Did Satoshi Nakamoto envision the NFT era? Early JPEG sales then suggest ⋆ ZyCrypto

Despite still being fairly new, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have taken art and digital collectibles by storm. However, according to a recent discovery, it seems that Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto predicted this trend long before NFTs became a household name.

The revelation came when Udi Wertheimer, a prominent figure in the crypto community, made an intriguing discovery in a post on the original Bitcointalk forum. On May 14, Wertheimer tweeted about finding evidence of the first real Bitcoin payment made in 2010 to buy an NFT.

The post in question was made by a pseudonymous user named “Sabunir” on the Bitcointalk forum on January 24, 2010. Sabunir announced plans to sell a JPEG image worth $1 Bitcoin, which amounted to a staggering 500 BTC at the time. He then posted his address and asked any interested buyers to send him a private message.

Interestingly, Satoshi Nakamoto responded to the post and gave recommendations on how the seller would conduct the sale with Bitcoin. Satoshi suggested sending BTC to a seller’s static IP address with a comment or creating a new BTC address for the transaction. He even mentioned that this method could become the “standard way” for website software to handle such transactions.

And while the discussion lacks conclusive evidence of a sale, ZyCrypto conducted an investigation of the address and discovered a transaction of 500 Bitcoin on 02/24/2010. This means that if this transaction is indeed linked to the image’s sale, it will precede the well-known first Bitcoin transaction of 10,000 for 2 pizzas, which took place on 05/22/2010.

However, the claim of the NFT sale has been disputed by various observers, with Wertheimer suggesting that the JPEG sale never took place, despite 500 BTC being sent to that address a month after the sale offer was made.

“It’s possible the 500 BTC was sent as a donation for another interaction and the JPEG sale never took place. Only one way to know for sure…maybe one day Sabunir will come back and tell us what really happened.” Wertheimer tweeted on Sunday, May 14.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the specific transaction, some believe that Satoshi Nakamoto’s assistance and guidance in carrying out the potential sale implies his support for the concept of NFTs.

“Most remarkable of all, Satoshi treated this as if it were the most normal thing in the world. He would certainly be pro-ordinal,” Mike McDonald tweetedwhich responds to Wertheimer’s post.

Notably, Satoshi’s actions align with those of early Bitcoin developer Hal Finney, who received the first Bitcoin transaction by Satoshi and expressed interest in “Crypto trading cards” in a 1993 email.