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6 sats \ 5 replies \ @siggy47 4 Dec 2022 \ on: Mysterious Bitcoin miner shows off oldest signature dated Jan. 2009 bitcoin
I'm no bitcoin historian, but if this was mined a week after inception of bitcoin, it would have to be Satoshi Nakamoto or Hal Finney, and Hal Finney is dead. I know there were others in the forum, but I thought there were only two mining that early. I'm sure more knowledgeable people are taking a look now.
The whole point of the famous genesis block quote was to prove that everyone has been given an equal opportunity even from day zero to mine Bitcoin.
And Bitcoin was announced publicly on what was at the time one of the most active cryptography/cypherpunk mailing lists. It got a lot of attention in that community and we have every reason to think there were quite a few early miners.
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Satoshi's paper had been published earlier and some people could've been lurking around the forum without participating, so I think that address could be owned someone totally unknown.
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Right, there were several cypherpunks on the mailing lists.
And don't underestimate cryptographers from academic circles in the early days - Satoshi themselves were from a university context which you can see through the double spaces in the Whitepaper.
Also there was the larger underground cyber scene from the very beginning. Not unlikely that one of them tried it out
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Do you know if there's a way to determine how many computers were mining back then based on hash rate or by other means?
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I don't think there is any way to figure that out from the blockchain data itself, and I have no idea if someone kept a log of connected peers or something like that, but I guess it could've been well possible.
Ask Satoshi, he probably did it. LOL
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