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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

#641

Post by ak_111 »

mijoharas wrote: post #110
int32_64 wrote: post #40

If you've ever seen Back's twitter you would know he's not Satoshi. I'm still firmly in the Finney camp. Every couple years one of these articles shows up focusing on one of the core Satoshi suspects, at least do a Wei Dai one next time.

So I just searched the article for Finney to see why it claimed it wasn't him. It claims Satoshi was active after Finney had died? What's that about? I used to be of the opinion that it was probably hal, but haven't paid too much attention. What's the counter evidence here? And why do we disregard that?

I am also not sure about Finney, but Hal saw his death coming so it is plausible he handed the reins to one more person he deeply trusted, and asked him to tie some knots but not to keep the show going.

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

#642

Post by Pay08 »

busterarm wrote: post #290
danso wrote: post #79

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…

Impeccable? Carreyrou's articles and eventual book are built largely off of the deep investigative work done by Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis and Dr. Eleftherios P. Diamandis and a listserv with thousands of participating doctors...who aren't mentioned in the book once...Similarly-omitted are Softbank/Fortress and their eventual patent-holding shell company Labrador Diagnostics LLC...

Do you have a link to that investigation?

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

#643

Post by eru »

khalic wrote: post #637
eru wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to look up how representative democracy works?

So if something is legal = it’s what most people think. Holy fallacy

Huh? What makes you think so?

I was replying purely to 'Oh really, there was a vote?'

Most places have votes every few years. And the elected representatives can generally make and amend or keep laws. The candidates can also generally make any promises they wish to make, and if the general public wants some specific laws changed, it's often a good idea for candidates to make that a part of their platform. And if people generally don't want a law changed, candidates tend to ignore them. Basic representative democracy stuff.

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

#644

Post by Jean-Papoulos »

olalonde wrote: post #622
vidarh wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it likely that someone who realised that if they were to touch that paper fortune the Bitcoin price will totally crater would have made additional billions they could actually access by mining more bitcoin at a point where the difficulty was still ridiculously low. The value of the bitcoins in those early wallets isn't real, because they are the most watched bitcoin wallets in existence, and any movement there…

From a financial standpoint, this makes no sense. First, they could just liquidate all their other BTC before moving the Satoshi coins. Second, even with a significant price impact, the net worth of an additional 1M BTC would surely outweigh any realistic price slippage. Third, the price probably wouldn't even crash that much. We're talking about a 5% increase in supply... which rationally, should result in a ~5% dip…

This 5% increase is actually huge, because the amount of bitcoins in actual free float is very small. The same coins get traded over and over while the vast majority sits in cold storage. A 5% supply sell off would eat up all of the order books, and that's before everyone else starts selling off.

Do note that the selloff would be automatic, huge wallets are monitored 24/7.

If I was Satoshi, I would go a to big bank and sell the private key directly for huge discount. Still a billionaire, no trace.

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

#645

Post by pas »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #321
icelancer wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handing over email metadata, or whatever your interrogator wants from you, will only cause them to shift the goalposts, or find something they want to find in the metadata even if it exonerates you. There is no reason to cooperate with journalists with a slant.

I tend to agree with you, to be honest. Seems fairly clear that Carreyrou was going to conclude that Back is Satoshi, come hell or high water. Kind of a disappointing piece of work from the guy who took down Theranos. His journalistic talents are sorely needed elsewhere right now.

it seems he pursued Theranos when it was hot, but he had not much to do with the background work

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698933

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

#646

Post by zamadatix »

Lio wrote: post #520
johnfn wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's the use of the word "quest" here that really bothers me. It seems ignoble. Much like the "unmasking" of Banksy or Belle de Jour. Why do it other than nosiness? Is the person committing a crime? No? Then leave them in peace. This is just a journalist using the resources of NYTimes to show off that they can exert control over someone else.

I had a good chuckle going from Banksy on one line to whether the person is committing a crime on the other - that it's a crime was key to how the article claimed to find Banksy's identity and mentioned as one of the likely factors in why Banksy chose to be anonymous early on :D.

I get you mean whether they are causing any actual harm though (and agree for many such unmaskings), it was just an amusing juxtaposition of literal statements.

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

#647

Post by api »

mptest wrote: post #497
nekitamo wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

for a good counterbalance to those just finding out the nyt is a state dept mouthpiece at best, read about real journalists and why there seem to be so few of them, read Pegasus by laurent richard. Spoiler alert, real journalists who expose powerful peoples' wrongdoings simply get killed.

Reminds me of a related principle:

“How do you know if a conspiracy theorist is really on to something?”

“Check the missing persons list.”

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

#648

Post by pas »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #257
eddiewithzato wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s simply that Back has nothing to gain to claim to be Satoshi. It would make bitcoin a lot more volatile. He even said just now > I also don't know who satoshi is, and i think it is good for bitcoin that this is the case, as it helps bitcoin be viewed a new asset class, the mathematically scarce digital commodity. That’s as close to admitting it as you can get

Point being, he has a lot to lose if people think he IS Satoshi. I would be coughing up those email headers if I were him. Or forging some, if necessary.

if he has the key he could buy security (move the money to a multisig, etc)

if he doesn't have the key then of course he's motivated to make sure bad people don't think otherwise (but the usual thing about bad people is they don't really have a habit of giving up without a fight, so if someone really thinks he has the keys he cannot do shit to convince them otherwise, so he's again back to hiring security)

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

#649

Post by stinkbeetle »

vntok wrote: post #579
stinkbeetle wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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