The New Satoshi Emails: Early Developer Sirius Releases 120 Pages Detailing Work on Bitcoin

Satoshi Nakamoto’s earliest collaborator Martii ‘Sirius’ Malmi has released his entire email correspondence with Bitcoin’s creator.

Spurred by an ongoing lawsuit in the U.K., the new emails are the most significant addition to the canon of what we know about Bitcoin’s still anonymous creator. 

Here are the most important new findings.

EMAIL #1: SATOSHI’S BITCOIN SCALING ASSUMPTIONS

When asked how Bitcoin might scale in the future, Satoshi theorized the network might have a maximum of 100,000 nodes. 

Here he goes into the calculations assessing the economics of bandwidth costs to nodes (read: miners) in propagating transactions across the network, the economic costs that would incur, and how that could be cost effectively passed on to users. 

He also discusses the implementation of users paying fees, and hints at the potential for the fee necessary for confirmation of your transaction being market driven due to the processing capacity of the network.

All in all, it’s interesting napkin math, though nothing out of the ordinary for those who have read Satoshi’s full Bitcoin forum posts. 

There Satoshi talked frequently about his vision for how the network might grow larger, and it’s notable much of his ideas were not proven to be viable based on subsequent development work.

EMAIL #2: Bitcoin Doesn’t Waste Energy

Though he wouldn’t stick around to see the tremendous uptick in Bitcoin mining using stranded resources, it turns out, Satoshi knew the network was greent.

One of the first criticisms to be lobbied at his new creation, Satoshi spent time addressing the idea that Bitcoin mining was wasteful on the forums, most notably saying that not having a currency like Bitcoin would be the bigger waste. 

Here, however, he expands on the idea in more detail, and in a more vivid and descriptive way than we’ve seen before. 

EMAIL #3: Satoshi on Time-stamping 

A headed debated today remains whether Bitcoin is money, or whether it can or does have other ancillary uses. 

In this email exchange, Satoshi seems to offer some insight on the debate, noting his belief the blockchain can be used as a distributed time-stamping server. This is akin to what has happened in Guatemala, where the blockchain has been used to certify contentious elections in recent years. 

EMAIL #4: Satoshi Talks DigiCash

Satoshi describing the differences between #Bitcoin and DigiCash, David Chaum’s failed e-money.

This is notable as Chaum’s work had a profound impact on the cypherpunks, including Hal Finney. He specifically discusses the differences in privacy properties of the two models, and notes that unlike Chaum’s scheme did not support an offline model, requiring all participants to be online to make use of the system. 

He also explains the finite supply cap of bitcoin. 

EMAIL #5: Satoshi Was Concerned About Promoting Bitcoin

Satoshi was concerned about his legal risk in launching #Bitcoin, noting he was “uncomfortable” with explicitly labeling it an investment. 

Note: Here also we see he didn’t come up with the term “cryptocurrency” himself.

EMAIL #6: Satoshi Got Burned Out on Bitcoin

By July 2009, Satoshi was tired, saying he “needed a break” from Bitcoin. Here, he also explains Hal’s absence from the work. He also mentions spending a period of 18 months at that point developing Bitcoin. 

A curious note as well, he asks Malmi if he had any ideas for applications people can actually use Bitcoin for. 

EMAIL #7: Bitcoin, A Way to Get Free Money

Satoshi discussing how #Bitcoin might gain adoption. Of note is his emphasis that Bitcoin was easy to obtain given that you could mine it on a computer. He also goes to postulate how the nature of a market trading for Bitcoin would evolve, discussing how skeptical people might be of its value, stating he was confident the increasing mining difficulty would prove its scarcity to people. 

Very different from how we think about BTC today in terms of acquiring it, but demonstrating a prescience of how people would mentally value it in the future. 

EMAIL #8: A Mysterious Bitcoin Donor Emerges

In June 2010, someone offered to donate $2,000 to Satoshi for his #Bitcoin work. Notably, he had the donor send it to Martti’s address. He also communicated care that the donor’s privacy was respected.

EMAIL #9: Satoshi Was a Fan of Free Transactions 

Already known, but Satoshi was pretty adamant that early users consider #Bitcoin “free.” Here he is discussing removing transaction fees from the UX of an early software. 

It’s interesting that his reasoning was to obscure this feature from users, but simultaneously acknowledged its necessity in the far future. 

EMAIL #10: Satoshi Was Dedicated to His Bitcoin Work

Satoshi worked on #Bitcoin on Christmas day. There are some interesting implications here to consider regarding his personal life. 

EMAIL #11: Bitcoin, A Web Currency for Currency Trading?

Satoshi saw #Bitcoin taking hold as a way to trade other internet currencies like Liberty Reserve. He also goes on to discuss the potential for markets selling gift cards for bitcoin, which wound up becoming and is to this day a significant market for bitcoin. 

Note: Liberty Reserve was later shut down by the US.

EMAIL #12: Satoshi’s First Disappearance 

Satoshi had a mysterious leave of absence from #Bitcoin in 2010. Here he is talking about it with Martti, though it’s notably also short on details.

EMAIL #13: Satoshi Realized Bitcoin Wasn’t Anonymous

It was Satoshi who removed the language that Bitcoin was “anonymous” from http://Bitcoin.org. He worried it made Bitcoin sound “shady.” This echoes his later sentiments around Wikileaks announcing their acceptance of bitcoin for donations. 

EMAIL #14: Satoshi Gives Praise to His Protege

Worth noting given the historical revisionism around this, Satoshi thought very highly of Gavin Andresen. Here he is praising Gavin and referring to someone else as a “goofball.”

EMAIL #15: Satoshi Says Sayonara 

We finally have a copy of the email Satoshi sent other developers before taking his name off the project website. As they’ve said, Satoshi doesn’t mention his intention to step back from the project at all.

Overall no substantial new information is brought to light, but the emails do give a new angle to Satoshi’s interactions with others involved in the project before his departure. 

Top-10 Ranked UFC Fighter To Be Paid In Bitcoin

The #8-ranked UFC flyweight fighter Matheus Nicolau penned a deal to receive his future fight earnings in bitcoin through the payroll service, Bitwage, on March 21st, 2022. Nicolau is the first Latin American UFC athlete to take a paycheck in bitcoin.

“I’m thrilled to be receiving my earnings in bitcoin,” Nicolau stated. “As an athlete, I work hard to earn a living for myself, but with rising inflation I worry that this hard work goes to waste. By using Bitwage to earn bitcoin, I know that I am securing the value of my work.”

Nicolau, a Brazilian native of Belo Horizonte, has come to understand the importance of Bitcoin, while the market has seen explosive growth over the past two years in South America due to economic burdens like inflation.

“We are very bullish on Bitcoin,” Nicolau’s manager Vinícius Las Casas commented, “and we are looking to spread the Bitcoin gospel with this latest deal.” Alongside the Brazilian fighter, his manager will also be using Bitwage to receive a portion of his wages in bitcoin.

Bitwage is the world’s largest payroll, invoicing, and benefits company in the Bitcoin space. Its services allow both individuals and companies around the world to receive their monthly wages in bitcoin. Bitwage is pioneering the payroll industry with its bitcoin 401k and lightning payroll products.

“Working with Matheus has been a rewarding experience for us,” said Bitwage CEO Jonathan Chester. “He’s an amazing fighter with a champion mentality.”

Nicolau is among the latest in a trend of professional athletes pioneering bitcoin deals: professional soccer players Achara Ifunanyachi and Alex Crognale made similar financial moves in 2021 with Bitwage.

MMA fighters in general, and even some of the internationally recognized superstars in the UFC, are paid in lump sums only after their events, much of their pay being contingent on a successful performance and performance bonuses. Many fighters are forced to take on extra jobs outside of their rigorous and time consuming training regimens just to afford to pay their coaching and recovery teams.

The UFC in particular is notorious for undervaluing some of its highest pay-per-view earning fighters, with some of its most decorated fighters simply walking away from the organization, or seeking and taking on high-paying crossover fight opportunities in boxing. Through Bitwage, fighters like Nicolau can get paid in bitcoin without the UFC being onboarded to the service. They can focus on training, while knowing their savings are secure in bitcoin.

Bitwage’s services are available to the broader market as well. Here’s how it works: You register with Bitwage and receive a bank account number. Next, you choose what percentage of your paycheck you want to receive in bitcoin, and then you give the new account number to your employer. Once they send the paycheck, you will receive bitcoin in an address that you control. If you did not allocate 100% of your wage into bitcoin in a given pay period, you will receive the rest of the money in your regular bank account. This is exactly how Matheus will be receiving his future payments from the UFC.

“Matheus represents our exponential growth trend in Latin America, with people opting to get paid in bitcoin in order to preserve their hard-earned money,” Chester stated.

For Nicolau, and other MMA fighters who understand the value of hard money, and a sound store of value, Bitcoin is the solution. Bitcoin will preserve their irregular earnings over time when custodied correctly. It allows fighters to alleviate future career uncertainty, by providing them with an appreciating sovereign wealth fund.

Nicolau is currently enjoying a four fight win streak in the UFC. This deal comes only days before Nicolau’s fight on March 26th against David Dvorak in Columbus, Ohio. Win, lose, or draw, his earnings will be immediately processed by Bitwage and converted into bitcoin.

Nicolau explains, “I make my money the hard way. I bleed for it. MMA is an intense sport that you put everything you have into. While I constantly fight on one hand, I have a feeling I am constantly losing money on the other. Then it hit me: Bitcoin is the solution. I worked with Bitwage to create this solution to ensure that my work pays dividends in the future.” 

The Story Behind The Bitcoin Infinity Day Public/Private Keys

The story of the Bitcoin Infinity Day Keys spans seven months of my life. The story evolves and transforms until it reaches its final form, crystallizing forever like the root of a Merkle tree. Over these seven months, the keys went from a test design I threw together and forgot about to a project that consumed my every waking moment. I’m going to take you on a walk through my mind to observe the path from idea to reality.

As the idea spread through the Bitcoin community, serendipitous manifestations would arise, leading the project in unimagined directions. A message here, a tweet there. Each piece is a subtle nudge in the direction of mapping out the end result. The idea grew and blossomed over time, pushed from one boundary to another on its hero’s quest to actualization. I’ve tried to find those pivotal moments to share with you. This is the story of how it all came to pass.

The Idea

The idea for the keys presented itself in a sly, roundabout way. It didn’t arrive as a finished vision, but rather as a stepping stone from one level of skill to another. I had just completed The Bitcoin Full Node Sculpture 7.0 made out of silver mirror and was preparing to start on #8 (it is a series of 10 sculptures).

As an artist, I always want to grow with each new project. Not only because doing the same thing over and over can be boring (even when successful), it’s also a safe zone. The world and market motivate you to repeat your greatest hits but you do that at the expense of furthering your growth. I like to try things that I’m not sure I can pull off. I try to work at a level slightly above my current skill set. This is the way I grow. It takes a ton of experimentation and testing to obtain and grow the skills. It also takes a willingness to fail. Failing is fine and should be done hard and fast so you can move on to winning.

The next move for me was to see if I could use colored mirrors to create new dimensions in the node sculpture. I quickly put together a two-layer design. Then I engraved, cut, painted, and assembled the test pieces. I had four colors of mirror to work with — silver, gold, blue, and rose gold — so I made 16 pieces to test all the different color combinations. Check out the tweet for the original video.

I got a lot of encouragement and, surprisingly, people wanted to buy my test cut design as an art piece. I wasn’t prepared for this at all. I didn’t think of the design as anything other than a test for a future sculpture. People were breathing life into the concept that the keys stood as their own design. I quickly fell in love with the idea. An art piece for the Plebs. In an edition of 210.

On the same day, July 5, I

tweeted this video

and then, just as quickly as I fell in love with the idea, I forgot about it.

It’s easy to forget about things when I‘m working on a project. My attention gets sucked in like a whirlpool until I’m far too deep to pay attention to anything else. I spent the next month working like this, tirelessly. By August 7, 2021, I completed the Full Node Sculpture #8.

This was about two weeks before the first Bitcoin Infinity Day: August 21, 2021.

Before we go any further, I want to make sure you’re familiar with the origins behind the Infinity Day keys. I made them to help spread the meme created by Knut Svanholm, “Bitcoin: Everything there is, divided by 21 million” and the original article, released August 21, 2020, called “Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole.”

It’s fun to note — and Knut says it was unintentional — that the original article was published on August 21, 2020. That date can be written more succinctly as “8/21.” Notice that the “8” can be viewed as an infinity symbol (∞) standing on its end. So the date “8/21” can be read as Knut’s meme: “Everything there is (infinity or “8”), divided by 21 (million).” So August 8 is Bitcoin Infinity Day. This is astounding, considering it was published on August 8, a year before the Bitcoin Infinity Day meme even existed.The idea for Bitcoin Infinity Day seems to have arisen right around the time I finished the sculpture (August 10, 2021). This is only 11 days! Not much time to birth a meme holiday…

The First Transformation

The idea for the Infinity Day Key came during a private conversation with the collector who purchased the Full Node Sculpture #8. Without this one comment from @Protagonist4now at 5:21 on August 17, the Infinity Day Keys would probably never have happened. He was asking me why Knut didn’t have one of the Bitcoin Full Node Sculptures…

On August 19, just two days before Infinity Day, I was able to get sculpture #8 shipped out. With that project done I could work on a new one, but time was short. It was August 20, just one day left.

Not sure if I could pull it off, I knew it was a pass-or-fail idea. I’d either do it in time and it’d be awesome, or I’d end up empty-handed and no one would know this was ever an idea. The only way to find out was to try. Proof of work. I reached out to Knut to get the “look” he liked for the meme.

So now it was almost 2 p.m. on the day before Bitcoin Infinity Day — crunch time. Just 10 hours left until the first-ever Bitcoin Infinity Day. I worked through the night and into the next day. Almost 24 hours later, I was done. I tweeted this video at 3:41 p.m. EST. I thought this was the end of the Infinity Day key project. But, as we know, life has a way of reorienting us when we least expect it…

Original goal: Achieved! Here’s a photo of

Knut Svanholm

After posting the Infinity Day key video, I began to get a barrage of tweets and DMs of plebs asking to buy a key. Since I never planned to sell the keys, I made only five of them. I planned to make a few extras to account for errors and mistakes, but all five turned out great. I knew I wanted to give two to Knut as a gift, but I wasn’t sure what to do with the other keys. Also, I wasn’t sure how I’d price the key fairly, as my last piece sold for 15.1 bitcoin. So I decided to do a giveaway.

The contest went on for about a week and I realized I loved so many of the answers that I had more than two people I considered winners. I highly recommend

checking out the thread

, it’s densely packed with interesting Bitcoin trivia. You can see here where we jump from two keys as the giveaway to five and then to 21. I even added the idea to auction the last key here.

Originally I was going to auction key #21 of 21 on

Scarce.city

, but again the idea man, @Protagonist4Now came through with the vision — #8 of 21 would be the one to auction, as it is the physical embodiment of the “8/21” meme within the set.

video here

That was on September 11, and below

in this thread on October 9,

you can see I just finished the 21 private keys. I have

videos of each of the keys

in the thread. The

first video

shows all the pieces after being cut, engraved and painted, but not yet assembled.

You can see the list of the 20 Private Key winners

here

:

The Public Keys – One for the Plebs

I started thinking about it, and over a few days the idea solidified. We’ll get more into the design of the sale and how it works soon, but the important thing here was that I wanted to do a sale that was open to everyone. Anyone could get a key as long as they were able to get into the sale “in time.” I would not be doing something like this again, but I wanted to make sure everyone had at least this one chance to own an original FractalEncrypt art piece. But the window would be short, and people had to be ready and have bitcoin handy to pay (so I had to give people time to get sats out of cold storage, etc.).

Michael Saylor is probably the most famous of the key winners. Here’s a never-before-seen photo from Bitcoin White Paper Day 2021.Saylor owns Private Key #11 and is also the owner of one of the artist-proof versions of the Public Key.

Third Transformation — Holographic Rainbow Background

I was working on the

Bitcoin Full Node Sculpture #9 of 10

I made an

artist’s proof

The Auction and The Sale

As things took shape, I prepared for the auction of Private key #8 of 21 and the sale of the Public Keys. This was set for the weekend of October 31, 2021, the 13th anniversary of Bitcoin White Paper Day.

Scarce.city

with actualizing. I wanted the sale to be defined by the Bitcoin network. It would be a limited-time sale, but not limited by clock time, but rather the world’s first sale limited to Bitcoin block time. The sale wouldn’t run for a set number of hours or days, but instead for a set number of blocks mined in the Bitcoin network.

The duration of the sale would be entirely decided by Bitcoin block time. The edition size (how many keys I would need to make), was also left entirely up to bitcoiners. I would make as few or as many keys as were ordered, no more, no less. If people bought three, I’d make only three. If they bought 1,000, I’d make 1,000. The price would increase as new blocks were mined. This meant waiting had a cost. If you wanted a key, the longer you waited to buy one, the more expensive it got.

As the day of the sale got closer, I began to get concerned. I wasn’t sure if the sale concept would make sense to others, so I reached out to some collectors I know, (Eric Weiss and Jeff (@SatoshisArk), and asked for opinions. I explained the idea, but both guys seemed confused, so that made me more uncomfortable.

This is the explanation of how the sale would work on the Public Key Sale page on Scarce.City (the bitcoin-only auction site);

The idea for the sale was this:

It is a limited-time offer, but available not for a specified time, but rather a specified number of Bitcoin blocks. Bitcoin blocks are mined about every 10 minutes so 210 blocks would take about 36 hours, or a day and a half to elapse.

Anyone can buy at any time during the 210 block window and there is no limit on how many keys would be made.

The price will increase by about $5 every time a new block is mined (this turned out to be 8200 sats per block on the day of the sale).

Once the 210th block was mined, the edition would be locked at the final sale count.

The morning of Saturday, October 30 arrived full force. I woke up nervous. Was my idea too far out there. Would people understand? Does anyone even care?

The sale of the Public Keys started first. It was set to begin as soon as the first block was mined after 11:11 AM, which was block 707,443. The amazing thing is that collectors wanted to be the very first to click “buy” once the sale went live, so they could get lower edition numbers. The first buyer to click buy, would get key #1, the second would get key #2. However no one knew when the sale would begin, since it began only once a block was mined after 11:11 AM. The block was not mined until 11:17, a LONG 6 minute wait for plebs with fingers at the ready.

42 keys were sold before the next block was mined only 21 seconds later. The sheer dedication of those bitcoiners who were ready at the keyboard, and clicked “buy” before that next block was mined just seconds later, cannot be overstated. As we know from Douglas Adams’ writing, the number 42 in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” is the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”. I took this to be a good sign, but I’m not one to declare victory before the end of the battle, so I remained cautious.

By the time the Private Key auction started at 3:33 p.m., just over 100 of the Public Keys were sold. Bidding on the Private Key went live and we were at 0.1 BTC within an hour.

I woke up excited. Not only would both the auction and the sale end today, but I was going to a fancy invite-only bitcoiner BBQ for Bitcoin White Paper Day. I arrived just before noon, made the rounds and settled in at a table by the pool while I tried not to look too anti-social watching the auction on my phone. Around 1 p.m., with only two hours left before the end of the auction, we hit 0.25 BTC. A bidding war broke out between ObiWan, willebra and TH pushing us over half a bitcoin. What happened next shocked everyone.

In disbelief I say, “This must be an accident!” Eric inhaled, thought for a second and agreed. No. No way the bid went from 0.575 BTC to 6 BTC. I took some deep breaths, calmed down and in a few moments the page updated. The world zoomed back into focus. Not 6.0 BTC. One-tenth of that: 0.6 BTC. Okay.

The bidding went on for another 30 minutes. Hitting 1.0 BTC was a beautiful moment and the auction came to a climax with a bid at 1.05 BTC by pekf73.

Now with the Private Key sale over, the adrenaline rush hit me hard. I switched focus back over to the Public Key sale. The Public Key sale edition amount would be entirely decided by how many plebs bought keys.

I checked the current total and we were at 199 keys. I saw

this tweet

from Glenn Hodl and I saw the vision immediately. 210. I certainly didn’t know how much work it would be to make that many keys.

With hours to go, and the price increasing every 10 minutes… is it going to hit 210?

It was a long weekend and the sale was going to close in about hours. I needed some sleep. My heart wanted to stay awake but my mind was not having it. By this time the counter was at 206 keys. I couldn’t stay up anymore. I gave up on the dream of hitting 210 keys. The fact is, the price got higher with each passing block, so selling more keys became less and less likely with each block mined. I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. I went to sleep. 206 was a good run, nothing to be ashamed of.

The next morning I woke up to a Bitcoin miracle. By the very last block of the sale, block number 210, only 208 keys had sold. It was over and done with, we weren’t hitting 210.

Then, literally in the nick of time, in that very last block

bought both 209 and 210, forever cementing the edition in at a perfect 21:210 ratio of Private Keys to Public Keys. Absolutely beautiful.

The anon pleb who bought #210 created this

.

Now you might think the story ends here, but there’s so much more. Once the 210 keys were sold, I needed to make and ship them all. On the sale page, I wrote that it would take me 4-6 weeks to have the keys completed and shipped. Later I realized that I set this time frame before I even knew how many keys I would sell. Making the 21 Private Keys took longer than I thought, but making 210 keys took the amount of work required to a whole new level.

We’ll jump into the creation process and I’ll share some insights into the journey, but first we have the next transformation.

Fourth Transformation — Taproot Keypairs

It all started with this question:

It got me thinking. I had what I thought was an answer, but it wasn’t a very good one. In the end, things got much deeper and far more interesting. Take note of the date, it’s Oct 31. Things take time to percolate.

About two weeks later,

Taproot activated

on the Bitcoin network at block height 709,632. This block was mined just before midnight on November 14 in my timezone and while I was sleeping, cypherpunks were playing. By the time I woke up, many interesting taproot transactions had been sent and then discovered by other cypherpunks. I began exploring everything I could find.

this tweet

Click on the image below and take a look at this transaction. Take note of the vanity addresses of course, but also the values transacted. 0.1337 BTC sent and then the first 3 inputs have values of 340, 341, and 342, these correlate to the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals related to taproot.

Whaaaaaaa?!?!

— FractalEncrypt ∞/21M (@FractalEncrypt) November 14, 2021

The fourth transaction contained the first 2-of-2 scriptpath spend.

pic.twitter.com/h9w8jhsjA5

November 14, 2021

Looks like I found this around 9:23 AM.

Then just eight minutes later I get a message from

Yegor Petrov

, “Hey Fractal”;

These two puzzle pieces clicked and fit together perfectly. Combining an on-chain Certificate-of-Authenticity for the keys using taproot vanity addresses with an OP_RETURN (hidden message)… a fire was lit within my mind.

First things first, I needed to download the new version of Bitcoin Core so I could get the new taproot functionality and begin teaching myself how to do this.

in this tweet thread

. It has links to all my educational sources and screenshots as well.

trying and failing to create taproot addresses in Bitcoin Core

because that functionality is not yet released. You know when you’re trying to do something and you run into a wall? Well, we can’t give up, this is Bitcoin. There’s either going to be a way to do this or an explanation as to why we can’t.

Andy to the rescue

!

this from Learning Bitcoin From the Command Line,

this

Now that I had a few hours’ worth of foundations in taproot, I needed to find out how to generate vanity addresses. I looked at several methods before landing on the

. It was created by Bitcoin Core developer

Andy Chow

. (again, Andy to the rescue, and he will become much more helpful soon.)

Link in hand, I downloaded the program, excited to get rolling and immediately ran into a series of errors that took me hoursof hard work to get past.

I installed Rust and a bunch of other dependencies, but nothing was working. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the program to do anything. So what do I do? Request help through Twitter DMs from the guy who wrote the software. I know this is probably not “the way” I should do it. It’d be more polite to ask via a post on StackExchange or BitcoinTalk, but luckily, within a very short window, I got a response, and it was exactly what I needed.

With this simple, magnificent piece of info, I was rolling! I’ll note that this step is nowhere to be found in the Readme on Github.

However there is something in Bitcoin known as the “dust limit” it’s an anti-spam feature of Bitcoin, and also helps avoid “blockchain bloat.”

Instead of looking up the dust limit myself, I decided to “

ask Twitter

”, not something I’d usually do. This post is at 4:07 p.m. on Nov. 18 about 30 minutes after I figured out the last step (constructing and importing taproot descriptors into Bitcoin Core).

At first, I wasn’t getting any helpful answers so I did what any good bitcoiner would do, verify the shit myself. I constructed a transaction with a one sat output in my Bitcoin Core QT wallet.

Then at 4:31 p.m., Michael Moffit posted this.

Then he dropped

and cemented the path forward for the taproot keypairs.

That lead me to Vijay Boyapati’s

amazing idea and execution

(which I copied; steal like an artist they say!):

on-chain bitcoin transaction

The timing of events here is an astounding unfolding. Consider the vanity taproot address generator software was released on November 10, 2021, just days before this. Vijay’s tweets were from September and October 2021, just weeks from this moment of realization. These building blocks are critical and necessary for the Bitcoin Infinity Keys to find their final form. And the building blocks themselves are forged by both the code and human facets of the bitcoin network.

Mining the Vanity Taproot Bitcoin Addresses

Here’s how the process of mining the vanity addresses works. The software asks you to define the vanity words or phrases you want to find. Imagine you wanted to say “Hello World.” You’d enter that into the vanity address software as “bc1pHelloWorld.” The “bc1p” prefix is required for all taproot bitcoin addresses (also known as “bech32m” addresses), and then your vanity words go after the prefix. The software then begins searching for any Public/Private key combination that results in a bitcoin address with your prefix.

Depending on how many letters or characters are in your search, your search may be quick or take an eternity. The more characters, the longer it will take. To find the 3-letter “key” addresses didn’t take long at all, however, to find an address with bc1pFractal it took me almost 5 days to find a single key pair. Finding bc1pEncrypt took me another 7 days and I almost quit looking for it as I was running out of time. Finding a bc1pFractalEncrypt address may have taken me more than my lifetime so I didn’t even attempt it.

Once I mined 210 “key” addresses I was ready to go. Or so I thought. As I started looking at the addresses, I noticed that some had numbers following the word “key.” This meant that I could have addresses like “Key1, Key2, Key3, …, Key210” I began searching and sorting my addresses to see what I had. I quickly saw that I already had many addresses that followed this format and I began organizing them.

Once done, I went back into the vanity address generator and began trying to find the missing addresses. I was missing “key1” so, of course, that was the first one I tried to mine. Immediately I hit a brick wall. “1” is a restricted character in taproot addresses, so mining any address with a 1 would be impossible. So that ruined that whole idea. I can’t do a series of numbers without “1” 1, 11–19, 21, 31, …, 100–199, etc. I was screwed. I had an okay idea, but it just wasn’t actually possible.

After a few minutes of thinking, I came up with the idea to try a lowercase “L” in place of the “1”s and see if that would work. It did. Okay, back in business!

Mining the addresses in a series like this was extremely time-consuming and I only made it to 50 before the addresses became too hard to mine, and I ran out of time. So keys 1–50 are special for this feature alone.

After “50” the only numbers I was able to mine the “numbered key” vanity addresses for were these:

Testnet Transaction

To create a Bitcoin transaction, I used a simple text editor called Notepad. I just typed it all out (or copied/pasted in the case of addresses). I’d never written a transaction this big before, it was intimidating. 210 outputs! Each output was one of the bitcoin vanity addresses I mined. But before I used the precious vanity addresses and spent real bitcoin, I needed to test things out. Mistakes on-chain are forever, so I didn’t want to look like an idiot to far-future generations.

The good thing is, once I created the testnet transaction, I could use that same text file as a template to create my “real” mainnet transaction later. In my testnet transaction, I didn’t use my precious vanity addresses, I just used regular bech32 addresses (taproot are bech32m addresses). The raw bitcoin transaction simply states what inputs are being spent and how they are spent. Here we see 2 inputs followed by the first 26 testnet addresses.

transaction

as well.

In addition to not writing out a specific fee amount (meaning you can make a big expensive mistake without realizing it), the fee is based on how many characters are in your transaction. This is called “sats per byte” and you pay your fees in a specific amount of satoshis for each letter or number you want to include on-chain.

For comparison, a regular transaction with two inputs and two outputs averages 150 – 250 bytes. I made a guess and figured for 200 outputs, maybe this would be about 105,000 bytes (half of 210, then multiplied by 100). In my guestimation, I paid out 109,467 testnet satoshis (or 0.00109467 tBTC) in fees. I knew if I was too low, my node would not send the transaction. There is a minimum of 1 sat/byte that is enforced by my node, so it won’t send a transaction with a smaller fee than that. An error is my indication that I’ve underestimated. If you overestimate, well, too bad, you just overpay for your transaction. That’s why we do this on testnet.

only turned out to be 6996 bytes. I thought it was going to be closer to 100,000 bytes. Sending these batch transactions is very economical in terms of both onchain data and the cost to place it there.

I did make a mistake in the testnet transaction and if I hadn’t caught it, I would’ve looked like an idiot to all my descendants and brought shame to my family. I had two outputs paying 1003 satoshis. Whoops, but this is why we do things on testnet first. Luckily I did catch this and was able to fix it before sending my “real” mainnet transaction.

Making the Keys

Video link

).

tweet above

and scroll down in the thread to see a video of the laser machine cutting the clear back pieces. I covered the Private Key plates in the video with the microfiber glove.

Once the pieces are cut, I have to paint each one. I also custom cut and apply double-sided industrial adhesive that welds the pieces together.

Painting all the pieces was a much larger job than I expected and I needed to acquire new tools and skills to pull it off. I also needed this big bounce-house-inspired inflatable paint booth!

Here are a few pics of painting the key pieces. This was my first time using a professional auto paint sprayer and I have to say the results came out fantastic.

The Art of The Transaction

While I was busy making the physical key parts, I put off sending the mainnet bitcoin transaction. I just took the risk and engraved all the Public Addresses into the mirrored plates and painted them. Heck, I even had the private keys all cut, engraved, and painted too. Failure here would be disastrous. If anything went wrong and I wasn’t able to send the transaction and use these keypairs, all that work would be wasted. Time for the acid test. I needed to send that transaction!

I took a few days to get the file set up correctly, checked, double-checked and ready to send. By the time it was done, I felt the transaction itself was a work of art. I encoded all kinds of Easter eggs into the transaction, not only what you could see in the text of the transaction, but even the fee amount. I had calculated the fee to the exact satoshi (we talked about the fee amounts before — remember, this is something you do not write into the transaction, it’s implied). I don’t think I could say this for many transactions, but even the

raw hexadecimal signed transaction

is beautiful.

Bitcoin Is Time

Let’s back up one second here. Before I was able to send the main transaction, I had to pre-fund my vanity addresses. It took me almost two weeks to mine these two addresses, and I wanted to fund them with exactly the right amount of satoshis, no more, no less. This must be executed with surgical precision.

This is the pre-funding transaction. I want to spend frommy “FractalEncrypt” addresses to all the Public Key Addresses. To do that I needed to make sure I had the right amount of bitcoin in the right addresses.

I was hoping

to have the transaction mined at a specific time, to add to the magic, but that was not to be. That’s okay, we take our wins where we can take them.

I wanted the transaction to be sent at a cool date and time. The date was December 21, 2021, so 12/21, and

The clock was running down. It was getting close to 8:21. I didn’t want to submit my transaction too soon or too late. A bitcoin block can be mined at any time, so I was afraid to send my transaction too early. It was a risk, but one I had to take. It was 8:20, and no block had been mined in the past 9 minutes, it was almost perfect. The tension was insane. I had to send it right then.

I clicked to send and… FUCK!

The transaction wouldn’t send! I didn’t have enough in fees. Fuck! My testnet transaction was 6996 bytes, so I thought by sending 8,888 satoshis in fees, I would be overpaying, not underpaying! This was a disaster of the highest order. I didn’t have

any more satoshis in my vanity addresses and sending more to them just wouldn’t look the way I want onchain. The feeling of defeat at that moment cannot be explained.

I got myself together and began thinking. Maybe 8:21 was something of an illusion. Maybe I just see that in block explorers because that is my local time…if this is true, then it’ll be 8:21 in one more hour, one timezone to the west of me. Back to Twitter. And, yes. That’s how it works.

So now I knew I had another 50+ minutes to figure out some way to get my transaction sent without ruining any of my encoded Easter eggs. I knew I could mine a new simple vanity address and send funds to that. I’d use those new funds to pay the missing fee amount. Instead of having my send addresses be the “Fractal” and “Encrypt” addresses, I could add a third address that contained the fees and I could make it say anything I wanted.

I went to my list of vanity keys that I’d already mined, but not yet used. I found one of the keys was a “bc1pkeys” address. Using this would make the send addresses:

“Fractal Encrypt Keys”

This was cool, I liked it, but now I needed to decide how much in fees to pay. I knew I needed to pay at least 9248 in fees because of this error, but that number had nothing to do with the “8/21” meme, so…

My prior fee amount was 8,888 but since that was too low, I pondered other numbers like 21,888 and 21,821 but settled on 88,888 to dig into the “Infinity” part of the meme deeper. To do this, I had to construct a new taproot descriptor for the private key of this new address, import it into Bitcoin Core to be able to spend to and from it and then send some sats there. I had to do all this quickly, as I had under an hour left.

Judging by the timestamp on

the funding transaction for this address

, it took me about 15 minutes after the first transaction failed (from 8:21 p.m. when the transaction failed to 8:36 p.m. when this transaction was confirmed) This may seem quick, but it was an intense and terror-fraught 15 minutes. Notice I didn’t put any fancy messages in this one. Stressed!

With this transaction confirmed, I had 80,000 satoshis in my “keys” address, allowing me to add these new funds to my transaction as an input. By doing this, I could spend the full amount. Adding the new 80,000 sats to the 8,888 I already had in my transaction would bring my total to 88,888. This is why I said that the amounts in the addresses had to be handled with surgical precision. An error of a single satoshi would ruin the magic.

Now I just had to wait for 9:21 p.m. EST, which would be 8:21 CST. Also, 8 p.m. is 20:00 in military time (or 24-hour time), this makes 9 p.m. 21:00 so if I could get it at 21:21, that would be magical! It was not to be, I was off by seconds, and it went through at 21:20. Here’s the transaction. See how many Easter eggs you can find yourself or just continue reading for the spoilers.

We can see the transaction is recognized as a taproot transaction, but this was also my first-ever RBF transaction. I’d been wanting to learn that for a while, and never did until now. I’m proud of this RBF flag!

The three inputs in the transaction have the vanity addresses reading “FractalEncrypt Keys”:

And here we can see the two input values of “8” and “21”

A Path Not Taken: 21-of-210 Multisig Treasure Hunt

I thought it would be cool to combine all the addresses on all the keys into one huge multisig “pot” that could only be accessed by possessing access to 21 of the keys. I wanted to make it so all keys are part of a 21-of-210 multisig scheme so that if any one person or group of key owners assembled any 21 of the 210 keys they could spend all the sats in all 210 of the addresses. This may not be worthwhile today, but in 20 – 50 years, it may be a treasure worth hunting down the keys to unlock (literally!).

I can imagine a dedicated collector hunting down 21 of the keys, or convincing a group of other key owners to join forces to unlock generational wealth. It was a nice daydream, but the fact is, writing this transaction (if possible) would have been a huge undertaking! I quickly found out that I could not use 210 keys together in a giant multisig.

The most I would be able to use together at one time was 20

.

Shipping The Keys

Once I had all the key pieces cut, engraved, painted and ready to assemble, it took me almost two weeks to get them all completed. I had hoped to ship them in time for the 2021 winter holidays but didn’t have them shipped until early January 2022.

Even putting the labels on the boxes took me a full weekend of non-stop work. When you’re trying to get precisely numbered sculptures matched to 200+ shipping labels, it takes attention to detail. It also takes patience. I also ran into unexpected supply chain issues. The Private Keys were shipped using a laser-cuttable foam. I was able to custom-cut the foam to fit the boxes and the sculpture.

But when I tried to order enough of the foam to ship 210 keys, I ran into supply chain issues. The foam wasn’t available in any size, at any price. So I ended up buying a bubble wrap-making machine and making the packaging myself. My whole art room was filled with rolls of bubble wrap that I filled myself. It was a pretty interesting process and, in the end, I now have a new cool machine.

By the end of the weekend, my front porch was filled with boxes ready to go out into the world.

The UPS driver wanted to know what I was shipping. I said marijuana. Just kidding. I tried to explain the keys without mentioning bitcoin or anything too specific (for opsec). She was like, “oh cool, art.”

And with that, the keys were sent to their new homes and this story comes to a close. As the keys arrived in their homes, I saw many delightful posts and received messages from the new owners. I’m sure the close of this story is the beginning of many others. Thanks for sharing the journey with me. Happy Bitcoining!