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I Am Not Satoshi

blog.dustintrammell.com

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Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#61

Post by feral »

wmf wrote: post #46
gjm11 wrote: post #42

General consensus seems to be that Ron&Shamir's publications on this topic are extraordinarily weak given how stellar a record Shamir, in particular, has. The conclusion seems obvious: It's a misdirection. Adi Shamir is Satoshi Nakamoto. (Note: No, I do not in fact believe this.)

This sounds like a fairly typical case of an advisor giving a student free reign. Most professors do not invest the time to understand their students' work as much as you might think.

As your comment is 3rd from the top of page:

You could investigate that with a few minutes of googling - the 'student' has been writing CS papers since the mid '80s [0]

This reminds me of when someone on HN described both the authors as 'some Israeli CS students' [1]

Whatever you think about this particular paper, the authors are experienced researchers.

[0] http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~dron/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209356

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#63

Post by eigenvalue »

vbuterin wrote: post #20

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.

I'd be shocked if the NSA hadn't "invented" differential cryptanalysis long before Shamir.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#64

Post by Crito »

feral wrote: post #61
wmf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a fairly typical case of an advisor giving a student free reign. Most professors do not invest the time to understand their students' work as much as you might think.

As your comment is 3rd from the top of page: You could investigate that with a few minutes of googling - the 'student' has been writing CS papers since the mid '80s [0] This reminds me of when someone on HN described both the authors as 'some Israeli CS students' [1] Whatever you think about this particular paper, the authors are experienced researchers. [0] http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~dron/ [1] https://news.yc…

So what we are saying here is that in the "did a bit of preliminary googling before writing something foolish" department, they did about as well as a HN commenter.

Seriously, the slight difference here makes your comparison less than flattering. This seems like some form of "damning with faint praise".

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#65

Post by dllthomas »

cm2012 wrote: post #32
maaku wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Doesn't matter for a lower bound, of course...

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#67

Post by betterunix »

maaku wrote: post #17
highace wrote: 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.

It only counts as "rich" if he can use the money. I suspect that in practice, such large amounts of Bitcoin money have limited usefulness. It would be hard to get the actual million dollars his wallet is supposedly worth. There are still exceedingly few businesses that accept Bitcoin payments. At best, he could get augment whatever other income he has by selling small amounts of his Bitcoin money at a time.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#68

Post by caf »

eigenvalue wrote: post #63
vbuterin wrote: post #20

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.

I'd be shocked if the NSA hadn't "invented" differential cryptanalysis long before Shamir.

Does that matter? If two people independently invent the same thing, they're both inventors with equal standing. The classic example being Leibniz and Newton with regards to calculus of infintesimals.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#70

Post by unreal37 »

manuelflara wrote: post #22
DigitalSea wrote: post #16

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…

Where did you get that 20,000 Bitcoins are worth (even hypothetically) one billion? Even at $1,000 per BTC that's just $20M.

The paper linked speculates that a small group of people mined the first 20,000 blocks of Bitcoin. 20,000 blocks (@50 coins each) is 1,000,000 bitcoins, which @ $1000 is $1 billion.
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