1) Everyone talks about who Satoshi Nakamoto was. Almost no one talks about how he coded. If you look at Bitcoin’s early source code, you’ll see quirks that reveal far more than his PGP key ever could. 🧵👇

2) I just stumbled on one of the rarest artefacts in Bitcoin history: The pre-release Bitcoin source code. Not the polished repo you see on GitHub today. The real 2008–2009 code Satoshi wrote before Bitcoin even launched.

3) It’s full of surprises. From strange coding styles… to forgotten terminology… to features that never made it past the early builds. It’s like stepping inside Satoshi’s mind in late 2008.

4) First shock: Satoshi didn’t code like a modern software engineer. - He used Hungarian notation (already outdated in 2008) - Heavy use of locks when they were “out of fashion” - Recursive spaghetti functions - No object encapsulation - Windows-focused build

5) These quirks tell a story. They hint at an older person. Someone from a close domain maybe engineering or physics, but not a career software dev. The whitepaper shows practical thinking, not the style of a pure mathematician.

6) He called the blockchain… the timechain. Yes — TIMECHAIN. His code literally had functions named around “timechain” logic. Every block linked by pprev and pnext. Somewhere along the way, the name was lost.

7) Even the word miner comes from him. The earliest reference to “BitcoinMiner” is right there in the pre-release code. Satoshi invented the term and with it, a whole cultural identity.

8) He had units called COIN and CENT. CENT was essentially his original vision for sats. One CENT = 1/100 of a bitcoin. Yes, sats could have been called cents.

9) Then there’s the weird stuff. Buried in the code: “add atoms to user reviews for coins created” Never mentioned again. Was it a reputation system for nodes? An abandoned idea? A brain fart? We’ll never know.

10) And some lines are just… pure Satoshi. Like this comment in the timechain logic: “protest the reorg” Straightforward. Philosophical. Almost punk.

11) Now, here’s one of the most iconic pieces from his codebase. It’s not just logic. It’s Bitcoin’s immune system. Every block your node validates today traces its lineage back to this exact function. Minimal. Pragmatic. Pure Satoshi.

12) This is where the rules live: - Block size limits - Timestamp validity - Proof-of-work target check - Coinbase transaction structure - Merkle root validation Every single miner, pool, and full node still dances to this beat.

13) When you compare his 2008 code to his 2010 code, you see something rare: The style never changes. From proof-of-concept to production-ready — it’s still undeniably his.

14) And here’s the wild part: We could use this style to compare and identify his other code in the wild. But no one does. Maybe out of respect. Maybe because we secretly want Satoshi to stay hidden.

15) Whenever someone says “X is Satoshi,” my first question is: “Show me the code.” Because that’s where the truth is. Not in photos. Not in rumors. In the style only he had.

16) Looking at this pre-release code feels like holding a fossil from a new species. Everything Bitcoin became… started right here.

17) The biggest mystery in tech didn’t just leave us a whitepaper. He left us a time capsule. And in that code, you can still hear his voice. Quiet, precise, and immortal.