Has Back not produced any c++ code from his thesis or days in University? That would be more useful for satoshi-profiling than his written prose, I would think.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
271–280 of 905 posts
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Pretty compelling story. Not necessarily for its revelations, but for the fact that John Carreyrou and the NYT decided to publish it at all. When is the line crossed from journalism into doxxing? Whoever created Bitcoin has a legitimate safety reason to stay anonymous. Anyone suspected of holding that much wealth becomes a target - as does their family.
I hate this idea that doxxing is some kind if crime. “Who is the creator of bitcoin?” is a matter of great public and historical interest. Finding out who he is, is the purest form of journalism.
Good point, personally I had never considered that doxing could be considered not illegal/crime.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#273Adam fits better as someone Satoshi respected, not who Satoshi was... Bitcoin explicitly cites hashcash. If Adam was so careful, why would he name himself in the paper; tongue-in-cheek? hide in plain sight? I don't buy it...
Hal Finney is the strongest alternative, but even there, I’m not fully convinced. Hal had the technical profile, mined early, and received the first transaction. But he also feels almost too obvious. I believe, just as Adam Back's hashcash, Hal's RPOW was a precursor.
I lean toward Len Sassaman, who was deeply embedded in the exact world Satoshi seemed to come from: remailers, anonymity systems, OpenPGP, and privacy-first engineering. Same things that got his conversations with Adam and Hal going... Adam here is probably just protecting his friend's legacy
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Americ…
Where does your 500 come from? Why can't Satoshi be someone who simply had no deanonymized online presence?
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
The interests and writing style differentiate Mr. (Dr.?) Back from the general public, sure. But from what I’m reading, they don’t do a great job of distinguishing between 90s hackers. “Get this, his PhD thesis dealt with a computer language called C++, just like Bitcoin papers used ” seems both confused and impossibly lazy to me. > “Scrap patents and copyright,” Mr. Back wrote in September 1997. > Satoshi did a simi…
Did you read most of the article or what?
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Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#276I 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.
And nowadays, PGP technology is mostly used by the government and military. I wouldn't be surprised if this was also the case when Bitcoins was originally developed
Never seen it. What parts? Do you mean PKI?
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#277Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared. Adam is a well known supporter of small blocks, ultimately the "winning" side of the debate. They are not the same person.
> Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared. Adam is a well known supporter of small blocks, ultimately the "winning" side of the debate. They are not the same person.
From the article:
Then, out of the blue, Satoshi appeared on the list with an email that neatly dovetailed with Mr. Back’s position. It was the first time Satoshi had been heard from in more than four years, other than a five-word post the previous year denying a Newsweek article’s claim to have unmasked him.
Many in the Bitcoin community questioned the new email’s authenticity since another of Satoshi’s email accounts had been hacked. But Mr. Back argued that the email sounded real. In a series of tweets, he called Satoshi’s observations “spot on” and “consistent with Satoshi views IMO” and took to quoting from the email.
Mr. Back was likely correct: To this day, there is no evidence to indicate the email was a forgery, and no other emails from that account have surfaced.
The Satoshi email sounded a lot like Mr. Back had in his posts during the preceding weeks, although no one took notice. Like Mr. Back, Satoshi argued that the Bitcoin network’s increasing centralization jeopardized its security. He called the big block proposal very “dangerous” — the same term Mr. Back had used repeatedly. He also used other words and phrases Mr. Back had used: “widespread consensus,” “consensus rules,” “technical,” “trivial” and “robust.”
At the end of the email, Satoshi denounced Mr. Andresen and Mr. Hearn as two reckless developers trying to hijack Bitcoin with populist tactics and added: “This present situation has been very disappointing to watch unfold.”
https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/6EC9DDF352DC4838AE9B088AB37...
https://x.com/adam3us/status/632928398893907968
https://x.com/adam3us/status/632650884011458560
https://x.com/adam3us/status/632923680104841220
https://x.com/adam3us/status/632919411112849410
https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTHfU5+1ezP-Jnn5obpd62...
https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTGBt7MNs5YWf8QzKe+4Fr...
https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTFC7zBN9GvHAZLQj4SbXj...
https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTFu6DRVMSLsGDa6AgVX1X...
https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTG7+MMN50VH9-Y++B1_De...
https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTGCkTZAs74bXk57L6JWK2...
https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTH_5rtOs=aSNiVrfsG_sq...
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#278Earlier 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 .
I commented elsewhere in this thread theorising that Satoshi could be the work of both Finney and Back. If that has any basis in reality, then it stands to reason that perhaps the wallet is locked away in a trust or at least legally unobtainable until certain conditions are met (e.g. Adam Back's passing). I can imagine a scenario in the future where a law firm makes a press release confirming they're in possession of Satoshi's wallet and have been instructed to liquidate and donate its proceeds.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a heated debate ... exposed his ignorance Didnt follow everything here, but wouldn't that make for a perfect cover story? If you're Satoshi, and people are getting close to verifying (or at least nominating you as "most likely candidate"), what better way to throw people off than to engage in a public conversation in which you (creatively) get all kinds of technical details wrong and make yourself look too ignorant…
The funny thing is that the author uses your exact logic when he finds evidence that goes against his hypothesis. He made posts that asked questions about things that Satoshi definitely would've known? Misdirection! Somebody else does it? Strong evidence against them!
This is why I stopped reading these Bitcoin creator stories. It's usually more about the journalist and their 'process' than the story.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#280I 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.
I see your point, but PGP was literally invented by an anti-nuclear activist and intentionally disseminated to human rights groups.
"Created" or "originally used" would be on point, 60 years after the fact it is just slop.