On December 3, 2010, Malmi asked Satoshi whether they should recruit someone to take over more Bitcoin-related development and management activities. By this point, Satoshi was becoming increasingly less active and appeared to be preparing for his departure from the project.
Satoshi’s response was clear and decisive:
It should be Gavin [Andresen]. I trust him, he’s responsible, professional, and technically much more Linux capable than me.
Three days later, Malmi replied simply: “Ok, I’ll ask him.”
This exchange is one of the most historically significant in Bitcoin’s early development. Satoshi’s explicit endorsement of Gavin Andresen as his successor formalized a leadership transition that had been gradually taking shape. Andresen went on to become the lead developer of Bitcoin and the primary maintainer of the Bitcoin Core software.
The comment about Linux capability is also revealing - it confirms that Satoshi primarily worked on Windows and relied on others, particularly Malmi and later Andresen, for Linux-related development. Bitcoin had been initially released as a Windows-only application, with Linux support added in version 0.2 largely through Malmi’s work.
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/.