TITLE AS SENT IN AUGUST 2008
Electronic Cash Without a Trusted Third Party
◆
The starting text in this four-stage record.
THE FORGING OF THE WHITEPAPERS
The Bitcoin
Whitepapers,
Evolution.
Four versions of The Bitcoin Whitepaper are known. Three are accounted for. One remains lost...
Begin in August 200804 stages in the record03 surviving PDFs
From a private email
…to the paper we know.
Slide through the record
Four stages · dates not to scale
01 / PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE
Before the name
01 / 04
THE REVISION ROOM
Every word leaves a trace.
Choose two stages. See what changed, what stayed, and what moved.
ABSTRACT
The opening argument
RemovedAdded
THE ADDRESS TRAIL
Three addresses. One unfolding record.
- 01 · AUGUST 2008
satoshi@anonymousspeech.comSender in the emails to Adam Back and Wei Dai.
EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE - 02–03 · OCTOBER & NOVEMBER 2008
satoshi@vistomail.comPrinted on the StealthMonger and Bohm copies.
PDF · PAGE 1 - 04 · MARCH 2009
satoshin@gmx.comThe domain changes, and the username gains an “n.”
PDF · PAGE 1
The August sender address survives in the correspondence. The address printed in the missing August PDF remains unknown.
Layout note. The difficulty-adjustment paragraph is word-for-word identical in all three PDFs. It moves from §6 (Incentive) in October and November to §4 (Proof-of-Work) in March.
FOLLOW A CHANGE
Two comparison reports, checked against the PDFs REVIEW NOTES
All wording edits flagged in these two reports are represented in the comparison passages above. Page numbers, line wrapping and the moved difficulty paragraph account for the remaining highlighted differences.
A paragraph arrives. One word goes.
Report 1 adds the fee paragraph and removes “also” from the next paragraph’s opening sentence. The abstract and SPV wording stay the same; the added text shifts the page breaks.
Read comparison report 1 ↗Language tightens. A paragraph moves.
Report 2 flags edits to the abstract, contact address, fees, first network step and second SPV paragraph. The unchanged difficulty paragraph moves from §6 to §4.
Read comparison report 2 ↗Reviewed 21 October 2026. Line-end splits such as “peer-to-” / “peer” are normalized when comparing wording. Use the page overlay to see their original layout.
READING THE RECORD
Three different kinds of date.
A creation field, a public announcement and a saved download tell different parts of the story.
Created
The three PDFs record 3 October, 11 November and 24 March. Their timezone offsets are preserved and converted to UTC below.
EMBEDDED METADATAAnnounced
Satoshi announced Bitcoin on 31 October 2008. The announcement’s title and abstract match the surviving October copy.
PUBLIC RECORD ↗Preserved
StealthMonger reported receipt on 8 November. Bohm’s statement records a download on 18 January 2009 at 13:27 UTC.
REPORTED DOWNLOADSThe evidence supports a sequence of revisions. It does not establish a complete list of every draft, or prove the exact release-day bytes from metadata alone.
THE SOURCE DESK
Don’t take the typesetting on trust.
Inspect the pages. Download the original files. Check the hashes.
Sources, method & reading notes17 records
How this archive works
The August view transcribes the abstract preserved in the Wei Dai correspondence and identifies the sender address also visible in the Adam Back email. That address is not evidence of what was printed in the missing PDF. The three PDF views use the actual files. Their hashes, byte counts, page counts and creation fields were read directly from those files. The bundled PDFs are unchanged; page images are rendered derivatives.
Text comparisons cover the full abstract and six selected titles, addresses or passages. Line wrapping and repeated spaces are normalized. Both supplied HTML comparison reports were reviewed against the original PDFs; their wording edits are covered in these passages. These are not whole-document binary diffs. Use the original PDFs and page overlay for layout, equations, diagrams and pagination.
The Bohm PDF linked from NicholasBohm/Emails matches the bundled verified copy byte for byte. Its MD5 and SHA-256 also match Appendix PM3, §42 (pp. 14–15), reproduced in the linked JFIF. The appendix identifies itself as “Madden Appendix PM3”; its NB1 analysis begins at §41.
The August draft’s full contents are unknown. A missing passage is marked “unknown,” rather than treated as evidence it was absent. The October fee paragraph, by contrast, is demonstrably absent. Equal spacing on the timeline is for navigation, not elapsed time. “Four stages” is an editorial structure, not Satoshi’s version numbering.