“Satoshi taught me this concept of walking away and not touching their bitcoin, not as far as we can tell benefiting from it from a value perspective in any way, walking away at the onset of WikiLeaks using it which will tell you something about why they may have walked away,” – Jack Dorsey, in a podcast interview
On December 14, 2010, the US Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia faxed a court order to Twitter’s Trust & Safety Team. Twitter was not being sued. Instead, a federal court had ruled that there were reasonable grounds to believe that the social media network had records or information that were relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation into WikiLeaks. One of the conditions of the order was that Twitter was not permitted to disclose the existence of the order or even the existence of the investigation.
Dick Costolo was currently the CEO of Twitter while Jack Dorsey, who founded the company, only had a board seat at the time and was not involved in day-to-day operations. But that was on pace to change. After Jack Dorsey was forced out of the company in the Fall of 2008 (which dovetailed with the introduction of Satoshi and Bitcoin), he had remained in touch with many of the company’s key players, including Dick Costolo, who was then only COO, according to the Twitter biography Hatching Twitter. And by the summer of 2010 Jack and others were working on a plan to remove Evan (Ev) Williams as CEO, the very person who had usurped Jack previously.
According to the book, the plan was “to bring Jack back to the company. Although Jack wanted to be CEO, he knew he couldn’t do it while running Square at the same time, but just returning would be enough. At least for now.”
By October 4th Ev was out and Dick Costolo took his place as CEO. There was supposed to be a simultaneous announcement that Jack had returned in a major capacity but the way the leadership change played out caused issues that forced a delay. It wouldn’t be until March 28, 2011 that Jack would be made Head of Product and Executive Chairman at Twitter, all while remaining CEO of Square. But in the meantime as of October 2010, his return was promised.
Twitter had a big problem that October. WikiLeaks, a self-described whistleblower, was using Twitter as its primary communications channel as it released millions of highly sensitive US government documents to the world. As the secrets poured out, newspapers reported that people could follow the story as it was unfolding by following WikiLeaks’ Twitter account.
By December 4th, the US government was applying pressure in any way it could. WikiLeaks’ primary funding mechanism was PayPal, which PayPal finally shut off. The move caught the attention of Bitcoiners who suddenly believed they finally had the call to action to use Bitcoin they were looking for.
“It is the morally correct thing to be supporting Wikileaks, and if they’ll take a few of my bitcoins, I not only want to donate but to let the world know that they can donate to Wikileaks through Bitcoins as well,” wrote RHorning on the Bitcointalk forum on December 4th. “Basically, bring it on. Let’s encourage Wikileaks to use Bitcoins and I’m willing to face any risk or fallout from that act.”
The rallying cry spooked Satoshi Nakamoto, whose political principles had otherwise mostly been kept to himself. “No, don’t ‘bring it on,'” Satoshi wrote on Bitcointalk on December 5th. “The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way. I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.”
Satoshi resumed posting about code like normal immediately after but the controversy surrounding WikiLeaks was not going away. Julian Assange, the main figure behind WikiLeaks, was arrested in London on December 7th. Then on December 10th, PCWorld published a famous story, titled “Could the Wikileaks Scandal Lead to New Virtual Currency?”
“As the Wikileaks debacle continues, [Bitcoin is being] increasingly discussed in various sections of the Web as a possible solution to the PayPal online payments monopoly,” the article said. It mentioned Satoshi Nakamoto by name as the creator. As the article swept the web, a disappointed Satoshi wrote on the 11th, “It would have been nice to get this attention in any other context. WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet’s nest, and the swarm is headed towards us.”
Satoshi made one final post the day after and per the site’s activity monitor logged in for his last time ever on December 13th. On the same day, Satoshi emailed a new release of the Bitcoin software to the Bitcoin list. That would be his last ever email to that list.
On December 14th, Twitter’s Trust & Safety team received a copy of the court order to turn over everything it had about WikiLeaks and a gag stipulation preventing them from telling anyone about it. The legality of the order would be litigated for years.
Satoshi only communicated by e-mail thereafter, and mainly on housekeeping matters. His last known email to Martti Malmi was on February 11, 2011.
On March 28, 2011, Jack Dorsey was finally given his official welcome back at Twitter. “Today I’m thrilled to get back to work at @Twitter leading product as Executive Chairman. And yes: leading @Square forevermore as CEO,” he wrote.
By then, it had become obvious that Satoshi was on his way out because Mike Hearn emailed Satoshi and asked, “are you planning on rejoining the community at some point (eg for code reviews), or is your plan to permanently step back from the limelight?”
“I’ve moved on to other things,” Satoshi wrote on April 23rd in reply. “It’s in good hands with Gavin and everyone. I do hope your BitcoinJ continues to be developed into an alternative client. It gives Java devs something to work on, and it’s easier with a simpler foundation that doesn’t have to do everything. It’ll get critical mass when impatient new users can get started using it while the other one is still downloading the block chain.”
On April 26th, Satoshi wrote to Gavin Andresen with his last email ever. “I wish you wouldn’t keep 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 your dev contributors; it helps motivate them.”
On April 27th, Jack Dorsey expressed just how tough it was to be working at two major companies at once. “Had to cancel my Square-related trip to China in May to be at Square & Twitter everyday. Sorry Woyo, lots going on here!”
On May 23, 2011, Twitter’s Tech lead tweeted, “I wonder when / if @square will handle bitcoin payments.”