1

How can we locate the code for an online poker game in version 0.1.0 of Bitcoin, which multiple articles on the internet claim was included by Satoshi Nakamoto? Furthermore, how can we verify that this code is indeed an online poker game ?

Saxtheowl
  • 2,800
  • 9
  • 17
  • 35

1 Answers1

3

How can we locate the code for an online poker game in version 0.1.0 of Bitcoin

The article you linked to, refers to https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/1/tree//trunk/uibase.cpp

At line 6 is a comment

 // C++ code generated with wxFormBuilder (version Apr 16 2008)

At line 1592 there is

CPokerLobbyDialogBase::CPokerLobbyDialogBase(wxWindow* parent, wxWindowID id, const wxString& title, const wxPoint& pos, const wxSize& size, long style) : wxFrame(parent, id, title, pos, size, style)

how can we verify that this code is indeed an online poker game?

Below line 1592 you can find many lines containing poker related stuff such as

  • Deal Me Out
  • Deal Hand
  • Fold
  • Call
  • Raise

It is vanishingly unlikely that these are not Poker related. Note that this is only small fragments of the user interface for a poker game. It is not, by a long long way, all the code for an online poker game.

Cause?

Whether this is genuine or a hoax I can't say. It does appear in several different repositories of the original source code. It looks to me like some user-interface layout definitions included by mistake from an unrelated project or accidentally left from experimentation when learning how to use wxFormBuilder.

Related sources

RedGrittyBrick
  • 26,841
  • 3
  • 25
  • 51
  • 1
    Thank you very clear, I did a grep poker on the directory but didnt go deeper – Saxtheowl Mar 22 '23 at 15:39
  • Any ideas on what the initial intent of this code was for besides, "by mistake from an unrelated project or accidentally left from experimentation when learning how to use wxFormBuilder?" What made you reach this conclusion? – adam2k Jul 24 '23 at 14:48
  • 1
    @Adam: A) I see no other plausible explanation. I guess Satoshi Nakamoto, or a collaborator, was interested in poker and had started writing a poker game in C. They might not have finished the Poker project but continued to use wxWindow tooling on the Bitcoin project. B) The absence of any mention of poker features in the Bitcoin whitepaper or other Bitcoin-related communications by Satoshi Nakamoto. Plus what I like to think of as experience as a software developer and common sense - though you are free to discount all that of course. – RedGrittyBrick Jul 24 '23 at 15:22