Wny does it even matter, there was no "Breakthrough" in the code, or in the whitepaper, it's a nice engineering combination of technologies, based on pre-existing attempts, nothing new - working software, admirable motivation - the fact that it became a creepy scamming industry is not his/her fault or achievment, I am not even sure why it matters these days. If he/she is still alive and not touching these wallets - I can only bow to the person.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
501–510 of 905 posts
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#502Simple 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…
> And really, for what?
Readership, clicks and views
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
In principle, anonymized case studies do not require consent and historically, they were often published without. Without personally identifiable information, this is and always has been 100% legal. But in modern practice, many journals acknowledge that making a case fully anonymous in the age of the internet might not even be possible without taking away everything noteworthy, so they require some form of consent no…
Alternatively they can do what Scott Alexander did and change irrelevant details.
That's not so easy, especially for clinical case studies. If any data points are irrelevant, they should not be stated at all, because they actually might not be irrelevant after all and by arbitrarily changing them, you could confound results. On the other hand, it has been shown that three or more indirect data points can already be enough to unmask you in an anonymized report. And most reports usually contain many more than that. So it's not surprising that journals would cover their backs by requiring consent, even if the law does not explicitly demand it.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 2014 I found myself having to explain the fundamental basis of bitcoin's economic model and Satoshi's contribution to ecash (that the value of proof-of-work is independent of the work it represents, something the cypherpunks consistently got wrong pre-bitcoin) to a non-comprehending Nick Szabo. It's not him.
Even if Nick Szabo didn't have anything to do with Bitcoin, I find it very unlikely that he wouldn't know about the core differences between his own system and Bitcoin by 2014. That's a bit like a mathematician trying damn hard to prove something, proving it for most cases, and then be totally unaware of the proof six months later, relying on his own proof and proving it for all cases. That doesn't sound like it happ…
I think you have the roles backwards. He was the one explaining (at first) how bitcoin wouldn't scale -- couldn't scale -- because the generated value doesn't adjust with the difficulty, when in fact that is fundamental to why bitcoin DOES work and prior schemes did not.
Which is fine. Nick was only just starting to learn about bitcoin at this time. I didn't understand this until much after I was first exposed to bitcoin, tbh. Much of how bitcoin/crypto works, although we take it for granted now, was very non-obvious to people working on ecash-like systems at the time. Bitcoin basically violates every inviolable constraint that cypherpunks had put on digital money systems.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine mafia knocking on your door and putting a gun to your head because some journalist figured out you are secret billionare. Not cool?
How is it different from all the non-secret billionaires to say nothing of all the people with 100s of millions?
Even if you put a gun to Bill Gates' head, signing over all his wealth to you would still require a lengthy process, not just handing over some keys.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#506Wny does it even matter, there was no "Breakthrough" in the code, or in the whitepaper, it's a nice engineering combination of technologies, based on pre-existing attempts, nothing new - working software, admirable motivation - the fact that it became a creepy scamming industry is not his/her fault or achievment, I am not even sure why it matters these days. If he/she is still alive and not touching these wallets - I…
Chances are the key to those is simply lost forever.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is his real name, and he also used his real surname in early blog posts.
It is not his real name. Once he upended his life, he revealed his real name here[1]. It is not Scott Alexander. [1]: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/still-alive
Scott Alexander are his first and middle names, and Siskind his last name, or that's what I've understood.
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#508This article is kinda bogwater. Repeating the same points, writing as if it were LinkedIn, pretending to be technically competent while obviously not. Over and over and over, reiterating the same points but ultimately getting nowhere.
Changing requirements ad-hoc throughout the article, picking and choosing ideal matches rather than objective ones, etc. basically trying to make the data fit the problem by force.
Author, over time, gets more desperate to be "the one that found Satoshi" and loses the plot entirely.
I mean, what the hell is this bullshit?
""" Adam Back: I did a lot of talking though for somebody, I mean … I mean, I’m not saying I’m good with words but I sure did a lot of yakking on these lists actually.
To my ears, it sounded like he was saying that for someone who preferred code over words, he sure had written a lot of words. Implicit in that was an acknowledgment that he had been the one who wrote the quote. In other words, for a few seconds, Mr. Back had let the mask fall and turned into Satoshi. """
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#509[dead]
Re: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine mafia knocking on your door and putting a gun to your head because some journalist figured out you are secret billionare. Not cool?
How is it different from all the non-secret billionaires to say nothing of all the people with 100s of millions?
You really dont get it? Because real billionares have the money and you dont.
Journalists just told everyone you are billionare, but you're just average SWE on $120k / year and absolutely no money for hiring small army of guards. Neither your own government agencies keep your back protected like they do for usual high profile people.
Now go find a proof for mafia that you are not in fact have a billion bucks on USD stick.
This has happened in this Satoshi hunt multiple times already. I mean finding that some random crypto related SWE is Satoshi when they are not.