The common linguistic quirks are interesting and extremely convincing at first glance, but the article doesn't investigate C++ coding style, which as others have mentioned, seems quite different between Back and Satoshi. And Satoshi didn't believe the blocksize should be set in stone, the notion that he just casually changed his mind on that isn't impossible but deserves a closer look than the article gives it.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
311–320 of 905 posts
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#312Simple question for anyone who’s familiar with this world of journalism: how does the author and the NYTimes cope with the fact that making such claims paint a huge target on the person they claim to have “unmasked”?
Satoshi’s wallets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and there have been kidnappings/torture/murders for much less than that.
Do they just not care about the ethical implications?
And really, for what? What is gained by “unmasking” Satoshi other than satisfying one’s curiosity? There is no argument to be made there for the greater public good or anything like that.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#313Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#314I 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.
This section stood out to me because it started out explaining PGP to a layman like this, but then the author gets overly excited that a cryptographer would be interested in... basic cryptography
> I’d learned enough by then to know that P.G.P. relies on public-key cryptography. So does Bitcoin. [...]
> How interesting, I thought, that Mr. Back’s grad-school hobby involved the same cryptographic technique that Satoshi had repurposed.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#315Adam 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 obvi…
You could game theory this out forever. Maybe he put his name in there because people like you would only use first order logic and conclude that it wasn't him because it would be crazy to "hide in plain site". I always had Adam Back as my main candidate because HashCash somehow had the same energy and thought to it. But I have no concrete reason to believe it was him.
So clearly I cannot choose the wine in front of me!
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#316Simple question for anyone who’s familiar with this world of journalism: how does the author and the NYTimes cope with the fact that making such claims paint a huge target on the person they claim to have “unmasked”? Satoshi’s wallets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and there have been kidnappings/torture/murders for much less than that. Do they just not care about the ethical implications? And really, for…
I was just wondering the same thing.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However, they just change their original message, maybe to remove a typo, change the date or add a friendly note. Then the three letter agency does a glorified 'diff' and they are subsequently in on the chat. Could you expand on this please?
You must be joking!
It is hard to imagine that "modern" encryption would be susceptible to known plaintext attacks, please provide some citations.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#318Simple question for anyone who’s familiar with this world of journalism: how does the author and the NYTimes cope with the fact that making such claims paint a huge target on the person they claim to have “unmasked”? Satoshi’s wallets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and there have been kidnappings/torture/murders for much less than that. Do they just not care about the ethical implications? And really, for…
I was just wondering the same thing.
Exposing the wealthy is pretty standard journalism
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#319Simple question for anyone who’s familiar with this world of journalism: how does the author and the NYTimes cope with the fact that making such claims paint a huge target on the person they claim to have “unmasked”? Satoshi’s wallets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and there have been kidnappings/torture/murders for much less than that. Do they just not care about the ethical implications? And really, for…
I think the wallets go well beyond "hundreds of millions". Aren't there like a million Bitcoin in dormant wallets associated with Satoshi? Personally, I'd assumed that whoever the person or persons were, they're dead because nobody can resist the pull of tens of billions of dollars regardless of their ideological position on cryptocurrencies. But that's just a guess.
There's absolutely a public interest in this. Sorry. This is a trillion dollar market now. Was this a state actor? If so, why? what was the plan here exactly? I see absolutely no reason to respect anonymity here. You don't get to sit on $50 billion and have people respect your desire to remain hidden.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#320> I’d learned enough by then to know that P.G.P. relies on public-key cryptography.
>So does Bitcoin...
> And Mr. Back’s thesis project focused on C++ — the same programming language Satoshi used to code the first version of the Bitcoin software.
This is such poor quality writing, I'm kind of shocked to see it in nyt. It reads like a family guy cutaway lampooning a whodunnit.
I honestly can't believe this warranted a full piece. I was wondering if this a symptom of the author going down some llm psychosis rabbit hole?
_youre absolutely right, you've repeatedly shown signs that back is satoshi. The pattern is clear: back isn't just some cypherpunk, he's Satoshi._