Before the hashtags, before the headlines, before your favorite influencers learned how to pronounce “decentralized”—there were a few stubborn humans writing code in the dark, sending emails at odd hours, and believing that money could be both math and freedom.

One of those humans was Sirius—you might know him by his real name, Martti Malmi—an early collaborator who stood beside Satoshi when Bitcoin wasn’t a movement yet. It was a repo. A mailing list. An idea that could have gone nowhere.

This month, we’re releasing The Sirius Collection—a 10,000-piece homage to the people who build before the applause. It’s a love letter to those who answered the question, “What if?” long before anyone else cared.

Who is Martti “Sirius” Malmi?

If you’ve been around Bitcoin long enough, you hear names like Satoshi, Hal Finney, Gavin Andresen. But standing right beside that origin story is a quiet Finnish developer named Martti Malmi, online handle “Sirius.”

In 2009, he was a second-year tech student in Finland looking for something that actually mattered. He found Bitcoin, resonated with the idea of separating money from the state, and reached out to Satoshi.

And he didn’t just “join” the project—he became one of the first two Bitcoin developers, working shoulder-to-shoulder with Satoshi himself.

Here’s what he did:

• He built Bitcoin’s first GUI (the first Windows client).

  Before Sirius, Bitcoin lived in command-line land—pure nerd territory.
  He helped build the first graphical interface, making Bitcoin usable for normal people.

• He co-ran Bitcoin.org with Satoshi.

  The main Bitcoin homepage was originally owned and managed by just two people: Satoshi Nakamoto & Martti Malmi. That’s how early—and how critical—his role was.

• He made the first known BTC-to-USD sale.

  5,050 BTC for $5.02. Yes, you read that right. He sold thousands of BTC so others could try Bitcoin themselves.

• He helped launch one of the earliest Bitcoin exchanges, using his own coins as liquidity.

  Student. Laptop. Tens of thousands of BTC. He didn’t hoard—he onboarded.

  Sirius wasn’t just a “user.” He was infrastructure.

  Fast-forward to today, many of the coins he used to grow the ecosystem would be worth billions. He sacrificed wealth for adoption. He recently released his full email correspondence with Satoshi—now a priceless historical archive.

  And yet outside the hardcore Bitcoin crowd, most people don’t know his name. That’s why this collection exists.

Why Sirius—Why Now?

Because memory is infrastructure. If we forget how this started, we’ll misunderstand where it’s going.

Sirius represents three things we need more of:

• Conviction before consensus. Not the loud kind. The kind you verify in quiet work and long nights.

• Contribution without applause. Shipping code, writing docs, fixing bugs—no stage, no slogans, just progress.

• Courage under doubt. Building when the world calls you foolish, and shipping anyway.

This isn’t nostalgia; it’s instruction. The rails we ride today were built by people who were okay being early—and occasionally alone.

What the Sirius Collection stands for

Every trait, every palette, every subtle nod in this collection points to builders over celebrities, substance over spectacle, legacy over hype. It’s not about worshiping the past; it’s about thanking it and using it to aim forward.

Owning a Sirius doesn’t make you special. It reminds you to stay responsible for what we’re building next.

• If you’re a newcomer: let this be your first “why.”

• If you’ve been here: let it be your reminder to keep shipping.

• If you’re somewhere in between: stay curious, stay humble, stay useful.

And if you’re asking, “Why an NFT? I thought you were a ‘money guy.’” That’s because culture carries truth farther than lectures ever will.

Money is a protocol, sure. But movements are human. We remember faces, symbols, stories. The Sirius Collection is a story object—a way to carry early-builder values into the feeds and wallets of a new generation so they don’t learn the wrong lesson: that this space is only about price.

Price moves. Principles compound.

Satoshi isn’t here to write this post. But I am. And I’m telling you, the distance between those first commits and today’s on-chain world isn’t an accident; it’s a relay. Someone ran the first leg. We run the next.

Sirius is the handoff—past to present, present to future.

From “a few devs shipping quietly” to “millions of people self-custodying, voting, building, and daring to own their money.”

What owning a Sirius means (and doesn’t)

It doesn’t make you an oracle, or a whale, or a sticker-collection champion.
But it does signal that you care about the right things: builders, verifiers, quiet ship-it energy. It’s a reminder that conviction isn’t loud; it’s consistent.

When you see your Sirius in your wallet, I want you to remember the people who built a legend when no one clapped—and then ask yourself one question: What am I building now?

The world loves to join in the victory lap. But the real work happens on mile one, in bad weather, when the stands are empty, and Sirius is for the mile-one runners. Let’s honor the ones who started the first relay.

Run your leg well, and we’ll see each other at the finish line.

Ready to go deeper?

• Mint Sirius (10,000 NFTs Collection): https://www.banksonbase.com/sirius/