Will buy 1 invite for $2, msg privately.
Peter Todd’s first-ever post on BitcoinTalk. Nine words. Posted on December 7, 2010 at 09:14:28 AM — one minute after registering under the username “retep” (Peter spelled backwards).
Context:
The thread was a marketplace for Diaspora invitations. Diaspora was an open-source, decentralized social network that launched in 2010 as a privacy-focused alternative to Facebook. It was invite-only at the time, and invites were being traded on BitcoinTalk’s Marketplace board.
Other buyers in the thread offered 0.5–2 BTC per invite. Todd offered $2 USD — a fiat currency price on a Bitcoin forum. Whether this reflects unfamiliarity with BTC pricing, a deliberate choice, or something else is unknowable.
Writing style:
The post is maximally terse: no subject (“I”), no full word (“msg” for “message”), no personality. It reads like a classified ad — the kind of text designed to leave zero stylistic fingerprint. Compare this to Todd’s later writing, which is characterized by self-deprecating humor, profanity, and casual-technical mixing, and to Satoshi’s measured, precise style. This post is neither.
Timeline significance:
- December 7, 09:13:47 — Account “retep” registered
- December 7, 09:14:28 — First post (this Diaspora invite request) — 41 seconds later
- December 10, 01:27:59 — Second post (reply to Satoshi on transaction replacement)
- December 12 — Satoshi’s last public post
The 41-second gap between registration and first post suggests the message was composed in advance — or the account was created specifically to post it.
Username change:
The username “retep” was changed to “Peter Todd” years later at Todd’s own request (BitcoinTalk requires users to ask an administrator to change usernames). The exact timing is unknown but is estimated to be around 2012–2013, when Todd began actively contributing to Bitcoin Core. Few people realized at the time that “retep” was “Peter” reversed. Bitcoin Core developer Gregory Maxwell commented on Hacker News in October 2024 that “it took me nearly a decade to realize retep was peter backwards.” Todd himself addressed this in a 2024 Bloomberg interview, arguing: “At the time I was under the name retep, and nobody knew who I was. If I had accidentally posted as Satoshi, the normal thing to do would be to abandon the account — not change the username to my real name years later.”