What was it like to work with Satoshi Nakamoto? Our own Jeff Garzik breaks down the experience.

In this video, Jeff Garzik reflects on Satoshi Nakamoto’s approach to coding and managing Bitcoin’s early development. He points out that there wasn’t a specific “Satoshi Way” of coding, as Satoshi’s code was messy, self-taught, and disorganized—something even Satoshi acknowledged.

Despite this, Satoshi was humble, often asking for help with tasks like porting Bitcoin to Linux. Jeff explains how the early versions of Bitcoin were all bundled into one application, containing the wallet, node, and miner. Satoshi wasn’t interested in keeping up with the latest mining optimizations, so Jeff took the initiative to separate the mining code into its own software, which evolved into CPU miner, GPU miner, and eventually the mining tools used today with ASICs.

In terms of management, Satoshi was calm, never argumentative, and communicated his decisions through code merges. Much like Linus Torvalds, the leader of the Linux project, Satoshi would simply merge or not merge a patch, signaling his agreement or disagreement. Jeff also compares Satoshi’s coding style to that of scientists in other fields, like physicists and biologists, who may not have formal training in coding but write functional, though messy, code to solve problems. Satoshi cared deeply about Bitcoin’s cryptographic security, but the organization and modularity of the software were less important to him.

About the Series

Satoshi Stories is a fascinating deep dive into the history of Bitcoin told by Bitcoin Core Developer Jeff Garzik. Jeff was there at the beginning of Bitcoin’s rise and eventual domination of the cryptocurrency world and his experience working with Satoshi in those early years offers important and fascinating insights into the technology.