Bitcoin v0.1 released

Satoshi Nakamoto satoshi at vistomail.com
Thu Jan 8 14:27:40 EST 2009


Announcing the first release of Bitcoin, a new electronic cash
system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending.
It's completely decentralized with no server or central authority.

See bitcoin.org for screenshots.

Download link:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/bitcoin/bitcoin-0.1.0.rar

Windows only for now.  Open source C++ code is included.

- Unpack the files into a directory
- Run BITCOIN.EXE
- It automatically connects to other nodes

If you can keep a node running that accepts incoming connections,
you'll really be helping the network a lot.  Port 8333 on your
firewall needs to be open to receive incoming connections.

The software is still alpha and experimental.  There's no guarantee
the system's state won't have to be restarted at some point if it
becomes necessary, although I've done everything I can to build in
extensibility and versioning.

You can get coins by getting someone to send you some, or turn on
Options->Generate Coins to run a node and generate blocks.  I made
the proof-of-work difficulty ridiculously easy to start with, so
for a little while in the beginning a typical PC will be able to
generate coins in just a few hours.  It'll get a lot harder when
competition makes the automatic adjustment drive up the difficulty.
Generated coins must wait 120 blocks to mature before they can be
spent.

There are two ways to send money.  If the recipient is online, you
can enter their IP address and it will connect, get a new public
key and send the transaction with comments.  If the recipient is
not online, it is possible to send to their Bitcoin address, which
is a hash of their public key that they give you.  They'll receive
the transaction the next time they connect and get the block it's
in.  This method has the disadvantage that no comment information
is sent, and a bit of privacy may be lost if the address is used
multiple times, but it is a useful alternative if both users can't
be online at the same time or the recipient can't receive incoming
connections.

Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins.  It'll be distributed
to network nodes when they make blocks, with the amount cut in half
every 4 years.

first 4 years: 10,500,000 coins
next 4 years: 5,250,000 coins
next 4 years: 2,625,000 coins
next 4 years: 1,312,500 coins
etc...

When that runs out, the system can support transaction fees if
needed.  It's based on open market competition, and there will
probably always be nodes willing to process transactions for free.

Satoshi Nakamoto


---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com



More information about the cryptography mailing list

Re: Bitcoin v0.1 released

Hal Finney hal at finney.org
Sat Jan 10 21:22:01 EST 2009


Satoshi Nakamoto writes:
> Announcing the first release of Bitcoin, a new electronic cash
> system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending.
> It's completely decentralized with no server or central authority.
>
> See bitcoin.org for screenshots.
>
> Download link:
> http://downloads.sourceforge.net/bitcoin/bitcoin-0.1.0.rar

Congratulations to Satoshi on this first alpha release.  I am looking
forward to trying it out.

> Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins.  It'll be distributed
> to network nodes when they make blocks, with the amount cut in half
> every 4 years.
>
> first 4 years: 10,500,000 coins
> next 4 years: 5,250,000 coins
> next 4 years: 2,625,000 coins
> next 4 years: 1,312,500 coins
> etc...

It's interesting that the system can be configured to only allow a
certain maximum number of coins ever to be generated. I guess the
idea is that the amount of work needed to generate a new coin will
become more difficult as time goes on.

One immediate problem with any new currency is how to value it. Even
ignoring the practical problem that virtually no one will accept it
at first, there is still a difficulty in coming up with a reasonable
argument in favor of a particular non-zero value for the coins.

As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and
becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world.  Then the
total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all
the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household
wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With
20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.

So the possibility of generating coins today with a few cents of compute
time may be quite a good bet, with a payoff of something like 100 million
to 1! Even if the odds of Bitcoin succeeding to this degree are slim,
are they really 100 million to one against? Something to think about...

Hal

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com


source | index