Bitcoin v0.1.5, the last version personally coded by Satoshi Nakamoto, contains curious references to poker buried in its source code. While never officially documented, these fragments suggest that Bitcoin’s original design may have envisioned more than just money; it may have included decentralized, trustless gaming. This talk will explore the historical and technical significance of these lost poker references, analyzing: What was Satoshi’s intent? Was this an abandoned feature, an experiment, or an overlooked function of Bitcoin’s game-theoretic design? How was poker referenced in early Bitcoin?
There will be a deep dive into the code archaeology of v0.1.5 and why poker may have been included. The presentation will also include the introduction of Bitcoin Poker, a modern Rust-based reimagining of trustless, peer-to-peer poker, demonstrating how we can host fully decentralized poker games without a centralized server, use multi-signature escrows for provably fair betting and payouts, ensure post-quantum security for long-term cryptographic safety, and implement a sidechain execution model to handle high-frequency transactions without bloating the main chain.