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Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

nytimes.com

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Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#21

Post by greazy »

chistev wrote: post #15
vintermann wrote: post #5

You can't sell books or articles from saying something that's been said before, but Nick Szabo remains the best Satoshi candidate by a mile. He had developed the system closest to Bitcoin, he was actively seeking collaborators to turn his system into a practical offering briefly before Bitcoin was released, and he was the only cipherpunk who conspicuously said very little when the system he'd been trying to realize f…

> In contrast to a certain convicted Australian fraudster who got caught trying to backdate his statements, Who?

This embarrassing wanker

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-28/craig-wright-not-sato...

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#24

Post by jahnu »

someperson wrote: post #4
xvxvx wrote: post #2

He’s not one person but a front for a US law enforcement task force dedicated to tracking down cyber criminals and anyone who would need anonymity online. It started, alongside TOR, as a way for drug dealers, weapons dealers, and pedophiles to do business. Neither cryptocurrency nor TOR are actually anonymous. They’re part of a pretty impressive honeypot ecosystem. What I’m interested in is the pivot when crypto trie…

The FBI created the purportedly encrypted "AN0M" messaging app [1] as part of a sting operation running between 2018-2021 used to catch drug-traffickers. Creating a fake app that people believe is secure or anonymous is an easier way to run a police sting operation than first making a significant breakthrough in Distributed Systems around the Byzantine Generals Problem. For your conspiracy theory to be true, at some…

Would make a good tv show where a small group in a secretive TLA org started this but then made so much money they decided to keep it to themselves and get rich.

"Sorry director, the experimental project was a failure. We deleted it all now to clean up and free resources. Oh and yeah unrelated, I need to hand in my notice. Want to spend more time with my ...er... family. Thanks."

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#25

Post by rcxdude »

tovej wrote: post #13
kgeist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I read up to here, but I wasn't convinced that this is the revelation that the author claims The rest of the arguments is as weak: 1) both released open-source software 2) both don't like spam 3) both like using pseudonyms online 4) both love freedom 5) both are anti-copyright etc. Basically, the author found that Adam Back used the same words on X as Satoshi did in some emails (including such rare words as "dang,"…

I think this misses the point. The point is that interests and writing style matches, which means there's a higher chance they are the same person. The more similarities you find, the closer the match. It's in no way proof, of course. But it does provide good reason to look closer

Only if those similarities are indicating more than 'generic internet hacker' for both of them. You only need 23 bits to identify a person but those are 23 uncorrelated bits, and all the 'similarities' presented here are extremely strongly correlated with themselves.

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#28

Post by defrost »

tovej wrote: post #13
kgeist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I read up to here, but I wasn't convinced that this is the revelation that the author claims The rest of the arguments is as weak: 1) both released open-source software 2) both don't like spam 3) both like using pseudonyms online 4) both love freedom 5) both are anti-copyright etc. Basically, the author found that Adam Back used the same words on X as Satoshi did in some emails (including such rare words as "dang,"…

I think this misses the point. The point is that interests and writing style matches, which means there's a higher chance they are the same person. The more similarities you find, the closer the match. It's in no way proof, of course. But it does provide good reason to look closer

Similarities in style and word were common enough in small circles such as the cyphyrpunks that spawned those discussions.

Then there's not altogether unlikely chance that Satoshi is a nodding homage to Nicolas Bourbaki, each contributor holding part of a multiparty voting key.

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#29

Post by raphlinus »

I found this article about as compelling as all the other attempts at identifying him. Half of the cypherpunks (I was pretty active) had the same set of interests in public key cryptography, libertarianism, anonymity, criticism of copyright, and predecessor systems like Chaum's ecash; we talked about those in virtually every meeting.

The most compelling evidence is Adam Back's body language, as subjectively observed by a reporter who is clearly in love with his own story. The stylometry also struck me as a form of p-hacking—keep re-rolling the methodology until you get the answer you want.

It's entirely possible Adam is Satoshi, but in my opinion this article moves us no closer to knowing whether that's true or not. He's been on everybody's top 5 list for years, and this article provides no actual evidence that hasn't been seen before.

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