Fifteen years ago today, on 12 December 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto made his final public post on the Bitcoin Forum.

It wasn’t a farewell. It wasn’t a philosophical message. It was just a short technical update.

Bitcoin was still in its early stages, trading at around $0.50. The network was young and small, and Satoshi’s focus remained on strengthening its core.

In that last post, he announced version 0.3.19 of Bitcoin Core, a release aimed at improving security and defending against denial-of-service attacks.

After that, he stopped posting publicly.

But he didn’t disappear immediately. He continued communicating privately with a few developers into 2011, quietly stepping away from the project he started.

Before leaving for good, Satoshi made one thing clear:

Bitcoin was not about him. It was about the code, the network, and the idea.

He encouraged the community to focus on the protocol, not the person behind it. Bitcoin was open-source, built to evolve with the help of many, not led by one.

Some believe he vanished to protect Bitcoin’s decentralization. Others think this was always the plan.

The last activity from his forum account was recorded on 13 December 2010. No more posts followed. No explanation ever came.

Fifteen years on, his decision still echoes through the Bitcoin community.

Because Bitcoin was never about Satoshi. It was about building something bigger than any single name.