51–60 of 151 posts
If this is true, wow. I've read about Paul Le Roux before as he is likely the person behind Trucrypt. While he's a criminal, if he really created Truecrypt and Bitcoin and also ran an international drug/gun running operation...I'm impressed. I think this dude's story could make a awesome book/movie some day...
Satoshi is a German or Swiss. Nobody in the world has GMX email addresses except the Germans and the Swiss.
If this is true, wow. I've read about Paul Le Roux before as he is likely the person behind Trucrypt. While he's a criminal, if he really created Truecrypt and Bitcoin and also ran an international drug/gun running operation...I'm impressed. I think this dude's story could make a awesome book/movie some day...
why would it take so long to discover this?
It's impossible to brute-force "decrypt" this message, you need to know it before hand.
More technically: you need to generate a pre-image of the sha-256 hash.
1. The signature was created using a private key that corresponds to the address "1Q2TWHE3GMdB6BZKafqwxXtWAWgFt5Jvm3". 2. 1Q2TWHE3GMdB6BZKafqwxXtWAWgFt5Jvm3 is Hal Finney's (Not Satoshi's) address. 3. Hal Finney passed away in 2014. 4. Some coins that belonged to that address were spent in 2017. [1] It appears that someone else (definitely not Hal) has the private key to that address. [1] https://www.blockchain.com/b…
Could someone please clarify the connection between the wallet: 1Q2TWHE3GMdB6BZKafqwxXtWAWgFt5Jvm3 And the signature: HM7vpPSUbNsfDHRX6gv8xxWcVNHEc/3pOk0YrVehaGoUdbWizznfzOdELkLd1EjSXsW1oE5vHAkNAPzrAVzhuoI= how do we know that the two are connected? (I'm guessing one of them hashes to the other.)
Could someone please clarify the connection between the wallet: 1Q2TWHE3GMdB6BZKafqwxXtWAWgFt5Jvm3 And the signature: HM7vpPSUbNsfDHRX6gv8xxWcVNHEc/3pOk0YrVehaGoUdbWizznfzOdELkLd1EjSXsW1oE5vHAkNAPzrAVzhuoI= how do we know that the two are connected? (I'm guessing one of them hashes to the other.)
- 1Q2TWHE3GMdB6BZKafqwxXtWAWgFt5Jvm3 is the wallet address but can also be thought of as a public key. The owner of the wallet also has a private key corresponding to that public key.
- HM7vpPSUbNsfDHRX6gv8xx...[etc] is a cryptographic signature generated by signing an arbitrary message using a private key. To generate the signature, you need the plain text of the message, and a private key. To "verify" the signature (i.e., confirm that it was generated by the private key you expect), you only need the message and the public key (or the wallet address, in this case).
- Shkreli claims (and it has indeed been confirmed) that the signature he posted is valid for the message and the wallet address. In other words, someone in possession of the private key for the wallet in question, has signed the message given using that private key.
What I don't understand is where the signature came from -- I do see a Jan 2009 transaction involving that address on various blockchain explorers, but that particular signature is nowhere to be found. This could absolutely just be me not understanding how all of this works, but in order for this to be "really big news" I think you'd have to show proof that the signature given was posted with the transaction back in 2009. Otherwise, it just means that Hal Finney's wallet is compromised and someone has been signing random messages with it.
In case you wonder who Paul Le Roux is, here’s the Wikipedia page [0] and what I believe is the original investigation by Evan Ratliff [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux [1]: https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind/
> Le Roux was arrested on 26 September 2012 for conspiracy to import narcotics into the United States, and agreed to cooperate with authorities in exchange for a lesser sentence and immunity to any crimes he might admit to later. He subsequently admitted to arranging or participating in seven murders, carried out as part of an extensive illegal business empire.
> Le Roux was sentenced to 25 years in prison in June 2020.