Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court • Hacker News Board

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#101

Post by tryptophan » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 10:56 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #3

samcday wrote: post #2

The whole story seems so bizarre. As far as I understand it, some kind of fraudster got caught up in a bunch of his own lies, of which being the inventor of Bitcoin happened to be one. We're only reading about it because "Bitcoin" happens to be a frothy buzzword that gets the clicks. Otherwise this would just be some local news case about a wacky person saying the darndest things. It's funny how we decide what's news…

There is a multi-billion dollar asset known as Bitcoin SV that is valued highly on the belief Craig Wright invented bitcoin. He is not just a local crank.

>multi-billion dollar asset

[number of coins] * [ price of coin] =/= value.

I hate this ridiculous trend of "valuing" currencies by the above formula.

I sold myself 1 HackerNewsCoin™ for 1$(featuring decentralized freedom© and proof of steak®). Since there are 1e13 coins, I am now the world's first trillionaire! I own a currency valued at 1$ * 1e13!

It makes much more sense to compare currencies by their transaction volume, or possibly even better by the volume * days destroyed metric.

Bitcoin SV probably has very little real "float" and so it appears far more valuable than it actually is.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#102

Post by anonymous257234 » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 11:01 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #14

jnbiche wrote: post #4

The amazing things is that this guy -- an obvious fraud and conman -- has been invited to numerous high-level Bitcoin/Blockchain conferences as a speaker. It always stuns me how relatively few people are able to spot frauds (although it explains a lot about our current political situation). I'm guessing 40-50% of the population is susceptible to this kind of trickery.

This is a feature, not a bug. Healthy communities are comprised of people who are trusting and permissive by default. The cost is that on occasion these communities will be exploited. Personally I think it's a very low price to pay for all its benefits.

Typical cryptocultist response.

Someone highly influential and respected in your community turns out to be a fraudster, and it's actually somehow a sign of strength that so many people were duped by him.

I'm glad all of your electronic monopoly money will soon be completely worthless.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#103

Post by keymone » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 11:02 PM UTC

lanrh1836 wrote: post #61

keymone wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

market cap numbers actually aren't meaningful, especially in low liquidity assets like bsv.

How does that change anything? The point is CSW is relevant in the sense that if the #9 token by market cap collapsed it should be “news” in the crypto world. He isn’t just some crazy bystander whose supporters have nothing to lose.

you argument that bitcoin sv is relevant stands on that market cap number.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#104

Post by api » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 11:05 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #4

The amazing things is that this guy -- an obvious fraud and conman -- has been invited to numerous high-level Bitcoin/Blockchain conferences as a speaker. It always stuns me how relatively few people are able to spot frauds (although it explains a lot about our current political situation). I'm guessing 40-50% of the population is susceptible to this kind of trickery.

Most people are mostly honest and assume others are the same. They are not really expecting someone who is radically and baldly dishonest and so they get taken aback.

I remember my first encounter with a group of really dishonest people. It was deeply shocking. When I grasped just how much lying was happening and the magnitude of it it took me a while to wrap my mind around it. The folks I encountered had built entire webs of massive lies. I now realize they were small time hucksters compared with some of the cons that are out there.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#105

Post by RustyRussell » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 11:05 PM UTC

BubRoss wrote: post #9

jnbiche wrote: post #4

The amazing things is that this guy -- an obvious fraud and conman -- has been invited to numerous high-level Bitcoin/Blockchain conferences as a speaker. It always stuns me how relatively few people are able to spot frauds (although it explains a lot about our current political situation). I'm guessing 40-50% of the population is susceptible to this kind of trickery.

Part of it has been the tribalism of him going against the obvious weasels that ousted the original Bitcoin team to keep the blocksize low, the transaction fees high and get VC funding for their company that they would market by saying it was the 'people that were in charge of bitcoin' Some of the people who hated those weasels decided that Craig Wright must be great since he says he is against the same people. Inste…

> Part of it has been the tribalism of him going against the obvious weasels that ousted the original Bitcoin team to keep the blocksize low, the transaction fees high and get VC funding for their company that they would market by saying it was the 'people that were in charge of bitcoin'

There are solid technical reasons to keep the block size low. The current developers were active almost from the beginning, you should take a look. And while Blockstream was founded by Bitcoin developers and sponsors development, it's a small part of the total development effort.

As an early Blockstream employee, I'd love to see some source to your claim that we "get VC funding for their company that they would market by saying it was the 'people that were in charge of bitcoin'"

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#106

Post by api » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 11:07 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #18

Waterluvian wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a feature, not a bug. Healthy communities are comprised of people who are trusting and permissive by default. The cost is that on occasion these communities will be exploited. Personally I think it's a very low price to pay for all its benefits.

> This is a feature, not a bug....Healthy communities are comprised of people who are trusting and permissive by default. It's entirely possible to find a happy medium. You can be trusting without being totally naive about individuals with bad intentions.

I am fond of a saying that apparently comes from the intelligence world: "trust, but verify." It never hurts to check. If you are dealing with a big liar you can usually catch them quickly enough, sometimes by just verifying small things like work or school history.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#107

Post by Kaveren » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 11:09 PM UTC

clemensley wrote: post #92

bdcravens wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet everybody is acting as if they _knew_ he is a liar and a fraud Most of his proof has been systematically proven to be forged or unverified. > That seems to be the justification for hate. You're confusing hate with lack of trust. > What happened to innocent until proven guilty? It's very much playing itself out in front of you. "Innocent" isn't the same thing as lack of accusation. In the court of public opinion…

You are stating a popular opinion, but it's one that I do not share. > Most of his proof has been systematically proven to be forged or unverified. If someone fails to prove A that does not mean that (not A) is true > You're confusing hate with lack of trust. You are right, hate is a very strong word that I should not have used in this context. > It's very much playing itself out in front of you. "Innocent" isn't the…

you're very gullible to not take a side here. the idea that the same man responsible for something quite libertarian (pseudononymous distributed currency) would sue someone for saying he isn't satoshi in a court of law is insanity.

not to mention satoshi himself wished people wouldn't obsess over who he is, and rather think more about the larger team of people behind bitcoin's development, according to a post of his.

fraudulent proof is proof of fraud. you have to play mental mind games to believe there's a case for him being satoshi. all it takes is 30 seconds of basic logical thinking.

people who believe he could be satoshi are the reason the cryptocurrency community is so awful.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#108

Post by RustyRussell » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 11:10 PM UTC

ChainOfFools wrote: post #100

BubRoss wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it has been the tribalism of him going against the obvious weasels that ousted the original Bitcoin team to keep the blocksize low, the transaction fees high and get VC funding for their company that they would market by saying it was the 'people that were in charge of bitcoin' Some of the people who hated those weasels decided that Craig Wright must be great since he says he is against the same people. Inste…

is this the purportedly decentralized group that refers to itself, with no sense of irony, as Bitcoin Core?

To clarify: the bitcoin open source project was renamed "Bitcoin Core" to avoid confusion with Bitcoin the currency and protocol (it didn't help).

It does seem to follow Open Source best practice: but I'm not even sure what "decentralized" development would look like?

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#109

Post by ItsMattyG » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 11:13 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #14

jnbiche wrote: post #4

The amazing things is that this guy -- an obvious fraud and conman -- has been invited to numerous high-level Bitcoin/Blockchain conferences as a speaker. It always stuns me how relatively few people are able to spot frauds (although it explains a lot about our current political situation). I'm guessing 40-50% of the population is susceptible to this kind of trickery.

This is a feature, not a bug. Healthy communities are comprised of people who are trusting and permissive by default. The cost is that on occasion these communities will be exploited. Personally I think it's a very low price to pay for all its benefits.

I think the healthiest communities have norms of openness and common knowledge that make fraud very difficult.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#110

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 11:20 PM UTC

ChainOfFools wrote: post #100

BubRoss wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it has been the tribalism of him going against the obvious weasels that ousted the original Bitcoin team to keep the blocksize low, the transaction fees high and get VC funding for their company that they would market by saying it was the 'people that were in charge of bitcoin' Some of the people who hated those weasels decided that Craig Wright must be great since he says he is against the same people. Inste…

is this the purportedly decentralized group that refers to itself, with no sense of irony, as Bitcoin Core?

Bitcoin Core is the name of the software that was originally released by Satoshi Nakamoto and has been continuously been developed ever since. It is the most widely used software to interact with the Bitcoin blockchain, which makes sense, since at the beginning it was the only client and essentially the reference implementation.

The confusion stems from the fact that it was renamed at one point to make it clear that "Bitcoin Core" refers to this specific software whereas "Bitcoin" refers to the protocol and blockchain more generally. This distinction wasn't originally needed, as there were no other clients.