According to Jim Blasko, he was able to uncover raw data and files from Bitcoin v0.1 including notations from Satoshi Nakamoto using “a little browser hacking.”
Jim Blasko, a crypto enthusiast, has claimed to have unearthed “the official oldest known uploaded copy of Satoshi’s Bitcoin” code, originally uploaded in August 2009.
In an Oct. 7 post on Facebook, Blasko said he found code dating back prior to the earliest days Satoshi went public with Bitcoin BTC by “using some browser hacking” on open-source software development platform SourceForge, where the cryptocurrency was registered in November 2008. He included claims that it took the BTC creator six months to mine 1 million coins “as block 20,000 wouldn’t come until July 22nd 2009 and others like Hal [Finney]” were also mining.
“This particular upload was thought to have been lost for at least 10 years, but after doing research on some old coins I made, I went to [SourceForge] and with a little browser hacking I found the lost Bitcoin v0.1 raw data and files,” said Blasko. “Since 2012 it was thought that the raw code and the files were gone as they had been scraped from the [SourceForge] search engine for some reason […] I did some digging and I was able to find the original code.”
According to the two SourceForge links provided by Blasko, Satoshi’s personal notations included remarks on why Bitcoin used base-58 “instead of standard base-64 encoding” and questioned what to do about errors in the future:
Related: ‘How I met Satoshi’: The mission to teach 100M people about Bitcoin by 2030
The first Bitcoin block — the Genesis Block — was mined on Jan. 3, 2009, following Satoshi releasing the cryptocurrency’s white paper in 2008. Satoshi’s identity continues to be a source of speculation among many in the space, with the pseudonymous creator being remembered with statues, papers, memes, and nonfungible tokens.
Cryptox was unable to verify the authenticity of Blasko’s claims at the time of publication. This story may be updated.
