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I Am Not Satoshi

blog.dustintrammell.com

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Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#91

Post by wmf »

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…

I stand corrected and I apologize to Dr. Ron. I am still not sure how much Shamir is responsible for the flaws in this research given that he's not the first author.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#92

Post by ars_technician »

gojomo wrote: post #36
m_ram wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

It's not 'a centralized' database at all. Calling it that only adds to the confusion.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#93

Post by ars_technician »

Crito wrote: post #72
eigenvalue wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't it a given that they did? They strengthened DES's s-boxes against it 10 or so years before it was publicly discovered iirc.

You're right, that's precisely why they changed DES.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#94

Post by ars_technician »

michaelt wrote: post #75
betterunix wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

According to [1] and [2] I can sell 100 bitcoins for $88,631 or $96,805 at Bitstamp and Mtgox respectively - or 10,000 bitcoins for $7,155,446 and $8,797,257 As I understand it those are offers to buy that are on the market right now, so you could execute the trades instantly. [1] http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/bitstampUSD_depth.html [2] http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html

Yes, that's correct. The market isn't nearly as illiquid as some of the commentors on this forum would like you to think.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#96

Post by ars_technician »

eliteraspberrie wrote: post #84
vijayboyapati wrote: post #15

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?

If it were published in an academic journal, the journal would publish these remarks by Dustin Trammell in the next issue. But this "paper" was published online without peer review, so it's up to Ron and Shamir to do the right thing.

Most of the research Shamir does at this point is basically crap like this, which is why it's on a website instead of in a conference or journal.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#99

Post by carbocation »

oakwhiz wrote: post #87
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.

We acquired the complete state of the Bitcoin transaction system [...] This required downloading 180,001 separate but linked HTML fi les [...] following the links backwards to the zeroth block [...] Each fi le was parsed in order to extract all the multisender/multireceiver transactions in it, and then the collection of transactions was encoded as a standard database on our local machine. This is definitely a very st…

Yes. In fact, I'm sure (formally, "I suspect") that what you are describing is exactly how blockchain.info gets its data in the first place.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi

#100

Post by lifeformed »

saraid216 wrote: post #23
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…

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 ).

I want a universe to exist where the answer to every question is based on its entertainment value.
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