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

nytimes.com

711–720 of 905 posts

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

#711
post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi cannot spend his fortune. If he did, it would be visible on the blockchain and bitcoin's price would collapse.

That’s not how you use that kind of wealth. You take loans with the fortune as collateral… come on that’s pretty basic stuff

You still have to pay the interest from somewhere. And presumably you'd need to put the coins into some kind of escrow so that the lender can get their money back even if you conveniently forget your private key.

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

#712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always found that case a bit odd. For one he was blogging under his real name and had made his medical practice known, so you could just google him. It was upending his psychiatry practice because he blogged, albeit in anonymized fashion, about his patients without disclosing it to them which I'd say is unethical but at the very least in the interest of his patients to be made known to them. I would be pretty pisse…

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

His pre-SSC blogging was, and he’d link those posts directly from time to time.

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

#713
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At which point the bitcoin in legacy wallets is clearly worthless

It would be insane for the Bitcoin protocol to make Bitcoin in non QR wallets worthless.

The protocol isn't what determines how much a coin is worth

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

#714
post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it likely that someone who realised that if they were to touch that paper fortune the Bitcoin price will totally crater would have made additional billions they could actually access by mining more bitcoin at a point where the difficulty was still ridiculously low. The value of the bitcoins in those early wallets isn't real, because they are the most watched bitcoin wallets in existence, and any movement there…

From a financial standpoint, this makes no sense. First, they could just liquidate all their other BTC before moving the Satoshi coins. Second, even with a significant price impact, the net worth of an additional 1M BTC would surely outweigh any realistic price slippage. Third, the price probably wouldn't even crash that much. We're talking about a 5% increase in supply... which rationally, should result in a ~5% dip…

The volume would involve a crazy increase in the actual float, but the bigger issue is that everyone watching knows this is Satoshi, and any sudden move to sell would be a massive shock to the market because the current presumption is that those coins are off the market for the long term. If they are not, it changes a lot of calculations.

And assuming they have lots of other bitcoin to liquidate first, the reasons to liquidate the early coins are basically gone. If they believe the price will continue to rise, and have enough wealth from later coins, they'd have little reason to rock the boat.

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

#715
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…

I get that, but it's difficult to reconcile this with media's second principle of protecting/anonymizing sources. I don't think it's reasonable for them to have it both ways, especially when exposing an anonymous subject could result in physical danger.

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

#716
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…

As someone currently working there (in tech, not the newsroom), this is partially correct.

Second order effects can become a consideration, but the bar is high. Usually “will this place someone in immediate, specific danger of harm” vs potential risks.

As a recent example, journalists covering Iran in the past week had sources confirming the downed airman was located, but that the extraction planes had been unable to take off, and held off on publication. Same for advance knowledge of the Maduro raid. Both examples have been confirmed publicly by those journalists.

Not defending this particular decision at the moment, but someone who potentially controls Satoshi’s wallet has much more ability to protect themselves, and their desire to remain anonymous wouldn’t factor in.

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

#717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one is more direct than most, but comments about the subject are not uncommon on the older blog. I think reading this material is why the journalist turned against him but never stated why. "Psychiatrist has dozens of charts on their secret personal blog comparing the achievements of different sub-ethnicities in Israel" is a headline you might try to hide out of politeness to the uninvolved. https://slatestarcod…

What's wrong with comparing the achievements of different sub-ethnicities in Israel? What's wrong with talking about any real phenomena? Is the assumption that he must have a hidden bad-faith agenda?

It's against the current ruling dogma to question that human beings are interchangeable cogs that are all ready to be placed into the machine wherever needed.

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

#719
post #702
post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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..

Incredible, some people think that minorities can't be racist, by that definition Japanese weren't at all racist in 1937 Nanjing.

There’s a context to that you’re missing. The people saying that are usually using the formulation that racism = prejudice + power. So can black people in the U.K. be prejudiced? Yes, definitely. Racist? They’d need to be in a position of authority for it to matter.

Other people use the formulation racism = prejudice about race, and end up talking past each other.

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