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I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

schneier.com

81–90 of 185 posts

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#82
post #72

Bitcoin uses elliptic curves. Schneier has infamously forsworn them, saying he doesn't trust the math. He hasn't to my knowledge (admittedly limited!) published any analyses of elliptic curve systems. He didn't need to tell anyone he wasn't Satoshi Nakamoto.

Not quite: he doesn't trust the constants. That's a big difference. He believes based on reading secret Snowden papers that the NSA has manipulated them via relationships with the industry. There are other curves that are NOT from NIST, like C25519, that are popular. In fact, the twisted edwards curve computation variant is also growing, which isn't the "traditional" (does that even make sense?) elliptic curve.

Now that doesn't mean the NSA hasn't fiddled with C25519, but I'd be surprised if they mind-controlled (or extorted) Bernstein into publishing a compromised curve.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#83
post #67
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the whole thing with crypto. The only benefits thus far that have come to widespread fruition are illicit purchases and speculation. For it to be broadly accepted, it has to lose the rest. Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's c…

well over 90% of illicit purchases are done in fiat and you've really not been paying attention if you think those are the only benefits of crypto. There's an entire country that uses crypto as legal tender. I could stop there, but there's more. Fees are lower than credit cards charge, there are businesses saving money by utilizing crypto. Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. The list go…

> Fees are lower than credit cards charge, there are businesses saving money by utilizing crypto.

That's news to me. Is this true for any of the major coins or just for some obscure one?

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#85
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

irreversibility is mostly a negative for anyone who is interested in getting a scam/fraudulent charge taken back. What happens when you purchase an item from some web shop with ETH and it never arrives?

This is actually an argument I totally disagree with. Businesses are long-lived, have reputations to maintain, and need to build trust. They have every incentive possible to treat their customers right, and issue refunds on valid issues. It is the customers that are sketchy and usually one-offs, and thus use stolen credit cards to burn the business with chargebacks. Businesses lose a huge amount to fraudulent payment…

> They have every incentive possible to treat their customers right, and issue refunds on valid issues.

There are plenty of fly-by-night operations that will smash and grab as many transactions as they can and not care about their reputations because they'll just set up under another alias.

Further, if your account/wallet gets compromised there is also no irreversibility. Whereas with the 'regular' banking system transactions can usually get reversed.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#86
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the could is meant as "technically, it would have been in my skillset to create something akin to this". It's clear that either motivation and/or ideas were missing, otherwise we would be crediting him for inventing bitcoin ;)

Afaik he doesn't actually have the full skillset required. He has the cryptographic and systems knowledge, but not the deep interest in or knowledge of monetary theory. The latter is prereq too.

I guess that's a theoretical question in the end, but it's definitely a valid point.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#87
post #74
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well over 90% of illicit purchases are done in fiat and you've really not been paying attention if you think those are the only benefits of crypto. There's an entire country that uses crypto as legal tender. I could stop there, but there's more. Fees are lower than credit cards charge, there are businesses saving money by utilizing crypto. Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. The list go…

> Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. Not in any of the countries that have implemented PayID. (Most of Europe, Aus/NZ, and South America, with the US finally beginning to get on board this year). It's a case of sending to a mobile phone, with instant-3days timeline, with a cost in 20-50c range for anything less than $10k.

I can send many orders of magnitudes more in crypto (XLM in case you're wanting a reference, but there are more) faster and cheaper than that.

and payID holds first time transactions for 24 hours...this isn't even marginally reasonable for many use-cases

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#88
post #52

Hal Finney is Satoshi, IMO. Not only is he the first person to respond to Satoshi and receive bitcoin, he lived minutes away from Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, an unrelated person who Newsweek falsely claimed was Satoshi. Satoshi also stopped posting at the same time Hal's ALS disease became unbearable, and after Hal's death Satoshi never posted again. I believe Hal either interacted with Dorian or drove by his house and…

This is a likely and plausible assumption.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#89
post #83
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well over 90% of illicit purchases are done in fiat and you've really not been paying attention if you think those are the only benefits of crypto. There's an entire country that uses crypto as legal tender. I could stop there, but there's more. Fees are lower than credit cards charge, there are businesses saving money by utilizing crypto. Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. The list go…

> Fees are lower than credit cards charge, there are businesses saving money by utilizing crypto. That's news to me. Is this true for any of the major coins or just for some obscure one?

lightening network for bitcoin (and many many many other coins/layer2 solutions) are practically free whereas credit cards charge sellers something like 2% _minimum_ on charges.
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