11 years ago today, Satoshi shared his final message and left forever

April 26, 2011

The Final Message

Satoshi sent this message to early Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen as a response to Andresen talking about Satoshi in the press

“I wish you would stop talking about me as a mysterious shadowy figure. The press just turns that into a pirate currency angle. Maybe instead make it about the open source project and give more credit to contributors. It helps motivate them.”

Satoshi did not want to be the leader or founder figure of Bitcoin. He wanted it to be a pure open source project created by and for all of humanity. It was clear from the beginning in every decision he made and his actions make more and more sense after he left.

Even 6 months before this final message, there were already signs that Satoshi would leave. In December 2010, he removed his name from Bitcoin's SourceForge license document and updated all email contacts on Bitcoin.org to other developers. Satoshi's last public message on Bitcointalk was on December 12, 2010. Through Gavin, he asked all the volunteer developers to take the project forward.

This was Gavin's message on behalf of Satoshi shared to Bitcointalk forum on January 13, 2011.

“So who is willing and able to help out? Don't ask permission, just jump in, grab a bug that catches your interest, add comments to it as you start to figure out what the problem is (or isn't), and submit a PULL request when you have a fix.

Your reward will be recognition, admiration and respect. It is time to take bitcoin from, essentially, a single-programmer project to a robust open source project with lots of contributors.”

By studying the early history of Bitcoin it's clear that Satoshi only planned to stay as long as he was needed to get Bitcoin up and running. Once others started chipping in, he knew his work was done and he left.

Today there are hundreds of Bitcoin developers but you may not know that they don't get any salary to work on Bitcoin. They are supported only by sponsors and donations. If you hold good amount of BTC, maybe you should consider donating at least 1% to Bitcoin FOSS developers.