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First public white-paper criticGenesis✓ Verified

James A. Donald

Sent the first reply to Satoshi's announcement.

Known as James A. Donald, jamesdActive Nov 2008 – Nov 2008

Why they matter

His exchange with Satoshi is the earliest recorded public technical debate about Bitcoin, and it framed the scaling tension that would dominate Bitcoin's politics for the next decade.

Profile

Cryptography mailing-list member who posted the first known public reply to Satoshi's white-paper announcement in November 2008, immediately raising the scalability question: "the way I understand your proposal, it does not seem to scale to the required size."

In their words

We very, very much need such a system, but the way I understand your proposal, it does not seem to scale to the required size. For transferable proof of work tokens to have value, they must have monetary value...
James A. DonaldNov 2, 2008source

Timeline

  1. Bitcoin's code is reviewed before launch

Sources