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I Am Not Satoshi

blog.dustintrammell.com

31–40 of 179 posts

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#31

I wonder, is research like journalism where an academic is morally obliged to issue a retraction or correction for conclusions shown, conclusively, to be false?

More or less. However it's also like journalism in that you shouldn't necessarily hold your breath until it happens.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#32
post #17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich in bitcoins - yes. Rich in USD? Not yet.

He had a balance of ~1200 btc on mtgox in March of 2013, during a time when bitcoin was hovering around $50. Had he sold it all then it would have been a cool $60k. Had he kept it until now, it would be approximately $1MM (it's never been below $50 since that time). Whether that counts as "rich" is a matter of perspective, I guess.

Is that all he had, though?

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#34

I doubt the real identity of Satoshi will ever be revealed. Seriously, if the claims of Satoshi mining the first 20,000 Bitcoins is true (with a value of almost one billion), would he seriously want to be publicly known? I would imagine the FBI amongst other Government organisations and figures would love nothing more than to pick Satoshi's brain (by force if need be) if his or her identity were to ever be truly reve…

I think Satoshi is the NSA. This is 99% because it would be the most entertaining result, and 1% actual reasoning ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6206086 ).

Can we rule out the FBI?

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#36
post #26
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it actually seemed like they thought that "the blockchain" is a file stored on blockchain.info People seem to confuse that a lot. It's a badly named service at the best of times. I wonder how many legal requests the site will get from people believing they run Bitcoin.

I was about to argue with you about it not being very confusing, but then I read the "About" section on the front page: "This site allows you to navigate the bitcoin blockchain (a database which holds information about all transactions)." That really does make it sound like they are storing the centralized database for bitcoin. Edit: changed "storing a" to "storing the" to clarify my point per gojomo's reply.

Blockchain.info is storing a centralized database for Bitcoin. Just not the centralized database... because there's not any official one. They're a value-added replica (via indexing & UI), not a constitutional authority.

(They have some earned authority, by a record of useful service.)

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#37
post #26
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it actually seemed like they thought that "the blockchain" is a file stored on blockchain.info People seem to confuse that a lot. It's a badly named service at the best of times. I wonder how many legal requests the site will get from people believing they run Bitcoin.

I was about to argue with you about it not being very confusing, but then I read the "About" section on the front page: "This site allows you to navigate the bitcoin blockchain (a database which holds information about all transactions)." That really does make it sound like they are storing the centralized database for bitcoin. Edit: changed "storing a" to "storing the" to clarify my point per gojomo's reply.

I can see where you are coming from, but how could you word that to be technically correct, succinct (not a full blown lecture on what bitcoin is), and not leave yourself open to giving people that impression?

Bitcoin isn't the simplest concept around. Unless you are in the business of packaging up bitcoin for non-technical consumers, I think it is reasonable to expect your users to bring some knowledge about bitcoin to the table.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#39

This is not even the first paper by Dorit Ron and Shamir on Bitcoin; they did an analysis of the transaction graph earlier: http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf‎ And that one too was quite poorly done; from the text, it actually seemed like they thought that "the blockchain" is a file stored on blockchain.info. Disappointing from the inventor of Shamir's Secret Sharing and differential cryptanalysis.

"Disappointing from the inventor of Shamir's Secret Sharing and differential cryptanalysis."

Indeed, as I was reading the post I thought to myself "it couldn't be that Shamir, could it?" Oh.

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