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Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

31–40 of 130 posts

Re: Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

#31
post #11

I doubt that the link here amounts to DPR knowing SN personally, or even worse, DPR being SN. Obviously I don't know DPR or SN, but I really doubt that DPR is SN or even communicated with him. The reasons are entirely circumstantial but from what I've read of both of them: - DPR is arrogant. - DPR makes stupid mistakes. - SN is fairly humble. - SN is smarter than DPR. - SN doesn't make mistakes. Is it possible that D…

[deleted]

Re: Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

#33
post #25
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - SN is fairly humble. You are talking about some one or group who took great care (including in all their dealings with other early bitcoin users) to maintain their anonymity - which is really hard to do, in the face of the sort of scrutiny that SN has had. Its at least plausible that, along with the name, other aspects of the SN persona were explicitly constructed. There's all this myth around who SN is. A lot of…

It is possible that aspects of the SN persona were highly constructed but what is a simpler explanation - that everything about SN was fake or just his identity? It would have taken an enormous cognitive effort to be able to consistently demonstrate the same personality traits in post after post unless it came naturally. It seems like he was more concerned about technical discussion than hiding information about hims…

When I hear an argument about a simpler explanation, I tend to assume there's an appeal to Occam's razor; but I'm not sure that's useful here:

What's the chances that they took so much care to obscure their identity in every other way, but decided to use their genuine personality? Doesn't that seem improbable, too?

I accept the argument about it being hard to maintain two personas - but what is enormous cognitive effort for you and me might be basic operational security for someone else.

Bitcoin is very interesting, but I'd like if there was more caution about SN, given it has has potentially endowed them with vast resources.

Re: Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

#34
post #14
post #7

This currently isn't "news," as the paper hasn't been published yet, and none of the disclosed findings are too damning or conclusive. That being said, it's important for two reasons: 1.) the paper gets published tomorrow, which will lead to a round of negative press, regardless of the claims' merit. 2.) More significant: it highlights what I see as an existential threat to the Bitcoin experiment: a.) the poor distri…

> a.) the lack of even distribution of early wealth Like an IPO? [1] > b.) the possibility that a great percentage of Bitcoin are currently held by bad actors (criminals, anarchists, use your imagination). I know you are probably using the term anarchist in the colloquial sense (meaning those black bloc anarchists who smash things and want revolution) conjuring images of a Mad Max like dystopia, but would you conside…

Well, early adopters do have an unfair advantage no matter how you links try to justify it.

Re: Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

#35
post #5

Note that Adi Shamir is the S in RSA (i.e. he's a co-inventor and it's named partly after him)

That's the only reason I believe there might be some sort of story behind this, although SN figures as way more interesting and complex figure DPR.

Re: Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

#36
2 possible situations I can think of, based strictly on 'Among their discoveries was a particular transfer to an account controlled by Mr. Ulbricht from another that had been created in January 2009, during the very earliest days of the bitcoin network, which was set up the previous year.':

- the bitcoin wallet, although said to be associated with SN, has changed ownership since its creation in 2009

- SN purchased something from DPR, perhaps something DPR himself was selling on SR, either a legitimate buy or for some other purposes; SN was just a regular customer in this case

In the meantime, I'm eagerly awaiting their paper. Ron and Shamir have previously co-authored another bitcoin related paper titled 'Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction Graph'. There's a very interested overview of it in this Gist: https://gist.github.com/jgarzik/3901921 It appears to have some flaws.

I don't know how accurate this statistic is, but the last Gist comment mentions that 22% of bitcoins are held in reused addresses.

Re: Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

#37
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it possible that DPR himself was an early adopter of BitCoins It is also possible that DPR is more than one person.

This is extremely likely. The SilkRoad admins all have access to the old (and the new) DPR forum account. One of them was using it even after Ross was arrested, leading someone to ask why DPR was showing up on the active members list of the SR forum even after be was arrested.

Could that not have been the feds?

Re: Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

#38
post #34
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a.) the lack of even distribution of early wealth Like an IPO? [1] > b.) the possibility that a great percentage of Bitcoin are currently held by bad actors (criminals, anarchists, use your imagination). I know you are probably using the term anarchist in the colloquial sense (meaning those black bloc anarchists who smash things and want revolution) conjuring images of a Mad Max like dystopia, but would you conside…

Well, early adopters do have an unfair advantage no matter how you links try to justify it.

Yeah, like every other economic system. That's life, that's nature. If you dumped 10% of your savings into BitCoin in 2010, you took a great risk and this is the reward. Had you been the angel investor dumping $100000 into Google when there was no business plan, the same applies or what about people who bought domain names for common words or phrases or That's the game, and you and I didn't win this round.

Re: Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

#39
post #7

This currently isn't "news," as the paper hasn't been published yet, and none of the disclosed findings are too damning or conclusive. That being said, it's important for two reasons: 1.) the paper gets published tomorrow, which will lead to a round of negative press, regardless of the claims' merit. 2.) More significant: it highlights what I see as an existential threat to the Bitcoin experiment: a.) the poor distri…

held by bad actors (criminals, anarchists, use your imagination).

Where do you get off calling anarchists "bad actors"??? Personally I find this highly offensive and insulting. Just because I believe people should be free, and not subjects of some "state", I am the "bad actor"? F@%@ that...

Re: Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

#40
post #17
post #7

This currently isn't "news," as the paper hasn't been published yet, and none of the disclosed findings are too damning or conclusive. That being said, it's important for two reasons: 1.) the paper gets published tomorrow, which will lead to a round of negative press, regardless of the claims' merit. 2.) More significant: it highlights what I see as an existential threat to the Bitcoin experiment: a.) the poor distri…

the lack of even distribution of early wealth Totally! All we need is an "affordable bitcoin act" and the problem is solved. Without being snarky: I just dislike when people tie political ideology into their evaluation of new technology.

i don't think you understand what he was saying. You are just being overly defensive against any liberal ideology. He was saying that if it isn't that evenly distributed then one actor, or maybe a few, could have large control over the markets. That is a different problem than distribution of wealth in the sense that the poor are disadvantaged. This argument is purely from a stability concern, not a concern of societal well being.
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