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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

#571

Post by socialcommenter »

entropyneur wrote: post #465
ghaff wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it different from all the non-secret billionaires to say nothing of all the people with 100s of millions?

Satoshi is a paper billionaire - he can't use a small fraction of his "wealth" to hire proper security. Simultaneously his "assets" are much more attractive to criminals. Imagine holding a regular billionaire hostage and demanding they give you a billion dollars. They'd probably have to sell 1B worth of stock, then convert it to cash (or crypto), etc. all of that requiring multiple interactions with different people…

Heisting multiple billions worth of crypto would have the same issues, just to a smaller degree. If that much illicit money is on the line, `mJurisdiction` which normally looks the other way might be tempted to investigate and confiscate it for their own benefit.

They also can't easily sell that amount quickly without repercussions (and without another institution like an exchange).

You're right, but only to a limited degree.

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

#572

Post by vidarh »

olalonde wrote: post #547
Thorrez wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>why would you do that if you were rich? Satoshi can't spend any of his bitcoins without tanking bitcoin's price. So Satoshi needs to find some other way to support himself. Creating bitcoin related companies is one way.

He could tank the price to $1000 and still be a billionaire. There's a much more plausible reason for why Satoshi's coins haven't moved.

It would also seem likely that if he at any point was alive and realised he wouldn't be able to touch his original wallets, he'd still get in early enough to be rich from subsequently crested wallets nobody would suspect.

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

#573

Post by stinkbeetle »

vntok wrote: post #529
orangepanda wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that what they call visiting private islands these days?

It's a pretty well known entity. You can find more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_Foundation

> It's a pretty well known entity. You can find more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_Foundation

Gates's relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein started in 2011, a few years after Epstein was convicted for procuring a child for prostitution

I see.

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

#574

Post by mike_hearn »

Thorrez wrote: post #539
mike_hearn wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems very unlikely to me. I've had personal correspondence with Satoshi, and met Adam Back in person, and I can't see it. Actually I don't see how anyone involved with Blockstream could be identified as Satoshi. They never believed in what Satoshi was doing and built their whole company around the claim that Satoshi had screwed up the core of the system's design, despite that nothing about the design or its assum…

>why would you do that if you were rich? Satoshi can't spend any of his bitcoins without tanking bitcoin's price. So Satoshi needs to find some other way to support himself. Creating bitcoin related companies is one way.

Nobody knows which coins Satoshi owns, it's just a guess for the very early coins and that guess gets progressively less accurate as time goes by. And this was a long time ago. There was no particular reason to think back then that Satoshi spending his coins would tank the price. Everyone back then was spending Bitcoins because that was the only way to build the economy. The idea that if his coins move everyone would panic is a post-2015 idea when Blockstream killed Bitcoin as a genuine means of exchange and it became all about sitting on them as a speculative "investment".

But if he did want to spend he could just start from his last coins backwards.

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

#575

Post by stinkbeetle »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #534
nothinkjustai wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was that in between his visits on Epstine island?

Sure. Al Capone did a lot of charitable work too. Someone can do more than one thing.

Yes, "charitable work". I'm sure a foundation like that could make a good front for child trafficking. Not that Bill would ever do such a thing obviously, his common interests with that old rascal Jeff must have strictly included other things.

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

#576

Post by SpecialistK »

mike_hearn wrote: post #517
omnimus wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure this is that clear cut. Naomi Wu agreed to interview then didn't want to answer some of the questions - instead of just saying no… she wrote social media threads and blogposts about how she can't talk about this because it's big bad china and all these western journalists are unprofessional not knowing her risk. For some reason then she tried to actually dox one of the journalists in her video. Unfortun…

How do you "dox" a journalist? Are they writing under anonymous bylines now?

By releasing personal information which a reasonable person would expect to be private? I don't know the specifics of this case (only responding to the overly vague question) but information like address, private contact info, details about their families. Anything you would not immediately expect to become public knowledge simply by writing about topic(s).

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

#577

Post by thaumasiotes »

SXX wrote: post #405
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…

It's not even hundreds of millions. It's tens of billions of dollars if we suppose someone actually have access to these wallets. Bitcoins across old unused wallets worth $30B to $80B depend of how you count it.

> Bitcoins across old unused wallets worth $30B to $80B depend of how you count it.

It's worth considerably less if you make any attempt to count it accurately. The market capitalization reflects the fact that old unused wallets are unused. If they stopped being unused, market capitalization would drop.

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

#578

Post by mememememememo »

mptest wrote: post #549
omnimus wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the journalists was Jason Koebler who later cofounded 404media. That is imho pretty legit outlet which uncovered many pretty damning stories about tech.

404media is good stuff, one of the few news outlets I pay for. I didn't dig too deep on the above comment because I have a deep respect for journalists despite admittedly many of them servicing things I dislike by choice or coercion or for remuneration or fame, etc. Reading about journalists in more authoritarian countries was seriously depressing

Yep Googlers... Metans... don't throw stones.

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

#579

Post by vntok »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #573
vntok wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty well known entity. You can find more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_Foundation

> It's a pretty well known entity. You can find more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_Foundation Gates's relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein started in 2011, a few years after Epstein was convicted for procuring a child for prostitution I see.

Wait. Are you claiming that there's some sort of link between "Gates's relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein started in 2011" and the Gates Foundation which launched in 2000 by merging with the Gates Sr. Foundation from all the way back in 1994?

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

#580

Post by boring-human »

adventured wrote: post #330
jmyeet wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Sorr…

An estimated 22,000 addresses, 1.1 million Bitcoin. Present value $78 billion. That would make him the 23rd richest person in the world. Bill Gates by comparison is 'only' worth $102 billion these days. If you priced Gates backwards in gold, his $102 billion is about $13 billion two decades ago. He hasn't kept ahead of the destruction of the dollar very well.

> He hasn't kept ahead of the destruction of the dollar very well.

You can't price dollars in gold to measure value. Gold doesn't measure value better than the dollar at any point in time, let alone over time. Just use the price index for one currency, or the relative price indexes across currencies.

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