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Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

nytimes.com

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Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#401

Post by Topfi »

pitaj wrote: post #205
shimman wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the weird thing about living in a democracy is you have to convince people who don't agree with you to do things. Maybe try better politics rather than attacks or else you'll go another 30 years of no nuclear power then die without realizing your dream of nearly free clean unlimited power.

Nuclear restrictions were instituted by beurocratic means, not democratic means.

In Austria we put it to a vote. Right after building the first fission plant. We never switched it on after a narrow defeat. At least in our narrow case, the restrictions were exclusively democratic.

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#402

Post by saddist0 »

jmyeet wrote: post #333
adventured wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An estimated 22,000 addresses, 1.1 million Bitcoin. Present value $78 billion. That would make him the 23rd richest person in the world. Bill Gates by comparison is 'only' worth $102 billion these days. If you priced Gates backwards in gold, his $102 billion is about $13 billion two decades ago. He hasn't kept ahead of the destruction of the dollar very well.

1.1m Bitcoin is currently $77B not $7B. Gold is a weird one. It’s has a hell of a run over the last decade. I’m not sure it looked so rosy in 2015. I kinda feel like betting on gold is betting on the end of civilization. I don’t really want to be right.

Lmao, it's $70B+ brother. Zeros aren't for everyone. :")

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#403

Post by vaginaphobic »

gyomu wrote: post #312

Simple question for anyone who’s familiar with this world of journalism: how does the author and the NYTimes cope with the fact that making such claims paint a huge target on the person they claim to have “unmasked”? Satoshi’s wallets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and there have been kidnappings/torture/murders for much less than that. Do they just not care about the ethical implications? And really, for…

[dead]

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#404

Post by vintermann »

adastra22 wrote: post #356
danso wrote: post #79

Pretty compelling story. Not necessarily for its revelations, but for the fact that John Carreyrou and the NYT decided to publish it at all. If it were by anyone else, I would have stopped reading after the first thousand words of meandering narrative, but Carreyrou is staking his massive and impeccable investigative journalistic reputation on this mountain of circumstantial evidence and statistical analysis. Him tor…

> Can someone explain why this relatively recent tweet fight is convincing evidence that Szabo is too ignorant to have been behind Bitcoin? I’m a primary player in this sad saga. I can tell you that neither Szabo nor Back are Satoshi, as anyone who knows them would attest. But to your question, all this does is make this “journalist” look dumb. The thing being discussed by Adam and Nick wasn’t wven proposed for bitco…

> I can tell you that neither Szabo nor Back are Satoshi, as anyone who knows them would attest.

I'm sure you can tell us, and I'm sure you all will attest it, but is it true though?

You probably wouldn't "out" Satoshi if it was one of you working on anonymous payment systems on the mailing list, and it very obviously is - there were like ten people at most, if we're generous, who were working on what was at the time an extremely nice cryptography topic.

Which is fine I guess, bit the attestation doesn't mean much.

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#405

Post by SXX »

gyomu wrote: post #312

Simple question for anyone who’s familiar with this world of journalism: how does the author and the NYTimes cope with the fact that making such claims paint a huge target on the person they claim to have “unmasked”? Satoshi’s wallets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and there have been kidnappings/torture/murders for much less than that. Do they just not care about the ethical implications? And really, for…

It's not even hundreds of millions. It's tens of billions of dollars if we suppose someone actually have access to these wallets.

Bitcoins across old unused wallets worth $30B to $80B depend of how you count it.

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#406

Post by vintermann »

Lerc wrote: post #133
lumirth wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What struck me in particular was the fact the reporter noticed that Back had theorized how to evade stylometry. Obviously, if one of the people in question had specifically come up with ways to evade methods, you’d want to re-roll those methods to account for that. That, alongside a number of other tidbits (Back’s activity and inactivity patterns lining up with Satoshi’s appearance and disappearance, his refusal to p…

> his financial incentive to hide his identity as Satoshi under US securities law I don't think you can attribute this to financial incentive. The actual Satoshi could forfeit 90% of their BTC and still have more than they could know what to do with. At those kinds of levels I can see personal security being a higher consideration. Either way it would give no indication who might be Satoshi because all candidates wou…

> The actual Satoshi could forfeit 90% of their BTC and still have more than they could know what to do with.

Ha, that may be technically true but when did you ever find a billionaire who would be OK with it?

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#407

Post by Topfi »

tptacek wrote: post #224
dotancohen wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty compelling story. Not necessarily for its revelations, but for the fact that John Carreyrou and the NYT decided to publish it at all. When is the line crossed from journalism into doxxing? Whoever created Bitcoin has a legitimate safety reason to stay anonymous. Anyone suspected of holding that much wealth becomes a target - as does their family.

There is no such line. The actual line is whether someone is newsworthy; the safeguard you have against journalism abusing random people (which it has done, often, over the last 150 years) is that journalists ordinarily don't write intrusive stories about random people. (There are some other safeguards, but they're highly situational.) The conflict between journalism and "doxxing" is a Redditism that people are frant…

But are they themselves newsworthy or is it what they created and that they hold a lot of coins?

There are many people, both FOSS devs and working for major corporations, that have contributed or singularly been responsible for very impactful technologies, but in general, if that person wants to keep their persona discreet and there is no evidence they have done anything of public interest, the reporting remains purely on what they have done. Akin to why Wikipedia generally has rules for notability (I’d argue Satoshi falls under ONEVENT if we are strict here).

To me, the way you describe it, the line appears to be less in whether there may be a public interest and more whether there is public attention. In other words, is the line in the sand whether people should know this or whether they want to (and thus buy copies)?

Genuinely asking, is there a rule set on this the NYT should adhere to? What is the APs position for dem asking a pseudononymous character only notable for a specific thing?

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#408

Post by jibal »

creatonez wrote: post #397
johnfn wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYTimes infamously doxxed Slate Star Codex[1], despite him basically begging them not to because it would upend his psychiatry practice, back in 2020 for no reason other than because they could. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23610416

[flagged]

I think you have that backwards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex#Anti-reaction...

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#409

Post by vintermann »

philistine wrote: post #157
Lerc wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his financial incentive to hide his identity as Satoshi under US securities law I don't think you can attribute this to financial incentive. The actual Satoshi could forfeit 90% of their BTC and still have more than they could know what to do with. At those kinds of levels I can see personal security being a higher consideration. Either way it would give no indication who might be Satoshi because all candidates wou…

why does everybody assume that whoever is Satoshi still has access to their wallet? It's absolutely possible whoever is Satoshi has simply lost the key. We're talking new technology where you're running fast and loose. It's absolutely possible, and I'd say a big reason why someone would not want to admit to being Satoshi. I'm Satoshi, but I also lost billions because I messed up a Debian upgrade .

It's entirely possible that Satoshi has deliberately destroyed the keys, but lost them? I doubt it. All these early cryptography guys were very conscious about keeping their keys secure, they discussed it endlessly.

Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator

#410

Post by SXX »

aaa_aaa wrote: post #364
DeathArrow wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Satoshi’s wallets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and there have been kidnappings/torture/murders for much less than that. So if Forbes publishes a list of the richest people in the world, it makes them targets?

When you are not actually rich, it matters.

This. Imagine being targeted by actual government agencies of russia, north korea and iran who wouldn't mind to take some of your bitcoins.
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