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The Face Behind Bitcoin?

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Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#531

Post by ChuckMcM »

anigbrowl wrote: post #517
ChuckMcM wrote: post #462

Doxing as journalism, kind of surreal. Not sure I get the point though. (I understand why irc enemies do it, but I don't get the journalistic value of 'outing' Satoshi)

Oh come on, you're a smart person Chuck. You don't get the journalistic value of tracking down the person who founded a $10 billion cryptocurrency economy that is in the news on a weekly basis? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

Oh I get the value of kind of "knowing the guy" but I don't understand the whole 'take down-esque' form the article took.

It would have been perfectly reasonable to use all that data and report that Satoshi is a brilliant, if quirky, guy living in Southern California. But to go through the hunt, the leads, the follow up, identifying his kids, family, and location. It has the feel of papparazzi taking pictures of Kate Middleton's panties on a windy day.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#532

Post by anigbrowl »

etherael wrote: post #495
anigbrowl wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Nakamoto can spend money on security too if he feels like it. As a cryptographer he's surely familiar with the adage that 'tehre's no security in obscurity,' and I'm only surprised it's taken this long to ID him.

It's probably not actually him.

Then why not simply say so? If she's misquoting him and he actually has nothing to do with Bitcoin, then he could easily sue for libel.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#533

Post by jeffdavis »

rosser wrote: post #337
Houshalter wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ayn Rand withdrew Social Security checks (to get back what the government took.) There is nothing necessarily wrong with that.

When you claim Social Security money, you aren't "getting back" what you put in/was "taken" from you. Your contribution is already gone, disbursed to current recipients. When you ultimately collect, that money is similarly coming out of someone else's pocket.

Right. That confusion is what causes some people to think that a tax cut is the same as government spending.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#534

Post by anigbrowl »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #531
anigbrowl wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on, you're a smart person Chuck. You don't get the journalistic value of tracking down the person who founded a $10 billion cryptocurrency economy that is in the news on a weekly basis? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

Oh I get the value of kind of "knowing the guy" but I don't understand the whole 'take down-esque' form the article took. It would have been perfectly reasonable to use all that data and report that Satoshi is a brilliant, if quirky, guy living in Southern California. But to go through the hunt, the leads, the follow up, identifying his kids, family, and location. It has the feel of papparazzi taking pictures of Kate…

I don't disagree that it's tacky, and have a low opinion of gonzo journalism in general. However, the rise of personal reporting brands is bigger than one person or evne one publication.

As for bringing the guy's identity out into the opne, I am OK with that. If (as posited elsewhere on this thread) he owns or controls some 5-10% of the bitcoin economy,t hen a good number of other people have a legitimate interest in knowing who he is and how he might leverage that. Frankly, one reason I've avoided speculating in bitcoin was precisely because of the lack of information about this; a crypto-currency set up by some International Man of Mystery has a high potential of being a pump-and-dump scheme.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#535

Post by sanderjd »

omegaham wrote: post #149
bane wrote: post #101

Topic other than discussing the irresponsibility of "outing" a guy using the clever tricks of using his name and public records look ups. > A libertarian, Nakamoto encouraged his daughter to be independent, start her own business and "not be under the government's thumb," she says. "He was very wary of the government, taxes and people in charge." > What you don't know about him is that he's worked on classified stuff…

Oh god yes. I'm currently a relatively junior flunky in the Marine Corps, and the GS civilians who work here are hilarious. "We need to cut the fat!" We work at a minor airbase in the middle of nowhere... oh. Oops. Whatever we are, it sure as hell ain't muscle. "Government spending is out of control" while talking about how they exploit the DTS system to get as much per diem as possible. "Those lazy people who expect…

My anecdotes differ from yours. Most of the people I have met that are living that dichotomy are very aware of it, and just think "well this is the system we live in, so I have to play along until it changes". Many of them are really bummed about it. Sometimes being the change you want to see in the world is impractical, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to change your mind about it.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#536

Post by argumentum »

unreal37 wrote: post #234
argumentum wrote: post #82

Quite an odd article for such an important (if true) expose. The only reason I think its possibly true is Gavin's vague tweet. 50% of the article deals with material about bitcoin that is redundant to anyone whose been following it for more than a day (like most here). 45% deals with "Dorian S. Nakamoto"'s family, personal background and that he's a libertarian oddball, with a penchant for math (but no other signific…

Gavin doesn't know who Satoshi is. He just regrets speaking to that reporter. His tweet doesn't lend any credibility to the story.

I agree, the reporter made it seem as if Gavin "knew".

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#537

Post by wpietri »

chimeracoder wrote: post #428
fedups wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most original and convincing argument against libertarianism that I've heard.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but it's about as original and convincing as saying that "liberalism is a 'coherent political philosophy' only if you are a poor inner-city black kid whose parents are on welfare". They make for witty-sounding quips, but both are ad-hominems[0] that do little to actually address and argue against the tenets of either philosophy. [0] (In before someone points out that this is no…

This definitely isn't an ad hominem, and it isn't even analogous to one. Enraged_camel is implying that libertarianism is missing something that is easy to miss if you have led a relatively comfortable and unchallenging life. The criticism is oblique rather than explicit, but that doesn't make it anything like an ad hominem, because ad hominems are essentially distracting with irrelevancy.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#538

Post by hindsightbias »

bane wrote: post #308
jeremyt wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to take you at your word that you're actually curious. I think you're seeing hypocrisy here when there is really a lot less in reality. People who are in favor of a certain outcome have no obligation to act as if that outcome has already come to pass. This is why I don't give liberals a hard time because they are in favor of higher taxes but don't voluntarily pay higher taxes themselves. First of all, most…

> I'm going to take you at your word that you're actually curious. I actually do find it curious, but frustrating. I have a great many friends, who I quite like in normal face-to-face interaction, who I've FB friended, and found I had to unfollow their feeds because in private they turn into rabid ideologues...from every part of the political spectrum. In this case I'm isolating conservative/libertarian folks, but I…

> planned parenthood

Do you see that as rabid ideology? I ask because I'm always interested in what is becoming the norm (or how far the goalposts of reality move). For instance, while a lot of FB relatives might believe Obama is coming for their guns tomorrow, the last clinic serving the entire Rio Grande Valley in Texas is closing tomorrow.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#539

Post by anigbrowl »

john_b wrote: post #526
anigbrowl wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a right to privacy. Perhaps you should, and I've argued in favor of a constitutional amendment to that effect, but in the meantime privacy is just a polite social fiction.

It's more than a polite social fiction. It's a moral requirement for many of the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution to have any meaning. E.g. try exercising your right to an attorney when the prosecution logs all your communications. Or try exercising your right of assembly to discussion union membership while your employer monitors the meeting. If Americans give up on privacy and decide it's not worth fighting…

And the legal scope of those situations is correspondingly narrow. I'm not against a right to privacy, which is why I said I'm in favor of a constitutional amendment to make it explicit. I'm saying that you don't have a comprehensive right to privacy now. Moral rights are what you want, legal rights are what you actually have.

I don't thinkt eh right to privacy is entirely unilateral; if it were, journalism could not exist, and the Constitution also forbids the government from abridging the freedom of the press - which includes the freedom to inquire as well as to publish. I personally would narrow the scope of press freedom if I were drafting constitution 2.0, because I believe publishers often exploit the economic asymmetry between themselves and their subjects to the detriment of ordinary people in a manner that the framers of the constitution were unable to envision, but there you go.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#540

Post by dagw »

girvo wrote: post #129
dagw wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they could have done all of that without revealing his identity.

His identity was revealed the moment he put his actual full name to the paper though :/ I would has sympathy if he actually did use a pseudonym, but assuming this is true then what did he really expect would happen?

I personally think they could have written a pretty good story without putting full name in the paper.
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