131–140 of 905 posts
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Who doesn’t like a good mystery?
I don't. It's a tool used by modern "journalism" to distract and detract from a story. If you have something reliable to report, then by all means, report it. If all you have is a "compelling narrative" then put it on the shelf and do NOT waste my time with it. If you can't manage that then publish fiction books.
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…
The body language thing really bothers me. Personally, if someone accuses me of lying, but I am actually telling the truth, I immediately start acting like a liar. It's really embarrassing and hard to explain. I can't believe such a seasoned reporter is leaning so hard on "his face went red."
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…
What struck me in particular was the fact the reporter noticed that Back had theorized how to evade stylometry. Obviously, if one of the people in question had specifically come up with ways to evade methods, you’d want to re-roll those methods to account for that. That, alongside a number of other tidbits (Back’s activity and inactivity patterns lining up with Satoshi’s appearance and disappearance, his refusal to p…
I don't think you can attribute this to financial incentive. The actual Satoshi could forfeit 90% of their BTC and still have more than they could know what to do with.
At those kinds of levels I can see personal security being a higher consideration.
Either way it would give no indication who might be Satoshi because all candidates would have a similar incentive if they were Satoshi, and you are measuring the absence of information.
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It's been extremely widely known that whoever created Bitcoin had a strong interest in Hashcash, and perhaps created that or worked on it, for years and years. If that's the only smoking gun, why didn't we identify Satoshi long ago?
The new claim is more specific: between 1997-1999, Back proposed combining Hashcash with b-money, adding inflation adjustment via increasing computational difficulty, and using hash trees for public timestamping.
That's most of Bitcoin's architecture in one package, a decade early.
The number of people who proposed that particular combination of ideas is much smaller than the number who were merely interested in Hashcash.
Every time I see one of these articles about "unmasking" Nakamoto, I always wonder the same thing: why? I don't really see a compelling reason to unmask this person. Surely there are other more important things a journalist can spend their time looking into. It's the same with Banksy: why?
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…
> No one in the cipherpunks mailing list thought any of this was odd, probably because it was obvious to them who Satoshi was. If dozens of people affiliated on a mailing list knew that Sbazo was Satoshi is a decade ago, would’t his identity be treated as an open secret by now?
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All of those similarities can be explained by Satoshi having read what Back wrote.
I found this amusing. >P.G.P., a free encryption program used by antinuclear activists and human rights groups to shield their files and emails from government surveillance. I find it fascinating to see how the users of a program change, based on how a reporter wants to build or diminish. At least it's going in a positive direction today.
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…
Nick Szabo doesn't know how to program enough to deliver the original bitcoin source code.
The refusal to provide email metadata is the most damning evidence. Adam Back clearly has the emails; he is the one who provided them in the first place during the previous court case. Everyone knows he has the emails. If Adam Back and Satoshi are two different people, the metadata should be exculpatory, and easy to share. There's literally no reason whatsoever to hide the metadata unless he is the one. In a court of…
The thing is, most of the people heavily involved in early Bitcoin are fairly characterized as cryptoanarchists, a group strongly devoted to the principle of privacy and liberty effected through technological means. The refusal to provide personal communications metadata by such a person is evidence of nothing but their steadfast commitment to the philosophy that presented them with the opportunity to be part of thos…
Satoshi is either dead, or he lost his keys and probably wishes he were.