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every ten minutes or so. But on Sunday eveningthe first transaction took place when Satoshi sent Hal ten coins to make sure that this part of the system was working smoothly. To complete the transaction, Satoshi signed off with the private key associated with the address where the coins were stored. This transaction was broadcast to the network—essentially just Hal and Satoshi at this point—and was registered in the blockchain a few minutes laterwhen Satoshi’s computers won the next round of the hash function lottery. At that point, anyone who downloaded the software would download the entire blockchain up to the point, which included a record of the ten coins that Hal had received from Satoshi, as well as the fifty coins that Hal had won on Saturday.
    In the first weeks, other early adopters were slow to buy in.Satoshi was using his own computers to help power the network. Satoshi was also doing everything possible to sell the technology, responding quickly to anyone showing the slightest interest.When a programmer in Texas wrote to Satoshi late one night, expressing his own familiarity with electronic currency and cryptography, he had an answer from Satoshi the next morning.
    â€œWe definitely have similar interests!” Satoshi wrote with innocent enthusiasm, before describing the challenge that confronted Bitcoin:
    You know, I think there were a lot more people interested in the 90’s, but after more than a decade of failed Trusted Third Party based systems (DigiCash, etc.), they see it as a lost cause. I hope they can make the distinction, that this is the first time I know of that we’re trying a non-trust based system.
    It became clear, though, that Satoshi’s program on its own was just a bunch of code, sitting on a server like so many other dreams hatched by programmers. Most of those dreams die, forgotten on a hard drive somewhere. Bitcoin needed more users and defenders like Hal to survive, and there weren’t many to be found. A week after the program was released, one writer on the Cryptography mailing list wrote: “No major government is likely to allow Bitcoin in its present form to operate on a large scale.”
    Hal acknowledged that the author could prove to be right, but came to Satoshi’s defense again: “Bitcoin has a couple of things going for it: one is that it is distributed, with no single point of failure, no ‘mint,’ no company with officers that can be subpoenaed and arrested and shut down.”
    Even Hal’s enthusiasm, though, appeared to flag at times. As his computer kept working at full capacity, trying to generate new coins, he began to worry about the carbon dioxide emissions caused by all the computers racing to mint coins. After his son, Jason, complained about the wear and tear it was causing to the computer, Hal turned off the Generate Coins option. Hal also had begun to fear that with a public ledger of all transactions—even if everyone was represented by a confusing-looking address—Bitcoin might not be as anonymous as he initially thought.
    And then something much worse happened. Hal’s speech began slurring. He became increasingly sluggish during his marathon training. Soon, all his free moments were spent visiting doctors, trying to identify the mysterious ailment. Eventually it was diagnosed as Lou Gehrig’s disease, the degenerative condition that would gradually cause all his muscles to wither away inside his body. By the time he learned this, Hal was out of the Bitcoin game. He wouldn’t return until his condition was much worse and Bitcoin’s was much better.

CHAPTER 3
    May 2009
    I n early May, a few months after Hal Finney’s last messages, Satoshi Nakamoto received an e-mail written in stilted but precise English.
    â€œI have a good touch on Java and C languages from school courses (I’m studying CS), but not so very much development experience yet,” read the note, signed