611–620 of 905 posts
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Are you implying there is an inherent right for public figures to hide their wealth, “for security reasons”? WTF?
Most people think that, otherwise tax filings would be public (like they are in some places iirc).
Pretty compelling story. Not necessarily for its revelations, but for the fact that John Carreyrou and the NYT decided to publish it at all. If it were by anyone else, I would have stopped reading after the first thousand words of meandering narrative, but Carreyrou is staking his massive and impeccable investigative journalistic reputation on this mountain of circumstantial evidence and statistical analysis. Him tor…
> 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.
You can’t just say “but this is doxxing” and expect people to know what you are talking about and also attach the same negative label to it as you do the same way you would when you call out murder or theft.
I personally don’t find “doxxing” that useful as a concept and as a guidepost to what I consider ethical or not. People who use the concept tend to be extremely zealous with at, to a point where anything identifying anyone is doxxing (and doxxing is to those people self-evidently unethical) and that just doesn’t seem useful or practical to me at all.
As to this particular case: if you create something as corrosive, destructive and powerful as Bitcoin society should know you. You don’t get to hide in anonymity at all.
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Those people are on alert and already protected. Satoshi is probably a regular guy without any other security other than being anonymous. We are also assuming that they are doxing the real guy, and not some bystander that now have to deal with all the consequences without having the resources to protect himself. Lets suppose they are wrong, they dox the wrong person, "opsies, let us add a footnote to the text saying…
And if you do have a big pile of money but are flying under the radar so far you sadly should have some investments in security. I thought people around here didn’t really believe in security through obscurity.
The simplest filter to exclude potential Satoshi candidates is to read Satoshi's early posts discussing bitcoin which never seems to come up in these convos. He had a calm, cool, consistent, professional demeanor. Always worlds different than the people people claim him to be. You'd have to believe these public figures were playing 4D chess where they invented a persona and spent a couple years impeccably roleplaying…
This comment rings true to me as someone who contemporaneously read Satoshi's posts (not from the very beginning but on bitcointalk.org). People are underestimating how difficult (and probably pointless) it is to create and maintain a whole personality in aid of subterfuge. There are so many other easier and less risky ways to achieve the same goal than to adopt a consistent persona that's far from your own; you coul…
Not only that, but the exceedingly niche C++ language and the MIT license!
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One of their journalists also doxxed Naomi Wu, intruding on her personal life, making her lose her income, and possibly getting her in trouble with Chinese authorities: https://x.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1209815150376574976 The journalist themselves is a real piece of work: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/463503-sarah-jeong-out-at... Kinda goes to show you the kind of people who write these stories. Ethics haven'…
when journalism is a business, stuff like this happens...
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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…
It's strange. I'm sure that he talked to experts who would immediately say, yes many programming languages exist. But two cryptographers who wrote money systems both using C++ is not informative. Today maybe we could expect one to use Rust.
A NYTimes journalist? I wouldn't bet on it. The experts might be smelly nerds, they'd cramp his style.
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The NYTimes infamously doxxed Slate Star Codex[1], despite him basically begging them not to because it would upend his psychiatry practice, back in 2020 for no reason other than because they could. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23610416
One of their journalists also doxxed Naomi Wu, intruding on her personal life, making her lose her income, and possibly getting her in trouble with Chinese authorities: https://x.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1209815150376574976 The journalist themselves is a real piece of work: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/463503-sarah-jeong-out-at... Kinda goes to show you the kind of people who write these stories. Ethics haven'…
It's not like she's any browner..
In other words it is almost irrational to deny it is you (if it is really you) if you are outted after a major investigation by the paper of record, so it is rational to take Back’s denial as honest.
His security is already screwed anyone who is incentivised to harm him for billions will already do it for tens of millions (or if they think there is more than 50% chance Back is a multi billionaire), so he might as well take the credit for it and live with the consequenes if it is really him.