Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

681–690 of 905 posts

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

#681
post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of their journalists also doxxed Naomi Wu, intruding on her personal life, making her lose her income, and possibly getting her in trouble with Chinese authorities: https://x.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1209815150376574976 The journalist themselves is a real piece of work: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/463503-sarah-jeong-out-at... Kinda goes to show you the kind of people who write these stories. Ethics haven'…

> A third tweet posted by Jeong in 2014 said, “Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” It's not like she's any browner..

I moderated a large Reddit community (circa 2014). She threatened to have articles written about how we were racist/misogynistic, unless we removed comments she didn't like.

Her being nasty elsewhere doesn't surprise me...

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

#682
post #365

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?

No, because those people are already public figures. They own companies that are publicly known (i don't mean publicly traded), and thus by proxy, are public face of those companies. Or they appear(ed) in public to make something of being in public (such as lobbying, or civic activities, or philanthropy etc). This makes any article about them not a doxx - they already revealed themselves publicly. You cannot segregat…

Mr Back is already a very public figure in the bitcoin/crypto community who is the face of a public company. This isn't some rando who nobody has ever heard of before.

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

#683
post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was not blogging under his real name. Scott Alexander is not his real name.

It's most of his name. Long before his full name became common knowledge, you could already Google "Scott Alexander psychiatrist" and find him almost instantly.

Yes, but a patient who googled his real name would not find his blog. That was the point.

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

#684
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…

invention of bitcoin is significant enough that world needs to know who really did it. Why is the person hiding is the real question.

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

#685
post #112

I found this amusing. >P.G.P., a free encryption program used by antinuclear activists and human rights groups to shield their files and emails from government surveillance. I find it fascinating to see how the users of a program change, based on how a reporter wants to build or diminish. At least it's going in a positive direction today.

I think it's mind boggling that in 2026 encryption and signing of emails is still not a common thing, only because it's Google's business model to snoop on their users' email. For that reason we can't use email to send sensitive data and need apps for every little thing that could have been an email.

At the same time the dumps of government and corporate emails have been invaluable to society at large. They’ve helped win court cases, uncover corruption, etc.

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

#686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it widely understood to be what most people call "a douche move".

Widely only in limited — mostly english speaking — online communities. Otherwise most people hate it if it is likely to harm someone considered as an innocent individual but less if that figure is already kind of public — people love to know where and all the details on how famous people live — or to people they view more negatively. For instance nobody complains when the real owner, origin and location of say, a sha…

I feel like the answer is way more cut and dry, but people dont like that.

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

#687
post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're talking about the decline in the purchasing price of a dollar over the past decade, not its value relative to other currencies at the moment

I don't know how you know that, but even that argument is a straw man, unless you're asserting that all of the other currencies declined in value equally against whatever theoretical good(s) you're holding out as the objective standard for value.

I don't think you know what a straw man means, or purchasing power.

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

#688
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…

Never get between a journalist and their scoop.

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

#689
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…

That could of course just be misdirection.

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

#690
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…

This is a journalistic publication with a foundational value of transparency. If you study the history of institutions that favor transparency, they rarely ever need to further justify efforts of transparency beyond that underlying value. Transparency needs no further analysis of second order effects. “What is gained…?” is simply not a question asked, for the same reason that advocates for privacy rarely if ever circ…

My mind goes to the science fiction novel Footfall by Larry Nivel and Jerry Pournell, in which Earth is attacked by aliens and, at one point, a journalist figures out about a secret project to carry out a counter-offensive and is going to run a story on it, obviously against the wishes of those involved with the project.

Another character drowns the journalist in a toilet.

Post reply on HN