Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto • Hacker News Board

Re: Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

#211

Post by saalweachter » Mon, May 02, 2016, 2:32 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #93

This is a very interesting situation. Fundamentally, there is no reason he shouldn't be willing to sign an additional message. If he is the crypto expert he claims to be, he should understand the perfect legitimacy of such a request. So either: a) He can't sign it. b) He is really that petulant and petty that he "won't keep jumping through hoops", even when those hoops represent completely reasonable and trivially fu…

Well, there is (d) paranoia.

Suppose he does have the private key, but, because it is literally worth millions of dollars, he has it somewhere secure. It's not sitting on his laptop, waiting for someone to steal it (physically or electronically).

Signing a message before the announcement was lower risk than signing messages now, after the announcement. Accessing it a second time, with greedy little eyes all over him, is risking millions of dollars to convince people who probably wouldn't be convinced anyway.

Re: Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

#212

Post by scott_s » Mon, May 02, 2016, 2:36 PM UTC

On the academic side of things, he has a very thin paper trail: http://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/w/Wright:Craig_S= and http://dl.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81488659808&coll=DL&dl=...

I'm not saying the real Satoshi has to be an academic computer scientist, but if someone with a significant academic publication record in cryptography stepped forward, I would take it much more seriously.

Of course, this is secondary to the fact that Wright has not signed a new message with the original Satoshi key.

Re: Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

#213

Post by branchless » Mon, May 02, 2016, 2:41 PM UTC

meowface wrote: post #121

Reposting my other comment: I think Wright is just a smooth-talking conman with some crypto experience. I'm betting he met Gavin and other (unfortunately, merely "supposed" at this point...) experts in person, talked shop for a while, then took out his laptop and staged verifying the signature of blocks 1 and 9 with dummy commands. (Edit: Gavin actually claimed it was a clean computer, not one that Wright brought. Di…

> information that allows us to go through the verification process independently was provided too late for us to do so fully

"Too late" ? They are in charge of their publication schedule, I believe.

The economist is a very weak publication. Anyone taking a lead from them on economics should think about how poor the above statement is and wonder about their rigor in other areas.

Re: Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

#214

Post by branchless » Mon, May 02, 2016, 2:42 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #167

meowface wrote: post #121

Reposting my other comment: I think Wright is just a smooth-talking conman with some crypto experience. I'm betting he met Gavin and other (unfortunately, merely "supposed" at this point...) experts in person, talked shop for a while, then took out his laptop and staged verifying the signature of blocks 1 and 9 with dummy commands. (Edit: Gavin actually claimed it was a clean computer, not one that Wright brought. Di…

I think Gavin was just lazy in how he validated this (he probably was misdirected by a conman Wright into focusing on validating the signature, not on assessing whether the signature and key actually meant anything....turns out it was a non fresh message, so it wasn't proof that the human in front of him actually controlled the key.) Neither Jon Matonis nor Ian Grigg have said they actually did real validations thems…

Why not fault them? Because it's not their area of expertise? They should get someone in to verify. Is this a real journalist or someone at a tabloid?

Re: Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

#215

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, May 02, 2016, 2:45 PM UTC

branchless wrote: post #213

meowface wrote: post #121

Reposting my other comment: I think Wright is just a smooth-talking conman with some crypto experience. I'm betting he met Gavin and other (unfortunately, merely "supposed" at this point...) experts in person, talked shop for a while, then took out his laptop and staged verifying the signature of blocks 1 and 9 with dummy commands. (Edit: Gavin actually claimed it was a clean computer, not one that Wright brought. Di…

> information that allows us to go through the verification process independently was provided too late for us to do so fully "Too late" ? They are in charge of their publication schedule, I believe. The economist is a very weak publication. Anyone taking a lead from them on economics should think about how poor the above statement is and wonder about their rigor in other areas.

They are not in charge of the publication schedule for several reasons:

1. They all have lives, and likely work regular hours.

2. They cannot control what other news outlets release and when. A skeptical story from The Economist in the presence of lots of credulous releases from other outlets is better than silence.

3. They are a print publication. They can't hold up an entire release for one story.

Actually, out of all the major outlets, I'm most impressed by The Economist's coverage. The BBC and CNN fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Re: Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

#216

Post by bananaoomarang » Mon, May 02, 2016, 2:52 PM UTC

bennyg wrote: post #208

tkredmond98075 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he is not the one he claims to be, why doesn't the real Satoshi send an email saying "hi, it is not him". There are only 2 answers. a. It is him b. The real Satoshi is dead and Mr. Wright knows so. Unless he is extremely stupid, he would never risk claiming to be the most wanted man in the world, if he was not sure that no one could discredit him. We don't need more signature here guys. We just need to decide who…

Or the real Satoshi knows it isn't this guy and will wait until it all blows over. Presumably at a pub of some sort.

Satoshi, is that you :P?

Re: Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

#217

Post by toopok4k3 » Mon, May 02, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

Why is no one talking about Dave Kleiman, the wheelchaired man who died in 2013? He was supposedly a friend of Wright. My gut feeling is that he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright just sounds like an fraudulent opportunist who tries to bank by all means necessary from knowing the guys secret.

Re: Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

#218

Post by headgasket » Mon, May 02, 2016, 2:56 PM UTC

sit the guy in a room. Fire up sublime, emacs, vim, or whatever IDE. Give him an hour to write an app in C++ to solve something trivial that he does not know in advance, such as the 8 queens problem. End of debate. The guy most likely cannot code to save his life.

Re: Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

#219

Post by noir-york » Mon, May 02, 2016, 2:57 PM UTC

branchless wrote: post #213

meowface wrote: post #121

Reposting my other comment: I think Wright is just a smooth-talking conman with some crypto experience. I'm betting he met Gavin and other (unfortunately, merely "supposed" at this point...) experts in person, talked shop for a while, then took out his laptop and staged verifying the signature of blocks 1 and 9 with dummy commands. (Edit: Gavin actually claimed it was a clean computer, not one that Wright brought. Di…

> information that allows us to go through the verification process independently was provided too late for us to do so fully "Too late" ? They are in charge of their publication schedule, I believe. The economist is a very weak publication. Anyone taking a lead from them on economics should think about how poor the above statement is and wonder about their rigor in other areas.

You either know little about economics, the Economist, or both.

The Economist did not "fall" for Wright, and does not believe the claims made.

Re: Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

#220

Post by zipwitch » Mon, May 02, 2016, 3:23 PM UTC

meowface wrote: post #145

comboy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Wright is just a smooth-talking conman with some crypto experience. I'm betting he met Gavin and other (unfortunately, merely "supposed" at this point...) experts in person, talked shop for a while, then took out his laptop and staged verifying the signature of blocks 1 and 9 with dummy commands. I don't believe that anybody with the most basic understanding of cryptography would fall for that. I don't thin…

I agree that it seems extremely absurd Bitcoin experts would fall for that. I'm very interested to see how this story develops.

It doesn't seem at all absurd to me that an expert at any subject, speaking to someone else they believe is another honest expert, but who is actually an experienced con-artist / fraudster, can be fooled. Don't think of it as one cryptographer deceiving another via cryptography. Think of it more like a Penn & Teller trick (to use an example of some well-known experts in the art of deceit - not that I think for a moment they'd ever actually defraud someone) only with the computers and cryptography. The actual deception is likely so far outside the mark's expectations and normal thought processes that the possibility of it never even occurs to them.