On May 4, 2009, Malmi submitted his initial FAQ draft to Satoshi, covering topics including Bitcoin’s definition, how to acquire bitcoins, how the system works, and security considerations.
Satoshi praised the FAQ but raised a critical concern about how Bitcoin was being positioned. In one of the most historically significant statements from these emails, Satoshi wrote:
There are a lot of things you can say on the sourceforge site that I can’t say on my own site … Even so, I’m uncomfortable with explicitly saying ‘consider it an investment’. That’s a dangerous thing to say and you should delete that bullet point. It’s OK if they come to that conclusion on their own, but we can’t pitch it as that.
This exchange reveals Satoshi’s careful approach to regulatory risk and his deliberate effort to position Bitcoin as a technology and payment system rather than as a speculative investment vehicle. This stance has been widely cited in discussions about Bitcoin’s intended purpose and the cryptocurrency regulatory landscape.
Source: Published by Martti Malmi on GitHub in February 2024 as part of his testimony in the COPA v. Wright trial. The full correspondence archive is available at mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/.