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Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

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

#121

Post by sentenza »

gwern wrote: post #115
jfoster wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a misleading litmus test. Only yen could be worked around through a prepaid card, stolen card number, gratis account, and probably other methods I'm not aware of. Lack of English support doesn't necessarily make the person Japanese. Westerners can learn Japanese or use translation tools.

Well, of course you can excuse it away (at the cost of adding complicating details and raising the question of why, if they used one of your suggestions, they later switched to the 21x more expensive Anonymousspeech hosting). The point of the test is to quickly asses whether the person trying to dox Satoshi has done even their basic homework and realized that it's an issue for their theory? If they haven't even looke…

However, the null hypothesis here should be clearly:

The NSA is SN.

Crypto knowledge? Check.

Ability to hide identity? Check.

Cultural expertise? Check.

Everything else that could possibly be needed? Check!

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

#122

Post by yohanatan »

joosters wrote: post #117
yohanatan wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that the authorities had no motivation to leave him in play for a while before busting him?

Nothing at all. But they certainly weren't able to hold back the other potential discoverers of his identity that I listed.

And he dealt with those other threats by attempting to issue hits on them.

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

#123

Post by wslh »

dobbsbob wrote: post #43
spenvo wrote: 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…

There's no way in hell Satoshi is anywhere connected to "DPR". Look at the OPSEC between the two. Satoshi carefully concealed his identity even in the early crypto mailing list days of Bitcoin. Ross Ulbricht failed at this completely throughout his underground career. Satoshi was a pretty good developer, Ulbricht posted to Stackexchange the most basic of php questions. Satoshi seemed to be very aware of the power of…

If you want to read more information about Satoshi you can take a look at this researched blog post: A new mystery about Satoshi hidden in the Bitcoin block-chain http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/new-mystery-about-sa...

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

#124

Post by bmelton »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #42
bmelton wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could that not have been the feds?

Libertas said it was SR admins. If it's a lie, I can't think of a good reason for it.

Fair enough. I wasn't familiar with the situation, that just would have been the conclusion I jumped to, and wondered why it wasn't yours.

Thanks for the info.

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

#125

Post by andrewflnr »

joosters wrote: post #113
AJ007 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mistakes which included publicly posting an email address with his full legal name on a bitcoin forum while using that same nickname to post on a drug forum, all in the same time period. Additionally he baited and trolled the mainstream press. The US government & US prosecutors do not react well to criminals who attempt to repeatedly publicly humiliate their failure to catch them. My honest opinion was this guy was a…

Idiot or not, his identity took some time to be discovered. People are oh-so-wise after the fact about DPR's dumb mistakes but can't tell the difference between their perceived brilliance and hindsight. Successfully hiding your identity is an all-or-nothing measure; either you are outed, or you stay anonymous. So the only remaining way to gauge how well someone hid before the final reveal is to look at how long it to…

Isn't there a huge component of luck in staying anonymous? A needle can remain in a haystack for a long time without requiring any skill, either of it's own or of someone who hid or accidentally dropped it there. If time spent anonymous is "only remaining way to gauge how well someone hid", it's a pretty crummy one. I think it makes sense to take into account the kind of mistakes that brought someone out.

By the same token, we might just not have found Satoshi's stupid mistakes yet. Still, I think dobbsbob's point stands at least as weak evidence of Satoshi and DPR being different people.

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

#128

Post by gwern »

sentenza wrote: post #121
gwern wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, of course you can excuse it away (at the cost of adding complicating details and raising the question of why, if they used one of your suggestions, they later switched to the 21x more expensive Anonymousspeech hosting). The point of the test is to quickly asses whether the person trying to dox Satoshi has done even their basic homework and realized that it's an issue for their theory? If they haven't even looke…

However, the null hypothesis here should be clearly: The NSA is SN. Crypto knowledge? Check. Ability to hide identity? Check. Cultural expertise? Check. Everything else that could possibly be needed? Check!

No, that's not the null hypothesis. The NSA does not dabble in digital currency, nor does it release vast complex systems with huge bugs in them

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

#129

Post by SwellJoe »

cdelsolar wrote: post #104
michaelt wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've heard, Satoshi's coins are spread around a lot of 50 btc wallets, and they're not so much known to be Satoshi's as suspected to be hers because there seems to have only been one person mining the blockchain at the start [1]. As other people started running the clients, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell Satoshi from any other miner. So though Satoshi may never have spent the bitcoins mined when…

she?

Since Satoshi's identity is unknown, it could be a female. Mike Hearn refers to Satoshi as a "he", and he would be most likely to know...but I don't know that Mike ever spoke to Satoshi in any form other than online, so he may not know Satoshi's preferred gender pronoun, either.

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

#130

Post by dllthomas »

topynate wrote: post #96
dllthomas wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Ronald Coase says the Coase theorem doesn't represent reality. Bitcoin dramatically decreases some parts of the costs of transactions, but the cost of buying a loaf of bread isn't only the credit card fee - it's also the trip to the store, time considering other things you could have bought, &c. Transaction costs are merely lower . Which does say this should help the Coase theorem better apply, but we don't reall…

Yes, good points. I was thinking of Bitcoin as an asset and not the numéraire, which to my mind changes the situation a bit - the problem suggested is that some 'undesirable' people will end up with too many Bitcoins and use them to manipulate the market. The Coase theorem points to this being as unlikely as it is for any other asset class. The bad actors will eventually get bought out if the putative damage they're…

I think a part of what you're missing is that (says my understanding, which could certainly be flawed...) transaction costs in Coase's model include the costs of enforcing whatever contract is used to prevent whatever badness.
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