If you missed your chance to talk with Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2010, there’s now a chatbot for that.
On Wednesday, developers Pierre Corbin and Hugo Ferrer announced an artificial intelligence bot that answers questions about Bitcoin as if they came straight from the protocol’s anonymous creator.
“We call it “Talk2Satoshi,” said Corbin when revealing the tool over Twitter. “We provide you with the tool for free. We only ask you to contribute to help us cover some of the API costs by donating some sats!”
Also known as “The Bitcoin GPT,” the chatbot uses an API from ChatGPT creator OpenAI, but features a dataset limited to Satoshi’s old emails and forum posts as well as only three Bitcoin-focused resources. These include The Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth, The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous, and The Great Reset and the Rise of Bitcoin—a film by the founder himself.
When asked about the future of fiat currency, Talk2Satoshi is relatively bearish on dollar, and bullish on Bitcoin. Referencing Ammous and Corbin’s books, the bot says that the dollar could be “more vulnerable to inflation,” and that Bitcoin could be “an attractive option for those who are concerned about the stability of fiat currencies.”
Check out an example:
Here's the answer to "Is our debt sustainable in an inflationary world?":Where else can you get this kind of answer? pic.twitter.com/euSj6oXqot
— Pierre Corbin (@CierrePorbin) May 31, 2023
Decrypt tried asking the bot what it thought about Ordinals—a new protocol ushering in NFTs and tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain. However, given its limited dataset that predated the emergence of Ordinals, Talk2Satoshi couldn’t provide a coherent answer.
Corbin told Decrypt that the bot will start to understand what Ordinals are once it has more resources to work with. These could include books, articles, research papers, podcasts, films, and whatever other sources users recommend.
“Its opinion will be interesting to observe [to be honest],” he said. “I hope it will be able to follow as much as possible the ideas of Satoshi and how he explained the future of Bitcoin.”
Regarding other cryptocurrencies, Corbin said that the bot isn’t necessarily designed to be biased one way or the other, but that it should explain other cryptos “from the context of Bitcoin,” staying true to Satoshi’s principles of “scarcity, decentralization and proper incentives.”
The ultimate goal of Talk2Satoshi is to provide Bitcoin education, and to help people down their “rabbit hole journey.” It also provides an easy window into Satoshi's thoughts on certain subjects, without having to manually dig through all of his old communications.
One thing the AI Satoshi still won’t tell us, however, is who Satoshi really is.
“I remain anonymous as I believe decentralization is key to the success of Bitcoin,” said the bot.