Decade-Old Wisdom: Unpacking Satoshi Nakamoto's Definitive Quote on Bitcoin Transaction Challenges

Thirteen years ago to the day, the enigmatic creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, pronounced a quote that has since reverberated across various contexts. This prominent aphorism: “If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry,” was Nakamoto’s curt response to questions surrounding the potential solutions for Bitcoin’s transaction speeds and double spending issues.

The 13th Year Anniversary of Nakamoto’s Iconic Quote

In the summer of 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto was a palpable presence in the nascent world of digital currency, busily shaping Bitcoin’s path and engaging in lively dialogues online. Within a span of two weeks – from July 2 to July 17, 2010 – Nakamoto found the time to articulate 73 thoughtful responses on specific discussions hosted on the forum bitcointalk.org. It was in this buzzing hub, on July 29, 2010, that Nakamoto memorably posted his now-famous line, “If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry,” in a thread aptly titled: “Scalability and transaction rate.”

Nakamoto’s comment was in response to the statement from another crypto proponent who said: “10 minutes is too long to verify that payment is good. It needs to be as fast as swiping a credit card is today.” Nakamoto replied by saying:

See the snack machine thread, I outline how a payment processor could verify payments well enough, actually really well (much lower fraud rate than credit cards), in something like 10 seconds or less. If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry.