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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

#381

Post by vintermann »

Theodores wrote: post #238
Lerc wrote: post #112

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.

PGP was different then. In the 90s the internet was unencrypted and the only people using PGP were those that had a reasonable need for it. However, there were a couple of big problems that the armchair historian would not be aware of. First off, communicating with PGP was hard. Imagine you are based in London and you want to publish something controversial without getting taken to court. You could email someone in N…

It was never trivial for TLAs to man-in-the-middle anyone, because PGP users were very much aware of the problem and nothing about key exchange was automated, for good or ill. Key exchange parties, reading out key fingerprints in their own custom extended phonetic alphabet etc.

A man in the middle attack would maybe work in rare cases, at great cost, and then you'd get one or two messages and immediately make people aware that they'd been attacked. It's not worth it. I'm confident the TLAs never bothered to do it against anyone with public keys on a key server, the minimum effort you could make to guard against MITM attacks.

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

#382

Post by ghaff »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #305
empath75 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does that say about pure journalism? Publish information despite doing harm? How do you present the information, and what impact does that presentation have? Historically, newspapers often published the full name and physical address of every person they covered, from judges to drunks to rape victims to people suspected of a crime. I'm sure people back in the day called that pure journalism, but I don't think we…

Historically, people got a big book every year with the name and address of most people in it. You could get unlisted numbers but now everyone has a cellphone which just isn’t broadly published but because now many use it for everything it’s probably not that hard to find.

Also, has others have noted it’s trivial to put other a list of wealthy people. In fact, it’s probably better to skip the Forbes 400 list who probably have some level of private security. Just go through the board member lists of Fortune 500 companies.

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

#384

Post by piekvorst »

connorboyle wrote: post #309

> And Mr. Back’s thesis project focused on C++ — the same programming language Satoshi used to code the first version of the Bitcoin software. I know the author isn't claiming this is definitive evidence, but I think it's so comically weak it is probably not worth mentioning at all.

It seems like this “journalist” speaks English. Guess who also spoke English? That’s exactly right, Satoshi did.

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

#386

Post by arthurofbabylon »

gyomu wrote: post #312

Simple 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…

This is a journalistic publication with a foundational value of transparency. If you study the history of institutions that favor transparency, they rarely ever need to further justify efforts of transparency beyond that underlying value. Transparency needs no further analysis of second order effects.

“What is gained…?” is simply not a question asked, for the same reason that advocates for privacy rarely if ever circumstantially ask the same question.

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

#388

Post by Topfi »

mapmeld wrote: post #314
Lerc wrote: post #112

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.

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 Satosh…

Bob uses electricity provided from a coal power plant, therefore he must be able to design a Fission plant. Yeah, these are some massive leaps, the question of why, beyond morbid curiosity, one must dox Satoshi not withstanding. Satoshi or the wallets they controlled were never associated with anything beyond the creation of BTC after all, making the value of knowing who they are or were not really great in my view. If these coins suddenly started funding someone or something, there could be an argument, but this coupled with such a layperson approach makes me doubtful about the ethics or approach.

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

#389

Post by Topfi »

qnleigh wrote: post #327
mapmeld wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Satosh…

We also have this gem: > And Mr. Back’s thesis project focused on C++ — the same programming language Satoshi used to code the first version of the Bitcoin software. Amazing! I bet they both for loops too! I heard Bitcoin relies heavily on for loops. Infuriatingly, to people who don't know much about programming, these pieces of 'evidence' might sound quite compelling, because it will all sound equally obscure to the…

The leaps here would get one laughed out of an early 2k conspiracy forum.

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

#390

Post by Topfi »

hbbio wrote: post #202
Lerc wrote: post #112

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.

> I would ping him over the Signal app Signal, the free encryption app used by journalists

Signal, an App predominantly used by governmental officials to leak war plans or bypass historical recording obligations.
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