Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Water, a drink consumed by nobel price winners and European kings...
Water? Like, from the toilet?
It's what plants crave.
(I needed to be able to post that to HN tonight.)
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
211–220 of 905 posts
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need someone who read Back's obscure 1997-1999 cypherpunks posts about combining Hashcash and b-money, implemented exactly that system a decade later, independently came up with the same non-technical analogies and trivia, wrote with the same hyphenation errors, and then happened to be active during the exact window Back went silent. The more you flesh out the "someone who read Back" profile, the more it just sou…
Someone who has read his material would be likely to repeat the same analogies and trivia. As for the hyphen errors, they are common for people for whom English is their second language. I commit hyphen errors similar to what is described all the time because English hyphenation makes absolutely no sense. In fact, reading the list of examples, the mistakes listed makes more sense to me than the correct way of writing…
At some point "Satoshi was a devoted reader of obscure 1997 Adam Back mailing list posts who shares his hyphenation errors, his Napster vs Gnutella analogy, his celebrity email filtering idea, his FDR gold ban interest, his 'burning the money' metaphor, his 'Achilles heel' description of DigiCash, his 'better with code than words' self-assessment, his energy-vs-banking defense, his British spellings mixed with American ones, his double-spacing habit, his it's/its confusion, his sentence-final 'also' tic, his 'proof-of-work' hyphenation, his WebMoney references, and who went active the exact week Back went silent" is just a longer way of saying it's Adam Back.
I'm not sure I agree with that, but it's what I came up with after challenging myself to read the article in toto again and note 1 by 1.
It's clear it's beyond a couple tics everyone has, and when you combine that with the starting set being ~500 instead of "all 8 billion people on earth", well, it's worth mentioning.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#213Steeped in confirmation bias.. the whole article - and apparently author's methods - are written from the point of view of trying to prove that Satoshi is Adam Back. This cannot be trusted, no matter how many times Back is mentioned in a single article
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#214I 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."
What's also worth noting is that they were not alone in the room, talking privately. Everything being said could presumably be heard by Back's business associates as well. Some of the questions could well be enough to cause embarrassment or unease on that account.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Water, a drink consumed by nobel price winners and European kings...
Dihydrogen monoxide - a constituent of many known toxic substances, diseases and disease-causing agents[0] [0]: https://www.dhmo.org/
100% of people who've ever had DHMO have died.
This is scientifically verified and yet nobody does anything about it.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#216Anyone who has access to Satoshi's account is worth $100B. If Satoshi were still alive some of the BTC would have been moved at least a little but they haven't.
Whoever Satoshi was is now dead.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#217I don't believe anyone claiming that Satoshi is still alive. There is zero chance any human who put so much effort into creating something would remain silent while it became a $2 trillion phenomenon that succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Satoshi is certainly dead.
My theory is that Satoshi is a persona created by Adam Back and Hal Finney. They probably devised something where both needed to agree and sign something for Satoshi to act. This also allowed them to say "I’m not Satoshi Nakamoto". They also probably ensured that anything that belongs to Satoshi required both of them. The death of Hal Finney ensure that Satoshi died definitely. But they may have "killed" him before b…
This may be the most convincing theory I've heard.
I don't believe any live human being has the wherewithal to not use any of the $100B+ in the Satoshi wallets, which has led me to believe it was Hal Finney. Back and Finney both being in on it would explain some of the email timing as well
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#218All you need to know about this "quest": https://xcancel.com/austinhill/status/2041986130871251141
Plus, the most obvious reason that Adam Back is not Satoshi is that he'd absolutely take credit for Bitcoin if he could. And he would have put an end to Craig Wright's legal circus. The most plausible explanation is that Satoshi is either dead or incapacitated.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then again, if I weren't Satoshi, but people suspected that I was, I'd be willing to do just about anything to prove that it's not me. No one in their right mind would want that kind of target on their back. Satoshi is either dead, or he lost his keys and probably wishes he were.
Supposing it is Adam Back, and supposing he lost his keys, he's still worth at least nine figures and is one of the most influential figures in the field he’s devoted his life to. Why would he wish he was dead?
"Nine figures isn't cool. You know what's cool? Eleven figures."
That aside, I don't agree with the premise. Back might be Satoshi, but there's nowhere near enough evidence in Carreyrou's article to reach that conclusion. He should have run it by some other veteran figures in the crypto community, so they could point out how quotidian some of the language and tropes being cited really are.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
> his financial incentive to hide his identity as Satoshi under US securities law 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 wou…
why does everybody assume that whoever is Satoshi still has access to their wallet? It's absolutely possible whoever is Satoshi has simply lost the key. We're talking new technology where you're running fast and loose. It's absolutely possible, and I'd say a big reason why someone would not want to admit to being Satoshi. I'm Satoshi, but I also lost billions because I messed up a Debian upgrade .
Further, no one would believe them, and they'd still endlessly be a target for criminals. No benefit to revealing any information beyond mild dismissals, IMO.