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Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto

639 points by shazad 10y ago

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EwanToo 10y ago
In a way it's a slightly disappointing end to the mystery!
- mystcb 10y ago
  I see what you mean! It felt like the end of the Perplexity puzzle that existed, the moment it was found the excitement behind it all just didn't keep going! Mind you, the card to find someone using six degrees of separation is also called Satoshi! http://perplexcitywiki.com/wiki/Billion_to_One http://perplexcitywiki.com/wiki/Billion_to_One
  - jazzychad 10y ago
    Hah, I was just thinking about Perplex City the other day and wondered if that Satoshi was ever found. I really did love that game and the community around it.
    - foota 10y ago
      Based on the wikipedia page that is one of two cards never solved, the other being the Riemann hypothesis.
      - foota 10y ago
        I'm curious, why are people downvoting this?
nathanscully 10y ago
"Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to amassed about one million Bitcoins which would give him a net worth, if all were converted to cash, of about $450m." Anyone know what this was worth at its peak?
- abhi3 10y ago
  The question is can he liquidate his holdings without causing a market crash? Not just because of economics of demand and supply but because of the psychological effects on the market.
  - smegger001 10y ago
    considering the cause for him needing to liquidate is known, he has major tax penalties he has to pay, exchanging them now won't cause as big of a stir as if he did it when he was anonymous and would lead to suspicion of some sort of problem with the protocol. and a run to cash in.
    - disposeofnick9 10y ago
      Mossack Fonseca alternatives will gladly arrange gradual liquidation into a Caribbean trust, to allow eventual retirement to a cheap island with pretty girls and piña coladas without salt.
  - disposeofnick9 10y ago
    Perhaps folks more knowledgable could weigh in if a large liquidation event could happen by darkpools or some other means that wouldn't cause an oversupply "market run."
- firloop 10y ago
  The all time high was ~$1216 a coin [1]... so that would put him approximately at $1.2 billion if he has a million coins like the OP suggests. There are about 15.4mm coins in circulation [2], so he has about 6.5% of the current market, or 4.7% of the total BTC that will ever be mined (1/21 million). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bitcoin#cite_note-66 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bitcoin#cite_note-6... (would appreciate a correction with a better source) [2]: https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins
ipsum2 10y ago
This article from 2015 was right after all: https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-this-unknown-australian-genius/ https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakam...
- mathdroid 10y ago
  And they may want to edit this one: https://www.wired.com/2015/12/new-clues-suggest-satoshi-suspect-craig-wright-may-be-a-hoaxer/ https://www.wired.com/2015/12/new-clues-suggest-satoshi-susp...
- VMG 10y ago
  No, journalism is in an even worse shape than we expected.
omarforgotpwd 10y ago
interesting that he didn't want to reveal his identity, but got in trouble and thought it might help
abhi3 10y ago
I'm sure people will still question his claims even though this should settle the debate.
disposeofnick9 10y ago
"I never, ever want to be in front of a camera ever again" Can't blame him there. Some Bloomberg mobile reporter came up to me once for an interview about BTC hitting $1k, and I redirected him to Google HQ. Fuck that soundbite, MSM, lazy shit.
manigandham 10y ago
That's really interesting. I've been updating this Quora answer for a while and he actually commented on it saying "People always know" in Sep 2015 before his name ever came up. I'm not sure I believe his comments fully in his latest video though. It seems he's been conflicted for a long time on whether to reveal himself but for all the times he says he wants to be left alone, he easily could have but yet here he is. https://www.quora.com/Who-is-most-likely-Satoshi-Nakamoto/answers/4157306 https://www.quora.com/Who-is-most-likely-Satoshi-Nakamoto/an...
- hmsln 10y ago
  https://www.quora.com/profile/Frank-Blu/log https://www.quora.com/profile/Frank-Blu/log The owner of the profile of the person who answered your question (whoever he is) seems to have changed his username from "Craig S Wright" to Frank Blu on Dec 12th 2015. He also seems to have deleted, on that same day, every post he made on Quora after Dec 11 2014. The titles of the questions on which he posted revolved a lot around cryptocurrencies, cryptography and supercomputers, as well as finance and economics. Some example of questions to which he contributed are: "How large will the Bitcoin blockchain be in November 2015?" "How would I estimate the cost of setting up a 100 Tera-Flop server at my..." "Why is gold considered so precious and why does it have such high prices..." "Are there better uses of stimulus funds than others?" His earliest activity on the site is the creation of a topic called CSCSS, on Jul 30th 2012. https://www.quora.com/topic/CSCSS https://www.quora.com/topic/CSCSS
im3w1l 10y ago
This is bittersweet. I loved the mystery and the whole guessing game of what Satoshi Nakamoto would have wanted.
daurnimator 10y ago
Looks like the sceptics at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10701785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10701785 were wrong. Interesting to read through now that the truth is known.
disposeofnick9 10y ago
Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609619
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edoloughlin 10y ago
Tech journalists: "Bitcoin creator confirms his identity by using, um, crypto stuff. Or something"
jmalloc 10y ago
Are the details of the key signing public?
dark_void 10y ago
Why would he verify that he is the creator? Even though Bitcoin is past the phase where the governments can criminalize it publicly they will surely torture him in every roundabout way possible for the rest of his life. He seems to be owning up to it in order to protect others but I think he has no idea what he is getting into. They mention that his house was raided a couple of years ago but I guess that didn't phase him.
- _yosefk 10y ago
  Governments could have criminalized it at any point, they can criminalize it now, and they will certainly criminalize it in the future if they feel a need to do so (unless this thing gets used by >1% of the population which I'm willing to bet money against.) They didn't because they didn't want to. If they wanted to know who created Bitcoin in order to "torture" them they would have found out, at this point we know how good they are at this sort of thing; also, if they wanted to "torture" prominent people behind the Bitcoin software there was never a shortage of people with known identities. That he didn't pay his taxes seems to be a separate issue.
toomim 10y ago
It's funny how many commenters on hacker news think that this is actually satoshi nakamoto.
- brunomarx 10y ago
  Man Has Never Set Foot on The Moon
heimatau 10y ago
"Mr Wright has also demonstrated this verification in person to The Economist—and not just for block 9, but block 1." Economist confirms: http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steven-wright-claims-be-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steve... BBC says it's also confirmed through GQ but I don't see anything related yet. (My view below) The way he is communicating in the interview sounds like the government was putting pressure on him. Whomever is 'forcing him' to come out as Nakamoto, I don't think this will end well for Wright nor his companies.
mappum 10y ago
EDIT 2: Debunked! The signature in Wright's post is just pulled straight from a transaction on the blockchain. Convert the base64 signature from his post (MEUCIQDBKn1Uly8m0UyzETObUSL4wYdBfd4ejvtoQfVcNCIK4AIgZmMsXNQWHvo6KDd2Tu6euEl13VTC3ihl6XUlhcU+fM4=) to hex (3045022100c12a7d54972f26d14cb311339b5122f8c187417dde1e8efb6841f55c34220ae0022066632c5cd4161efa3a2837764eee9eb84975dd54c2de2865e9752585c53e7cce), and you get the signature found in this transaction input: https://blockchain.info/tx/828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69d9e06e5b54ea597eef5fb3ffef509fe https://blockchain.info/tx/828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69... Note that the base64 string at the top of his post isn't a signature, just a cleartext message: " Wright, it is not the same as if I sign Craig Wright, Satoshi.\n\n". Now the only question is how he fooled Gavin. I would imagine this story will still get spread around some naive channels for a while, just like the last time Wright tried something like this. Credit goes to jouke in #bitcoin for figuring it out. ----------------- EDIT: Current opinion: still skeptical. Here is the public cryptographic "proof": http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif... Something still seems off to me, why does he go into such specific detail in verifying the signature? I would have assumed he would just let people figure out the verification themselves. But maybe I'm just skeptical because Satoshi having a public identity takes some of the magic away. As pointed out by maaku, he never revealed what message the signature is supposed to be signing. ----------------- My Original Post: Everyone in this thread is already taking this as the truth. But remember that Wright has not publicly released any cryptographic proof, there is only a claim from BBC that he showed the signature to them and a few magazines. This strikes me as a little strange since originally Satoshi pretty much only interacted with the community via the bitcoin mailing list. Why did he "reveal" the proof by sending it to some magazines rather than emailing the mailing list? It really seems like the person who created Bitcoin, a trustless system based on cryptographic proof, wouldn't make everyone take his word on his identity when it could be trivially solved with one email.
- vintermann 10y ago
  Last time around, he peddled fake proof. A deliberately backdated PGP key trying to look like Satoshi's. The key also reported being created on a date when the software it was created with didn't yet exist. (Keyservers will happily accept keys that claim to be generated in 1992. Some publications that ought to have known better still accepted it back then, until it was pointed out.) Still looking at the page you posted in the edit, but not yet convinced. edit: Sarah Jeong of Motherboard summed up the objections last time: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-probably-backdated-and-point-to-a-hoax https://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-prob... Wright goes into a long post explaining public key crypto - to me it looks intended to bedazzle more than inform - but as far as I can see he does not produce a signature from any of the genuine keys associated with Satoshi.
malbs 10y ago
Didn't they debunk this guy as a hack? /r/bitcoin pretty much destroyed him when he popped up last time
- gear54rus 10y ago
  Link please, 'dis gon b gud'? EDIT: This thread breaks all records of butthurt downvoters not only in this branch but also in general. Wow.
  - malbs 10y ago
    I can't actually find the link, but he was some special panelist on a stream last year.. A lot of people were asking who the hell he was, and he was claiming at the time to be a researcher with a heavy involvement with bitcoin, and at the same time either the Australian Federal Police, or Australian Tax Office were raiding his properties looking for damning evidence... He had taken federal funds for research purposes and miss-appropriated them. I can't find the original articles, sorry... Here's some links though http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-09/bitcoin-suspected-founder-craig-wright-home-raided-by-afp/7014254 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-09/bitcoin-suspected-foun... http://www.coindesk.com/documents-offer-clues-to-alleged-bitcoin-creator-craig-wrights-tax-troubles/ http://www.coindesk.com/documents-offer-clues-to-alleged-bit... https://delimiter.com.au/2015/12/15/lawyer-says-craig-wright-existed-within-his-own-fantasy-world/ https://delimiter.com.au/2015/12/15/lawyer-says-craig-wright...
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gsibble 10y ago
Fascinating. Why would he chose to reveal himself now?
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patio11 10y ago
Much more useful link: http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif... Working through it now -- lets say I am rapidly heading towards "Not a hoax" territory. [Edit: Or, possibly, totally quackadoodle -- but very convinced-in-himself quackadoodle. I've gotten as far as proving "OK, he knows how to reverse a Bitcoin address into a public key, and picked a good address for the purpose."]
- 6nf 10y ago
  He found, maybe by brute force, maybe some other way, a comment signed by whoever mined block 9 (Satoshi himself?) and now he's using this to claim that he just signed this himself. He's making all this up. Unless the message signed contains Craig Wright's name it's not proof of anything.
- patio11 10y ago
  I was unable to torture the inputs into verifying, despite worksmanlike effort, unless I trusted calculations made by "the adversary." I consider the posts by others of this thread of a Bitcoin transaction with the same signature to be dispositive that he was not signing any variant of the Sartre message. Conclusion: a) The linked blog post is pure hokum. b) I'm very clear on how he got this past generalist media but unsure of how he got it past Gavin.
  - bootload 10y ago
    Patrick, Gavin is just a person and as fallible as any other person. If a long con is being attempted, everything may appear to be right. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Time will tell.
- feedjoelpie 10y ago
  > "OK, he knows how to reverse a Bitcoin address into a public key, and picked a good address for the purpose." Yeah, but I can do that. Can it be my turn to be Satoshi now? It's specialized knowledge only insofar as you need to have read how to do it and understand enough to write some commensurate code. This is widely-published stuff. It doesn't take a Satoshi or even an expert.
sschueller 10y ago
Is he going to way in on the whole Blockchain size debate?
iamcreasy 10y ago
I was hoping they would ask him why choose the name 'Satoshi Nakamoto'?
- Untit1ed 10y ago
  The BBC article stated that Nakamoto was after Tominaga Nakamoto, and Satoshi was a secret.
- jonah 10y ago
  The Economist reporters did.
xiphias 10y ago
Of course he wants to be left alone: he didn't pay taxes. Also of course there is no real public proof as he's not Satoshi.
- f3llowtraveler 10y ago
  He wouldn't owe any taxes. At least, not any income tax. The coins were worthless when he first mined them, and so there wouldn't have been any tax due. If he were to sell the coins now, he might incur a capital gains tax, depending on where he lives.
  - xiphias 10y ago
    The tax fraud doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin. The top comment explains it more, but it was clear from earlier news about him as well.
markbao 10y ago
Craig Wright says that (the late) "Hal Finney was one of the engineers who helped turn Mr Wright's ideas into the Bitcoin protocol", according to this article. However, in Hal Finney's "Bitcoin and Me" post, Hal says he mined the first block in 2008, then turned the miner off, and then heard about Bitcoin again in 2010 and transferred his coins to a cold wallet. But he doesn't say anything about working on the protocol. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#msg1643833 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#ms... Interesting story there. Either way – RIP, Hal.
- rdl 10y ago
  Hopefully Hal comes back in some years in the future and sets the record straight. (He's at Alcor now)
  - erdojo 10y ago
    Hal Finney (sadly) died two years ago.
    - rdl 10y ago
      legally dead, yes. However: http://www.alcor.org/blog/hal-finney-becomes-alcors-128th-patient/ http://www.alcor.org/blog/hal-finney-becomes-alcors-128th-pa... I have more confidence Hal Finney will be back in some form, than that Craig Wright is Satoshi.
    - csomar 10y ago
      No. He was cryonized. Hopefully, the future makes it possible to resurrect him to life.
      - davidgerard 10y ago
        Alcor's competence, unfortunately, leaves a little to be desired. http://thebaffler.com/salvos/everybody-freeze-pein http://thebaffler.com/salvos/everybody-freeze-pein
heimatau 10y ago
Edit: (Sad that I submitted the long story yet original submission was just a snippet but HN mods change the submission.) That's not fair. Not full story. Just snippet. Full story (HN Sub): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609708 Direct: http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steven-wright-claims-be-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steve...
adefa 10y ago
Funny to go back and watch this panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdvQTwjVmrE&feature=youtu.be&t=57s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdvQTwjVmrE&feature=youtu.be...
partycoder 10y ago
Some time ago I read this: https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/ https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-f... Not sure how effective this is, but if this is true then Satoshi has been awarded most of the bitcoins.
apsec112 10y ago
Gavin Andresen says he's verified that Wright is Satoshi. If this is a hoax, a lot of people are going to wind up with a lot of egg on their faces. :) http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi
- digitaurus 10y ago
  This happens. The historian Hugh Trevor Roper was the world's greatest expert on Adolf Hitler and fell for a scam, famously publicly endorsing some fake 'Hitler diaries'.
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VMG 10y ago
Again? This was debunked months ago when he first tried to pull of this stunt. Remember, it's easy to prove you're Satoshi by either * Signing a message with his PGP key http://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/satoshinakamoto.asc http://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/satoshinakamoto.asc * Signing a message with one of his early Bitcoin address keys Edit: apparently he did the latter, quote article > Mr Wright said he planned to release information that would allow others to cryptographically verify that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. Wonder why it takes so much planning. Edit2: apparently he signed something http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif... Gavin Adresen also is convinced: http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi Edit3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609707
- jcoffland 10y ago
  His proof has been shown to be fake.
  - VMG 10y ago
    He didn't sign a message "Craig Wright is Satoshi", which would be the proper way to prove this. The signature he has could come from one of the signatures the real Satoshi has created. Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609707 The signature came from a blockchain tx.
husam212 10y ago
Sign something, or GTFO!
dang 10y ago
We changed the URL from http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21698060-craig-wright-reveals-himself-as-satoshi-nakamoto http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21698060-..., which points to this longer story.
6nf 10y ago
There's no real proof here that Craig is Satoshi. If he really wanted to prove it to us, he would need to sign a message saying 'Craig Wright is Satoshi signed 2016-05-02' using the genesis block key. Read his post: http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif... he goes into all sorts of details but then glosses over the fact that the arbitrary Sartre quote could have been signed by anyone at any point in the past.
- LeoPanthera 10y ago
  Or he could just use the PGP key he used on the mailing list for months at the start of bitcoin's life.
  - melchebo 10y ago
    Or donate some of the first blocks (s)he mined.
    - 6nf 10y ago
      Pre-announce and donate Block 1 to the red cross or whatever.
- nadaviv 10y ago
  Note that he didn't really sign that Sartre quote, either.
termos 10y ago
Craig: But how will those who don't get ECC believe that it's me? X: Set your hostname to be wintermute, that should remove all doubt people might have.
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danso 10y ago
A little OT, but whenever the "real" Satoshi Nakamoto is found, what does that mean for the lawsuit that Dorian Nakamoto has against Newsweek and its 2014 claim? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/dorian-nakamoto-fingered-as-bitcoin-creator-wants-to-sue-newsweek/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/dorian-nakamoto-f...
rurban 10y ago
I was convinced at the first outing 2015 already: https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-this-unknown-australian-genius/ https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakam...
argc 10y ago
It would be pretty annoying if he was making all this up. Posting a signed random quote does not prove anything. Signing something provably recent is better, especially if that is message akin to "Satoshi is Craig".
faraggi 10y ago
I don't want to sound like a nerd-snob, but isn't weird that the potential Satoshi Nakamoto uses Windows and notepad? http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif... I mean, to each his own- especially when talking about dev tools- so why not I guess?
- TD-Linux 10y ago
  Not really. The original Satoshi client only ran on Windows.
LeoPanthera 10y ago
> arguing that block 9 contains the only bitcoin address that is clearly linked to Mr Nakamoto (because he sent money to Hal Finney) Block 9 contains no transactions other than the mining reward. https://blockchain.info/block-index/14858/000000008d9dc510f23c2657fc4f67bea30078cc05a90eb89e84cc475c080805 https://blockchain.info/block-index/14858/000000008d9dc510f2...
- murbul 10y ago
  Block 9 reward payout address 12cbQ... was used in the transaction to Hal Finney later in block 170.
darawk 10y ago
This is a very interesting situation. Fundamentally, there is no reason he shouldn't be willing to sign an additional message. If he is the crypto expert he claims to be, he should understand the perfect legitimacy of such a request. So either: a) He can't sign it. b) He is really that petulant and petty that he "won't keep jumping through hoops", even when those hoops represent completely reasonable and trivially fulfillable requests. Which itself doesn't really seem to match the temperament I would have expected Satoshi to have, though i'm certainly no expert on the man. Something is wrong here. I'm not unconvinced, but i'm suspiciously reserving judgment until he signs a second, unpredictable message.
- dllthomas 10y ago
  c) He is deliberately leaving some wiggle room.
- saalweachter 10y ago
  Well, there is (d) paranoia. Suppose he does have the private key, but, because it is literally worth millions of dollars, he has it somewhere secure. It's not sitting on his laptop, waiting for someone to steal it (physically or electronically). Signing a message before the announcement was lower risk than signing messages now, after the announcement. Accessing it a second time, with greedy little eyes all over him, is risking millions of dollars to convince people who probably wouldn't be convinced anyway.
csomar 10y ago
This is a hoax I think. And also Gavin supporting it is weird. The Signature in the blog post, is, in fact a signature from this transaction: 828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69d9e06e5b54ea597eef5fb3ffef509fe Relevant Reddit Comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hf4s2/craig_wright_reveals_himself_as_satoshi_nakamoto/d2pf5op https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hf4s2/craig_wrigh...
- deleted 10y ago
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- pstrateman 10y ago
  > This is a hoax I think. And also Gavin supporting it is weird. Is it?
  - acqq 10y ago
    >> Gavin supporting it is weird. > Is it? Apparently, not weird. From the Economist article: "It pays, too, to bear in mind that Mr Wright’s outing will most likely be of benefit to those in the current bitcoin civil war who want to expand the block size quickly, whose number include Mr Matonis and Mr Andresen. Mr Wright says that if he could reinvent bitcoin, he would program in a steady increase of the block size. He also intends to publish mathematical proof that there is no trade-off between the mass adoption of the cryptocurrency and its remaining decentralised."
- pyb 10y ago
  It's all an elaborate ploy to force the real Satoshi to manifest themselves ;)
  - loup-vaillant 10y ago
    Wait a minute, are you just trying to be gender neutral, or do you suspect Satoshi is several people like Bourbaki?
    - 10y ago
om2 10y ago
"Mr Wright does not want to make public the proof for block 1, arguing that block 9 contains the only bitcoin address that is clearly linked to Mr Nakamoto (because he sent money to Hal Finney). Repeating the procedure for other blocks, he says, would not add more certainty. He also says he can’t send any bitcoin because they are now owned by a trust. And he rejected the idea of having The Economist send him another text to sign as proof that he actually possesses these private keys, rather than simply being the first to publish a proof which was generated at some point in the past by somebody else." Sounds extremely dubious. Especially when he's presented fake proof before.
redsummer 10y ago
"He also says he can’t send any bitcoin because they are now owned by a trust." Well, the trust could create a new address, and send btc to itself. This above all makes me not believe him.
- danielweber 10y ago
  When he talks to media, he uses technobabble bamboozle. When he talks to tech, he uses legalbabble bamboozle. Even if he didn't want to transfer any original BTC pre-news-release, they could have coordinated for him to transfer 1 BTC from an early block to some charity at the time of reveal.
curiousgal 10y ago
So either Gavin knew or didn't. As a core dev I am not sure which is worse.
nikcub 10y ago
I don't believe this for a second - and i'm more interested in figuring out how he duped two Bitcoin developers and some of the most notable news outlets in the world. When the link to Wright was first reported in Wired[0] and Gizmodo[1], after letting the news sink in for a day it was apparent that the evidence trail was an elaborate ruse. I don't know if Wright leaked the hack to the media (I think it was more likely to be a disgruntled former employee who bought into the story), but there were many journalists who turned down that story while it was being shopped widely because it didn't smell right (this is no slight on gwern, Andy Greenburg and Sam Biddle who could bring to the story more than what most ordinary journalists could, and mention that it could be a hoax) Consider that Wright faked old blog posts, allowed them to be found, and then deleted them. Consider that he added a new Satoshi Nakomoto PGP key to keyservers with an email he controlled (which was different, obviously) in 2013, three years after the real Satoshi disappeared. Consider that Wright claimed to have a super computer and produced a reference letter from SGI, but that SGI claimed no knowledge of the computer or letter and it turned out to be fake (in some parts of the world - this is known as fraud)[2]. Consider his LinkedIn said he earned a Phd. from Bathurst University but the University knew nothing about it[3]. Consider the only people Wright revealed he was Satoshi to were a few select employees and people he was trying to raise money from (he said he was a billionaire but the funds were locked up - it is a modern digital version of a 419 scam). Consider, also, that he says he "tried to keep his head down" but shows up at a Bitcoin panel as an unknown and suggestively describes himself vaguely - with a smirk and a wink. Consider that he says he doesn't want the fame or attention, but shopped an exclusive deal around the media for a month and went with the BBC, The Economist and GQ - and is currently on every TV channel. Consider that Wright, despite being quasi-published, has never produced anything approaching the complexity, clarity, succinctness and humble nature of the Bitcoin paper, but is the complete opposite of all of these characteristics (rambles and talks down to people, explaining detail not so that the reader learns it - but so that you know that he knows this shit). From what I know about him, it seems Wright is experienced with barely getting along with big pie-in-the-sky ideas that convince a lot of people around him, but that definitely are in the grey area between legitimate and fraud. He is able to drown people in quasi-technical talk and on big ideas and is very personable (we also have a word for people who take fraudulent action via their charms). He avoids people who are actual experts in the areas he himself professes to be an expert in, and when he is in relevant forums or other online communities he downplays his achievements. Some examples: He claimed to be published in infosec, but rather than writing for the usual outlets he wrote for political blogs on infosec topics[4] (often poorly). He added his two supercomputers to the top 500 index (which is self reported) but never participated in the online communities, but he did brag about it in investment material. He didn't interact with professors or students at universities, but did teach a remote webinar course on supercomputing at a pay-for school[4] and finally, with Bitcoin - in investment material and to employees he was a domain expert and the founder but he was never a regular in online communities or conferences (although it seems he got to a point of even convincing Bitcoin experts that he knew what he was talking about) He is currently being pursued in Australia by tax authorities not because, as was commonly reported, not paying taxes on the Satoshi coins (you don't pay tax in Australia until gains are realized) but because he was one of the largest claimants of R&D tax concessions in Australia (larger than Google and Atlassian) and this is a common area of fraud (create a fake company, say you employe 50 people, claim that 'R&D spend' back - similar to sales tax fraud). One more point of doubt - but I leave it because it is a bit ad hominem - it turns out that you can't work for long in Sydney without knowing someone who worked for Wright in one of his schemes or knowing someone who knew someone. Turns out I had 2 friends who worked with him at various points. Both offered characterizations of Wright as being crazy and deceiving. He is very convincing in the short term, but things start to unwind over time. One is still, despite being mildly burnt by him, partly convinced he may have had something to do with Bitcoin because "he is just that crazy, you learn not to be surprised by stuff" - but then snapped out of it. Is this really Satoshi? It isn't - i'm going to start from the perspective that Wright has pulled off (another) impressive fraud. I'm more interested in figuring out how the hell he did this. edit: that didn't take long. It appears there is evidence in this thread, on reddit and on Twitter that the 'verification' falls short and is just an old bitcoin transaction[6] edit: I just got this from another former employee of Wright's - "best conman i've ever met" [0] https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-this-unknown-australian-genius/ https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakam... [1] http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-friend-invented-bi-1746958692 http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-frie... [2] https://www.wired.com/2015/12/new-clues-suggest-satoshi-suspect-craig-wright-may-be-a-hoaxer/ https://www.wired.com/2015/12/new-clues-suggest-satoshi-susp... [3] http://gizmodo.com/the-mystery-of-craig-wright-and-bitcoin-isnt-solved-yet-1747576675 http://gizmodo.com/the-mystery-of-craig-wright-and-bitcoin-i... [4] https://theconversation.com/lulzsec-anonymous-freedom-fighters-or-the-new-face-of-evil-2605 https://theconversation.com/lulzsec-anonymous-freedom-fighte... [5] https://www.itmasters.edu.au/free-short-course-programming-super-computers/ https://www.itmasters.edu.au/free-short-course-programming-s... [6] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hf4s2/craig_wright_reveals_himself_as_satoshi_nakamoto/d2pf5op https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hf4s2/craig_wrigh...
chjj 10y ago
This is absolutely fake and already debunked, as mentioned on the bitcointalk forums: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1457039.msg14728531#msg14728531 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1457039.msg14728531#... The signature Wright posted is a signature from a transaction on the blockchain (and therefore cannot be a signature of a Nobel prize refusal speech or whatever other message he claims): https://blockchain.info/tx/828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69d9e06e5b54ea597eef5fb3ffef509fe https://blockchain.info/tx/828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69... The above tx's scriptSig: 3045022100c12a7d54972f26d14cb311339b5122f8c187417dde1e8efb6841f55c34220ae0022066632c5cd4161efa3a2837764eee9eb84975dd54c2de2865e9752585c53e7cce01 The signature Wright posted: $ echo 'MEUCIQDBKn1Uly8m0UyzETObUSL4wYdBfd4ejvtoQfVcNCIK4AIgZmMsXNQWHvo6KDd2Tu6euEl13VTC3ihl6XUlhcU+fM4=' | base64 -d | xxd -p 3045022100c12a7d54972f26d14cb311339b5122f8c187417dde1e8efb68 41f55c34220ae0022066632c5cd4161efa3a2837764eee9eb84975dd54c2 de2865e9752585c53e7cce
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Note to mods: the really long signature line makes the page unreadable on mobile; probably too late for OP to edit.
  - acqq 10y ago
    It would be good if the HN software during accepting the post which contains "the really long lines" inserts automatically pre tags around.
meowface 10y ago
Reposting my other comment: I think Wright is just a smooth-talking conman with some crypto experience. I'm betting he met Gavin and other (unfortunately, merely "supposed" at this point...) experts in person, talked shop for a while, then took out his laptop and staged verifying the signature of blocks 1 and 9 with dummy commands. (Edit: Gavin actually claimed it was a clean computer, not one that Wright brought. Disregard that.) The Economist actually states this directly: >Mr Wright has also demonstrated this verification in person to The Economist—and not just for block 9, but block 1. Such demonstrations can be stage-managed; and information that allows us to go through the verification process independently was provided too late for us to do so fully. Still, as far as we can tell he indeed seems to be in possession of the keys, at least for block 9. This assessment is shared by two bitcoin insiders who have sat through the same demonstration: Jon Matonis, a bitcoin consultant and former director of the Bitcoin Foundation, and Gavin Andresen, Mr Nakamoto’s successor as the lead developer of the cryptocurrency’s software (he has since passed on the baton, but is still contributing to the code). Relevant bit: >Such demonstrations can be stage-managed; and information that allows us to go through the verification process independently was provided too late for us to do so fully. For Gavin's demonstration, he claims Wright validated the signatures on a "clean" computer, with the implication that it could not be staged. >Part of that time was spent on a careful cryptographic verification of messages signed with keys that only Satoshi should possess. But even before I witnessed the keys signed and then verified on a clean computer that could not have been tampered with, I was reasonably certain I was sitting next to the Father of Bitcoin. So, either the clean computer wasn't really clean, or Gavin's complicit in the scam, or Wright does have Satoshi's private keys and may be Satoshi. Either way, why would Satoshi want to prove it yet only demonstrate proof to a few people in private rather than putting a message and signature online for anyone to verify?
- comboy 10y ago
  > I think Wright is just a smooth-talking conman with some crypto experience. I'm betting he met Gavin and other (unfortunately, merely "supposed" at this point...) experts in person, talked shop for a while, then took out his laptop and staged verifying the signature of blocks 1 and 9 with dummy commands. I don't believe that anybody with the most basic understanding of cryptography would fall for that. I don't think there is a slightest chance that Gavin would. So the most interesting part of the story to me is why did he publish his blog post.. Something made him do that, but it's beyond doubt to me that he did not take part in planning of this operation.
blakeross 10y ago
"One of the most useful lessons I learned from working at Facebook had nothing to do with technology: Doubt the media. Always doubt the media." (https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your-thinking-ad825a9b4653 https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your-thinking-...) I'm happy to see that The Economist, at least, has a healthy sense of skepticism.
nxzero 10y ago
Satoshi is Satoshi; please leave things be.
bshimmin 10y ago
I'm not sure whether I actually care if he is or if he isn't - there's just so much good material in this story: hidden super computers and theology degrees and all sorts of craziness. The only thing that could really improve it would be a link to Paul Le Roux!
IkmoIkmo 10y ago
It's kinda sad this is being reported by credible journals, it's super likely to be completely false. I'm glad on HN the link states it's just a claim, and that on the economist it's phrased as a question: 'is he Satoshi?' (the rule being in 99/100 cases, the answer is no.) But I've seen otherwise.
- bambax 10y ago
  Agence France Presse (AFP) says in English "Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright on Monday revealed himself as the creator of the virtual Bitcoin currency to media outlets..." which in French becomes "Bitcoin: le véritable créateur de la monnaie numérique est Craig Wright". This translates as "the actual inventor of the virtual Bitcoin currency IS Craig Wright", conditionals or precautions be damned; and it's printed as is all over the French press this morning.
  - IkmoIkmo 10y ago
    Yup, Dutch media it was less bad but still not great. Instead of saying it was a 'claim', or preferably not writing anything about this scam, they wrote 'Wright admits he's Satoshi' in the title. This 'admitting' implies everyone thought he was Satoshi, and he confirmed it. When in reality, everyone thinks he's definitely not it, and he claimed it without proof. Then in the article they make completely false claims about him signing messages he didn't etc. It's really sad, there wasn't a hint of skepticism that was present in the Economist which I thought was poor itself already.
bobowzki 10y ago
Maybe he is trying to get Nakamoto to out himself..? His claim is ridiculous.
neuropie 10y ago
The proof contains some strange bash commands, using & instead of &&: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610192
- zobby 10y ago
  Well, for that command line he didn't had to wait for the first instruction to return true, so he can use &
brunomarx 10y ago
I don't believe he would be so naive to publish this without having checked that matter with transaction 828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69d9e06e5b54ea597eef5fb3ffef509fe before.
daemonk 10y ago
If this is fake, is this some kind of ploy to flush out the real Satoshi? Or a publicity stunt?
alfiedotwtf 10y ago
Just remember that The Economist a few years ago published a story on Steorn's Perpetual Motion machine. You don't go to The Economist when you want hard hitting investigative journalism - you go The Economist when you need investor money.
- DharmaPolice 10y ago
  Wikipedia says that the Steorn thing was a paid advertisement. That's a little different to what's going on here.
- icebraining 10y ago
  It was a (full-page) ad, not a story, not even a "sponsored" one, as the layout was quite distinct: http://dispatchesfromthefuture.com/images/steorn_economist_ad.jpg http://dispatchesfromthefuture.com/images/steorn_economist_a...
  - alfiedotwtf 10y ago
    What's the difference between this and Nature having a full page ad for a Homeopathy clinic?
mattanical 10y ago
Guess the only way he can really prove he is S.N. is that he transfers cca. million bitcoins to himself for everyone to see ;) ...Wanna see that happen, lol. (most probably S.N. is a group not a person).
mattanical 10y ago
Guess the only way he can really prove he is S.N. is that he transfers cca. million bitcoins to himself for everyone to see ;) ...Wanna see that happen, lol. (most probably S.N. is a group not a person).
brunomarx 10y ago
It seems, we either have someone lying or a SHA-256 collision.
keithpeter 10y ago
>> In future, he explained, the blockchain could become so vast that it could keep track of every Visa transaction, every stock-exchange transaction, every bank transaction and much more. “We could even create an individual account for that tissue”, he said, pointing to a paper napkin on the table. << Quote from OA. Would this not short circuit any form of privacy? Or would various agencies and individuals still have to show that the various 'napkin accounts' that make up one's daily transaction count belonged to the same person? I'm less concerned with the identity of Nakamoto and more concerned with the shape of the future!
- aab0 10y ago
  > Would this not short circuit any form of privacy? As far as I can tell, Wright wants to extend the blockchain considerably, adding opcodes to get Turing-complete functionality. Among other things, he's hinted at using ring signatures for tracking things, which would give one both secure control and anonymity. (I think Monero and its descendants may have stolen that thunder, though.)
eggy 10y ago
What I find fascinating about all of this as a normal techie, not a crypto specialist, is whether he is Satoshi or not, the idea of "Satoshi" in all its guessing will be bigger than Craig Steven Wright, or I would say even the real Satoshi if he came out and proved it. We romance our notions of who is behind something to the point where that notion is too grand to be filled by an ordinary (pretty smart) human being. Only Craig Steven Wright for sure, and possibly the real Satoshi, knows the truth. Whomever it is, he can cash out to the tune of $450 million! Fun being on the sidelines here, but I do have a heavy intellectual, emotional investment in the idea of Bitcoin, and I hope it carries on.
return0 10y ago
So does the bitcoin community prefer it if the real satoshi comes forward or not? It seems that many would prefer a leader to set the future of bitcoin, eventhough that's counter to its principles.
cm3 10y ago
My impression is that these things happen in order to try to force the real Satoshi to come forward. I wouldn't be surprised if guys like Wright are paid and supported by others to do this. I hope Satoshi will never be revealed and don't see what that would provide anyway. Just leave them be.
jdlee0 10y ago
There's more chicanery in Wright's code [1] In the posted image of EcDSA.verify.sh, he base64 decodes $signiture, but this is uninitialised. The path is stored in $signature. http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif...
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bobwaycott 10y ago
What is up with this specific comment thread being so horribly wide on mobile? Why isn't CSS enforcing a width and wrapping the page?
- dang 10y ago
  It's a bug that we need to fix. I've seen similar things in other threads, but it doesn't come up that often. If anyone has ideas about what's going on here, emailing them to hn@ycombinator.com might help speed up the fixing process. (The core HN programmers have a... somewhat fraught relationship with CSS.)
- DanBC 10y ago
  This thread contains several posts that have very long, unbroken, lines. If those lines had started with four (two?) spaces they've have got different CSS - the pre-formatting would have put the very long unbroken line inside a different box with scrollbars. Here's one example post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610111
  - bobwaycott 10y ago
    The top comment seems to be the one that sets the tone, and it doesn't look like anything should be in a code block: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610101 Edit: oddly, going directly to that comment looks better than going to the main thread. It's still smaller than normal on mobile, but nowhere near as bad as the main thread. Here's what things look like for me in Safari on iOS: https://imgur.com/a/KVrSX https://imgur.com/a/KVrSX
joeyspn 10y ago
Here we go again... anatomy of a new "satoshi unmasked!" story: - Big media spreads bs claims (check) - BTC price drop (check) - Community CSI debunks story (check) - New core devs drama chapter (check) - Back to "normal" __
homero 10y ago
Beyond fake
max_ 10y ago
I wont believe so unless he signs the first block
deleted 10y ago
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MariuszGalus 10y ago
This guy > http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2016/05/articles/main/20160430_blp539.jpg http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac... < cannot possibly be Satoshi Nakamoto. He looks, feels, and smells like a conman. It only takes one red flag to question credibility and this guy has several. 1. Contradicts himself, privacy vs brokering a deal with major media outlets for a story. 2. Faking LinkedIn experience & degrees. 3. Associates believe he is 'crazy' and a 'conman' 4. Failed the writing syntax test comparing his multiple published works to the original posts and bitcoin paper and eventually... 5. ...Shifting blame or holes in his story towards the DEAD known people who've worked on Bitcoin or who had contact with Satoshi in the past. 6. SGI does not acknowledge him or his claimed statements regarding his relationship with SGI. 7. And I'm not going to go any further... the point is, he has too many 'excuses' for every little thing. I understand he wants to be infallible and unchallenged in his claim, but just the number of alibis and excuses he dishes out, sans his questionable private-key proof, leaves a gut feeling that he's not Satoshi and smells of con.
- koluft 10y ago
  Don't judge people by their looks when their actions speak far louder.
  - MariuszGalus 10y ago
    Sorry, I'm just taking this a bit personally because I know a guy who ruined a few peoples' lives by telling lies habitually and scamming for investors. For me, Dr. Wright relates to him and already as a bias I paint a bad image.
discardorama 10y ago
Simple. Satoshi owns millions of BTC. Anyone claiming to be Satoshi should just spend a small chunk of BTC from that initial block as a challenge response.
EGreg 10y ago
Satoshi Nakamoto was most likely a group, like Bourbaki.
- known 10y ago
  I second it
brunomarx 10y ago
https://github.com/patio11/wrightverification https://github.com/patio11/wrightverification
richtr 10y ago
BBC interview with Craig Wright (video, 4m50s) http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36168863 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36168863
altotrees 10y ago
Unless Craig Wright comes out with further proof, proof that is undeniable and unquestionable, I am left feeling sick to my stomach. I have read several articles this morning which tout this event as total fact (BBC, Venturebeat, NPR and more), and it just saddens me. If this is a hoax, I have lost even more respect for these outlets. If this is a hoax, I have also lost respect for Gavin Andersen, unless he has an ulterior motive for backing Wright in the first place, or was hacked as some have speculated. Whenever this kind of "unveiling" happens, I get disheartened. It makes a serious technical community and set of ides I care very much about look like little more than a soap-opera or disorganized group of gossip-hounds, as protrayed in major media outlets, overshadowing everything else. Total bummer (until further proof and/or notice).
scott_s 10y ago
On the academic side of things, he has a very thin paper trail: http://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/w/Wright:Craig_S= http://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/w/Wright:Craig_S= and http://dl.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81488659808&coll=DL&dl=ACM&trk=0&cfid=779669783&cftoken=67111435 http://dl.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81488659808&coll=DL&dl=... I'm not saying the real Satoshi has to be an academic computer scientist, but if someone with a significant academic publication record in cryptography stepped forward, I would take it much more seriously. Of course, this is secondary to the fact that Wright has not signed a new message with the original Satoshi key.
toopok4k3 10y ago
Why is no one talking about Dave Kleiman, the wheelchaired man who died in 2013? He was supposedly a friend of Wright. My gut feeling is that he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright just sounds like an fraudulent opportunist who tries to bank by all means necessary from knowing the guys secret.
- jbpetersen 10y ago
  Nick Szabo as Satoshi is my own hypothesis.
headgasket 10y ago
sit the guy in a room. Fire up sublime, emacs, vim, or whatever IDE. Give him an hour to write an app in C++ to solve something trivial that he does not know in advance, such as the 8 queens problem. End of debate. The guy most likely cannot code to save his life.
auggierose 10y ago
Well, he either is Satoshi, or a genius conman. I would love for him to be Satoshi, it would be a great story. It's also ridiculous that people think they would be able to derive the personality of someone from a paper he wrote.
grondilu 10y ago
That looks like an extremely elaborated way to make a claim that could normally be done in a few lines. And even if the claim would require a long explanation, for instance if Satoshi lost or destroyed the keys for the first few blocks, or the passwords to his accounts on several forums where he used to write, there would be no need for him to do this explanation himself. The burden of the proof his on him, but not the explanation of the proof.
- danielweber 10y ago
  The LiteCoin founder showed how easy it was: https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/727157971428331520 https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/727157971428331520
bitmapbrother 10y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't Craig Wright initiating a Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi's wallet to a retailer, of a reporter's choosing, be all the proof you would need to validate his claims? If he has access to Satoshi's wallet then that's all the proof he needs.
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mamadontloveme 10y ago
What is this - some kind of really, really weird hiring campaign for crypto folks?
neugier 10y ago
Might the reason they were fooled so easily be, that they were flattered, that Satoshi would reveal himself to them, but not the community directly?
martin1975 10y ago
Satoshi can also log into bitcointalk.org where the real Satoshi communicated with the public for quite some time during and after the release of the bitcoin client. Can Wright log into it and post or is he gonna claim he forgot his password? Oh wait, a password can be reset. Oh no, he forgot his password to the email he registered on BitcoinTalk.org.. Damn... I guess we're SOL :).
- aab0 10y ago
  No, he can't. That email was probably the hacked one, and Theymos locked the Bitcointalk account ages ago. And that's a dumb method of proof compared to cryptographic ones anyway - how many times has Bitcointalk been hacked now? 2? 3?
gnuvince 10y ago
Why do people care about the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto?
- acomjean 10y ago
  I don't know. Its kind of like "celebrity culture". I'm a little bit of an outlier on these things (I lack a facebook account) There is something in human brains that makes us really want to know about social network around us. Despite the strange URL this article tries to expain it [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-ooze/201503/why-caring-about-celebrities-can-be-good-you https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-ooze/201503/why...
known 10y ago
Hoax
krick 10y ago
Does it even matter? Why?
Houshalter 10y ago
This comment section is unreadable on mobile. Why is it so wide?
deleted 10y ago
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639 points by shazad 10y ago

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EwanToo 10y ago

In a way it's a slightly disappointing end to the mystery!

mystcb 10y ago
I see what you mean! It felt like the end of the Perplexity puzzle that existed, the moment it was found the excitement behind it all just didn't keep going! Mind you, the card to find someone using six degrees of separation is also called Satoshi! http://perplexcitywiki.com/wiki/Billion_to_One http://perplexcitywiki.com/wiki/Billion_to_One
- jazzychad 10y ago
  Hah, I was just thinking about Perplex City the other day and wondered if that Satoshi was ever found. I really did love that game and the community around it.
  - foota 10y ago
    Based on the wikipedia page that is one of two cards never solved, the other being the Riemann hypothesis.
    - foota 10y ago
      I'm curious, why are people downvoting this?

nathanscully 10y ago

"Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to amassed about one million Bitcoins which would give him a net worth, if all were converted to cash, of about $450m." Anyone know what this was worth at its peak?

abhi3 10y ago
The question is can he liquidate his holdings without causing a market crash? Not just because of economics of demand and supply but because of the psychological effects on the market.
- smegger001 10y ago
  considering the cause for him needing to liquidate is known, he has major tax penalties he has to pay, exchanging them now won't cause as big of a stir as if he did it when he was anonymous and would lead to suspicion of some sort of problem with the protocol. and a run to cash in.
  - disposeofnick9 10y ago
    Mossack Fonseca alternatives will gladly arrange gradual liquidation into a Caribbean trust, to allow eventual retirement to a cheap island with pretty girls and piña coladas without salt.
- disposeofnick9 10y ago
  Perhaps folks more knowledgable could weigh in if a large liquidation event could happen by darkpools or some other means that wouldn't cause an oversupply "market run."
firloop 10y ago
The all time high was ~$1216 a coin [1]... so that would put him approximately at $1.2 billion if he has a million coins like the OP suggests. There are about 15.4mm coins in circulation [2], so he has about 6.5% of the current market, or 4.7% of the total BTC that will ever be mined (1/21 million). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bitcoin#cite_note-66 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bitcoin#cite_note-6... (would appreciate a correction with a better source) [2]: https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins

ipsum2 10y ago

This article from 2015 was right after all: https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-this-unknown-australian-genius/ https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakam...

mathdroid 10y ago
And they may want to edit this one: https://www.wired.com/2015/12/new-clues-suggest-satoshi-suspect-craig-wright-may-be-a-hoaxer/ https://www.wired.com/2015/12/new-clues-suggest-satoshi-susp...
VMG 10y ago
No, journalism is in an even worse shape than we expected.

omarforgotpwd 10y ago

interesting that he didn't want to reveal his identity, but got in trouble and thought it might help

abhi3 10y ago

I'm sure people will still question his claims even though this should settle the debate.

disposeofnick9 10y ago

"I never, ever want to be in front of a camera ever again" Can't blame him there. Some Bloomberg mobile reporter came up to me once for an interview about BTC hitting $1k, and I redirected him to Google HQ. Fuck that soundbite, MSM, lazy shit.

manigandham 10y ago

That's really interesting. I've been updating this Quora answer for a while and he actually commented on it saying "People always know" in Sep 2015 before his name ever came up. I'm not sure I believe his comments fully in his latest video though. It seems he's been conflicted for a long time on whether to reveal himself but for all the times he says he wants to be left alone, he easily could have but yet here he is. https://www.quora.com/Who-is-most-likely-Satoshi-Nakamoto/answers/4157306 https://www.quora.com/Who-is-most-likely-Satoshi-Nakamoto/an...

hmsln 10y ago
https://www.quora.com/profile/Frank-Blu/log https://www.quora.com/profile/Frank-Blu/log The owner of the profile of the person who answered your question (whoever he is) seems to have changed his username from "Craig S Wright" to Frank Blu on Dec 12th 2015. He also seems to have deleted, on that same day, every post he made on Quora after Dec 11 2014. The titles of the questions on which he posted revolved a lot around cryptocurrencies, cryptography and supercomputers, as well as finance and economics. Some example of questions to which he contributed are: "How large will the Bitcoin blockchain be in November 2015?" "How would I estimate the cost of setting up a 100 Tera-Flop server at my..." "Why is gold considered so precious and why does it have such high prices..." "Are there better uses of stimulus funds than others?" His earliest activity on the site is the creation of a topic called CSCSS, on Jul 30th 2012. https://www.quora.com/topic/CSCSS https://www.quora.com/topic/CSCSS

im3w1l 10y ago

This is bittersweet. I loved the mystery and the whole guessing game of what Satoshi Nakamoto would have wanted.

daurnimator 10y ago

Looks like the sceptics at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10701785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10701785 were wrong. Interesting to read through now that the truth is known.

disposeofnick9 10y ago

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609619

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edoloughlin 10y ago

Tech journalists: "Bitcoin creator confirms his identity by using, um, crypto stuff. Or something"

jmalloc 10y ago

Are the details of the key signing public?

dark_void 10y ago

Why would he verify that he is the creator? Even though Bitcoin is past the phase where the governments can criminalize it publicly they will surely torture him in every roundabout way possible for the rest of his life. He seems to be owning up to it in order to protect others but I think he has no idea what he is getting into. They mention that his house was raided a couple of years ago but I guess that didn't phase him.

_yosefk 10y ago
Governments could have criminalized it at any point, they can criminalize it now, and they will certainly criminalize it in the future if they feel a need to do so (unless this thing gets used by >1% of the population which I'm willing to bet money against.) They didn't because they didn't want to. If they wanted to know who created Bitcoin in order to "torture" them they would have found out, at this point we know how good they are at this sort of thing; also, if they wanted to "torture" prominent people behind the Bitcoin software there was never a shortage of people with known identities. That he didn't pay his taxes seems to be a separate issue.

toomim 10y ago

It's funny how many commenters on hacker news think that this is actually satoshi nakamoto.

brunomarx 10y ago
Man Has Never Set Foot on The Moon

heimatau 10y ago

"Mr Wright has also demonstrated this verification in person to The Economist—and not just for block 9, but block 1." Economist confirms: http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steven-wright-claims-be-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steve... BBC says it's also confirmed through GQ but I don't see anything related yet. (My view below) The way he is communicating in the interview sounds like the government was putting pressure on him. Whomever is 'forcing him' to come out as Nakamoto, I don't think this will end well for Wright nor his companies.

mappum 10y ago

EDIT 2: Debunked! The signature in Wright's post is just pulled straight from a transaction on the blockchain. Convert the base64 signature from his post (MEUCIQDBKn1Uly8m0UyzETObUSL4wYdBfd4ejvtoQfVcNCIK4AIgZmMsXNQWHvo6KDd2Tu6euEl13VTC3ihl6XUlhcU+fM4=) to hex (3045022100c12a7d54972f26d14cb311339b5122f8c187417dde1e8efb6841f55c34220ae0022066632c5cd4161efa3a2837764eee9eb84975dd54c2de2865e9752585c53e7cce), and you get the signature found in this transaction input: https://blockchain.info/tx/828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69d9e06e5b54ea597eef5fb3ffef509fe https://blockchain.info/tx/828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69... Note that the base64 string at the top of his post isn't a signature, just a cleartext message: " Wright, it is not the same as if I sign Craig Wright, Satoshi.\n\n". Now the only question is how he fooled Gavin. I would imagine this story will still get spread around some naive channels for a while, just like the last time Wright tried something like this. Credit goes to jouke in #bitcoin for figuring it out. ----------------- EDIT: Current opinion: still skeptical. Here is the public cryptographic "proof": http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif... Something still seems off to me, why does he go into such specific detail in verifying the signature? I would have assumed he would just let people figure out the verification themselves. But maybe I'm just skeptical because Satoshi having a public identity takes some of the magic away. As pointed out by maaku, he never revealed what message the signature is supposed to be signing. ----------------- My Original Post: Everyone in this thread is already taking this as the truth. But remember that Wright has not publicly released any cryptographic proof, there is only a claim from BBC that he showed the signature to them and a few magazines. This strikes me as a little strange since originally Satoshi pretty much only interacted with the community via the bitcoin mailing list. Why did he "reveal" the proof by sending it to some magazines rather than emailing the mailing list? It really seems like the person who created Bitcoin, a trustless system based on cryptographic proof, wouldn't make everyone take his word on his identity when it could be trivially solved with one email.

vintermann 10y ago
Last time around, he peddled fake proof. A deliberately backdated PGP key trying to look like Satoshi's. The key also reported being created on a date when the software it was created with didn't yet exist. (Keyservers will happily accept keys that claim to be generated in 1992. Some publications that ought to have known better still accepted it back then, until it was pointed out.) Still looking at the page you posted in the edit, but not yet convinced. edit: Sarah Jeong of Motherboard summed up the objections last time: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-probably-backdated-and-point-to-a-hoax https://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-prob... Wright goes into a long post explaining public key crypto - to me it looks intended to bedazzle more than inform - but as far as I can see he does not produce a signature from any of the genuine keys associated with Satoshi.

malbs 10y ago

Didn't they debunk this guy as a hack? /r/bitcoin pretty much destroyed him when he popped up last time

gear54rus 10y ago
Link please, 'dis gon b gud'? EDIT: This thread breaks all records of butthurt downvoters not only in this branch but also in general. Wow.
- malbs 10y ago
  I can't actually find the link, but he was some special panelist on a stream last year.. A lot of people were asking who the hell he was, and he was claiming at the time to be a researcher with a heavy involvement with bitcoin, and at the same time either the Australian Federal Police, or Australian Tax Office were raiding his properties looking for damning evidence... He had taken federal funds for research purposes and miss-appropriated them. I can't find the original articles, sorry... Here's some links though http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-09/bitcoin-suspected-founder-craig-wright-home-raided-by-afp/7014254 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-09/bitcoin-suspected-foun... http://www.coindesk.com/documents-offer-clues-to-alleged-bitcoin-creator-craig-wrights-tax-troubles/ http://www.coindesk.com/documents-offer-clues-to-alleged-bit... https://delimiter.com.au/2015/12/15/lawyer-says-craig-wright-existed-within-his-own-fantasy-world/ https://delimiter.com.au/2015/12/15/lawyer-says-craig-wright...

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gsibble 10y ago

Fascinating. Why would he chose to reveal himself now?

deleted 10y ago

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patio11 10y ago

Much more useful link: http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif... Working through it now -- lets say I am rapidly heading towards "Not a hoax" territory. [Edit: Or, possibly, totally quackadoodle -- but very convinced-in-himself quackadoodle. I've gotten as far as proving "OK, he knows how to reverse a Bitcoin address into a public key, and picked a good address for the purpose."]

6nf 10y ago
He found, maybe by brute force, maybe some other way, a comment signed by whoever mined block 9 (Satoshi himself?) and now he's using this to claim that he just signed this himself. He's making all this up. Unless the message signed contains Craig Wright's name it's not proof of anything.
patio11 10y ago
I was unable to torture the inputs into verifying, despite worksmanlike effort, unless I trusted calculations made by "the adversary." I consider the posts by others of this thread of a Bitcoin transaction with the same signature to be dispositive that he was not signing any variant of the Sartre message. Conclusion: a) The linked blog post is pure hokum. b) I'm very clear on how he got this past generalist media but unsure of how he got it past Gavin.
- bootload 10y ago
  Patrick, Gavin is just a person and as fallible as any other person. If a long con is being attempted, everything may appear to be right. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Time will tell.
feedjoelpie 10y ago
> "OK, he knows how to reverse a Bitcoin address into a public key, and picked a good address for the purpose." Yeah, but I can do that. Can it be my turn to be Satoshi now? It's specialized knowledge only insofar as you need to have read how to do it and understand enough to write some commensurate code. This is widely-published stuff. It doesn't take a Satoshi or even an expert.

sschueller 10y ago

Is he going to way in on the whole Blockchain size debate?

iamcreasy 10y ago

I was hoping they would ask him why choose the name 'Satoshi Nakamoto'?

Untit1ed 10y ago
The BBC article stated that Nakamoto was after Tominaga Nakamoto, and Satoshi was a secret.
jonah 10y ago
The Economist reporters did.

xiphias 10y ago

Of course he wants to be left alone: he didn't pay taxes. Also of course there is no real public proof as he's not Satoshi.

f3llowtraveler 10y ago
He wouldn't owe any taxes. At least, not any income tax. The coins were worthless when he first mined them, and so there wouldn't have been any tax due. If he were to sell the coins now, he might incur a capital gains tax, depending on where he lives.
- xiphias 10y ago
  The tax fraud doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin. The top comment explains it more, but it was clear from earlier news about him as well.

markbao 10y ago

Craig Wright says that (the late) "Hal Finney was one of the engineers who helped turn Mr Wright's ideas into the Bitcoin protocol", according to this article. However, in Hal Finney's "Bitcoin and Me" post, Hal says he mined the first block in 2008, then turned the miner off, and then heard about Bitcoin again in 2010 and transferred his coins to a cold wallet. But he doesn't say anything about working on the protocol. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#msg1643833 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#ms... Interesting story there. Either way – RIP, Hal.

rdl 10y ago
Hopefully Hal comes back in some years in the future and sets the record straight. (He's at Alcor now)
- erdojo 10y ago
  Hal Finney (sadly) died two years ago.
  - rdl 10y ago
    legally dead, yes. However: http://www.alcor.org/blog/hal-finney-becomes-alcors-128th-patient/ http://www.alcor.org/blog/hal-finney-becomes-alcors-128th-pa... I have more confidence Hal Finney will be back in some form, than that Craig Wright is Satoshi.
  - csomar 10y ago
    No. He was cryonized. Hopefully, the future makes it possible to resurrect him to life.
    - davidgerard 10y ago
      Alcor's competence, unfortunately, leaves a little to be desired. http://thebaffler.com/salvos/everybody-freeze-pein http://thebaffler.com/salvos/everybody-freeze-pein

heimatau 10y ago

Edit: (Sad that I submitted the long story yet original submission was just a snippet but HN mods change the submission.) That's not fair. Not full story. Just snippet. Full story (HN Sub): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609708 Direct: http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steven-wright-claims-be-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steve...

adefa 10y ago

Funny to go back and watch this panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdvQTwjVmrE&feature=youtu.be&t=57s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdvQTwjVmrE&feature=youtu.be...

partycoder 10y ago

Some time ago I read this: https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/ https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-f... Not sure how effective this is, but if this is true then Satoshi has been awarded most of the bitcoins.

apsec112 10y ago

Gavin Andresen says he's verified that Wright is Satoshi. If this is a hoax, a lot of people are going to wind up with a lot of egg on their faces. :) http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi

digitaurus 10y ago
This happens. The historian Hugh Trevor Roper was the world's greatest expert on Adolf Hitler and fell for a scam, famously publicly endorsing some fake 'Hitler diaries'.

deleted 10y ago

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VMG 10y ago

Again? This was debunked months ago when he first tried to pull of this stunt. Remember, it's easy to prove you're Satoshi by either * Signing a message with his PGP key http://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/satoshinakamoto.asc http://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/satoshinakamoto.asc * Signing a message with one of his early Bitcoin address keys Edit: apparently he did the latter, quote article > Mr Wright said he planned to release information that would allow others to cryptographically verify that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. Wonder why it takes so much planning. Edit2: apparently he signed something http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif... Gavin Adresen also is convinced: http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi http://gavinandresen.ninja/satoshi Edit3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609707

jcoffland 10y ago
His proof has been shown to be fake.
- VMG 10y ago
  He didn't sign a message "Craig Wright is Satoshi", which would be the proper way to prove this. The signature he has could come from one of the signatures the real Satoshi has created. Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609707 The signature came from a blockchain tx.

husam212 10y ago

Sign something, or GTFO!

dang 10y ago

We changed the URL from http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21698060-craig-wright-reveals-himself-as-satoshi-nakamoto http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21698060-..., which points to this longer story.

6nf 10y ago

There's no real proof here that Craig is Satoshi. If he really wanted to prove it to us, he would need to sign a message saying 'Craig Wright is Satoshi signed 2016-05-02' using the genesis block key. Read his post: http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif... he goes into all sorts of details but then glosses over the fact that the arbitrary Sartre quote could have been signed by anyone at any point in the past.

LeoPanthera 10y ago
Or he could just use the PGP key he used on the mailing list for months at the start of bitcoin's life.
- melchebo 10y ago
  Or donate some of the first blocks (s)he mined.
  - 6nf 10y ago
    Pre-announce and donate Block 1 to the red cross or whatever.
nadaviv 10y ago
Note that he didn't really sign that Sartre quote, either.

termos 10y ago

Craig: But how will those who don't get ECC believe that it's me? X: Set your hostname to be wintermute, that should remove all doubt people might have.

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danso 10y ago

A little OT, but whenever the "real" Satoshi Nakamoto is found, what does that mean for the lawsuit that Dorian Nakamoto has against Newsweek and its 2014 claim? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/dorian-nakamoto-fingered-as-bitcoin-creator-wants-to-sue-newsweek/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/dorian-nakamoto-f...

rurban 10y ago

I was convinced at the first outing 2015 already: https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-this-unknown-australian-genius/ https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakam...

argc 10y ago

It would be pretty annoying if he was making all this up. Posting a signed random quote does not prove anything. Signing something provably recent is better, especially if that is message akin to "Satoshi is Craig".

faraggi 10y ago

I don't want to sound like a nerd-snob, but isn't weird that the potential Satoshi Nakamoto uses Windows and notepad? http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif... I mean, to each his own- especially when talking about dev tools- so why not I guess?

TD-Linux 10y ago
Not really. The original Satoshi client only ran on Windows.

LeoPanthera 10y ago

> arguing that block 9 contains the only bitcoin address that is clearly linked to Mr Nakamoto (because he sent money to Hal Finney) Block 9 contains no transactions other than the mining reward. https://blockchain.info/block-index/14858/000000008d9dc510f23c2657fc4f67bea30078cc05a90eb89e84cc475c080805 https://blockchain.info/block-index/14858/000000008d9dc510f2...

murbul 10y ago
Block 9 reward payout address 12cbQ... was used in the transaction to Hal Finney later in block 170.

darawk 10y ago

This is a very interesting situation. Fundamentally, there is no reason he shouldn't be willing to sign an additional message. If he is the crypto expert he claims to be, he should understand the perfect legitimacy of such a request. So either: a) He can't sign it. b) He is really that petulant and petty that he "won't keep jumping through hoops", even when those hoops represent completely reasonable and trivially fulfillable requests. Which itself doesn't really seem to match the temperament I would have expected Satoshi to have, though i'm certainly no expert on the man. Something is wrong here. I'm not unconvinced, but i'm suspiciously reserving judgment until he signs a second, unpredictable message.

dllthomas 10y ago
c) He is deliberately leaving some wiggle room.
saalweachter 10y ago
Well, there is (d) paranoia. Suppose he does have the private key, but, because it is literally worth millions of dollars, he has it somewhere secure. It's not sitting on his laptop, waiting for someone to steal it (physically or electronically). Signing a message before the announcement was lower risk than signing messages now, after the announcement. Accessing it a second time, with greedy little eyes all over him, is risking millions of dollars to convince people who probably wouldn't be convinced anyway.

csomar 10y ago

This is a hoax I think. And also Gavin supporting it is weird. The Signature in the blog post, is, in fact a signature from this transaction: 828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69d9e06e5b54ea597eef5fb3ffef509fe Relevant Reddit Comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hf4s2/craig_wright_reveals_himself_as_satoshi_nakamoto/d2pf5op https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hf4s2/craig_wrigh...

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pstrateman 10y ago
> This is a hoax I think. And also Gavin supporting it is weird. Is it?
- acqq 10y ago
  >> Gavin supporting it is weird. > Is it? Apparently, not weird. From the Economist article: "It pays, too, to bear in mind that Mr Wright’s outing will most likely be of benefit to those in the current bitcoin civil war who want to expand the block size quickly, whose number include Mr Matonis and Mr Andresen. Mr Wright says that if he could reinvent bitcoin, he would program in a steady increase of the block size. He also intends to publish mathematical proof that there is no trade-off between the mass adoption of the cryptocurrency and its remaining decentralised."
pyb 10y ago
It's all an elaborate ploy to force the real Satoshi to manifest themselves ;)
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  Wait a minute, are you just trying to be gender neutral, or do you suspect Satoshi is several people like Bourbaki?
  - 10y ago

om2 10y ago

"Mr Wright does not want to make public the proof for block 1, arguing that block 9 contains the only bitcoin address that is clearly linked to Mr Nakamoto (because he sent money to Hal Finney). Repeating the procedure for other blocks, he says, would not add more certainty. He also says he can’t send any bitcoin because they are now owned by a trust. And he rejected the idea of having The Economist send him another text to sign as proof that he actually possesses these private keys, rather than simply being the first to publish a proof which was generated at some point in the past by somebody else." Sounds extremely dubious. Especially when he's presented fake proof before.

redsummer 10y ago

"He also says he can’t send any bitcoin because they are now owned by a trust." Well, the trust could create a new address, and send btc to itself. This above all makes me not believe him.

danielweber 10y ago
When he talks to media, he uses technobabble bamboozle. When he talks to tech, he uses legalbabble bamboozle. Even if he didn't want to transfer any original BTC pre-news-release, they could have coordinated for him to transfer 1 BTC from an early block to some charity at the time of reveal.

curiousgal 10y ago

So either Gavin knew or didn't. As a core dev I am not sure which is worse.

nikcub 10y ago

I don't believe this for a second - and i'm more interested in figuring out how he duped two Bitcoin developers and some of the most notable news outlets in the world. When the link to Wright was first reported in Wired[0] and Gizmodo[1], after letting the news sink in for a day it was apparent that the evidence trail was an elaborate ruse. I don't know if Wright leaked the hack to the media (I think it was more likely to be a disgruntled former employee who bought into the story), but there were many journalists who turned down that story while it was being shopped widely because it didn't smell right (this is no slight on gwern, Andy Greenburg and Sam Biddle who could bring to the story more than what most ordinary journalists could, and mention that it could be a hoax) Consider that Wright faked old blog posts, allowed them to be found, and then deleted them. Consider that he added a new Satoshi Nakomoto PGP key to keyservers with an email he controlled (which was different, obviously) in 2013, three years after the real Satoshi disappeared. Consider that Wright claimed to have a super computer and produced a reference letter from SGI, but that SGI claimed no knowledge of the computer or letter and it turned out to be fake (in some parts of the world - this is known as fraud)[2]. Consider his LinkedIn said he earned a Phd. from Bathurst University but the University knew nothing about it[3]. Consider the only people Wright revealed he was Satoshi to were a few select employees and people he was trying to raise money from (he said he was a billionaire but the funds were locked up - it is a modern digital version of a 419 scam). Consider, also, that he says he "tried to keep his head down" but shows up at a Bitcoin panel as an unknown and suggestively describes himself vaguely - with a smirk and a wink. Consider that he says he doesn't want the fame or attention, but shopped an exclusive deal around the media for a month and went with the BBC, The Economist and GQ - and is currently on every TV channel. Consider that Wright, despite being quasi-published, has never produced anything approaching the complexity, clarity, succinctness and humble nature of the Bitcoin paper, but is the complete opposite of all of these characteristics (rambles and talks down to people, explaining detail not so that the reader learns it - but so that you know that he knows this shit). From what I know about him, it seems Wright is experienced with barely getting along with big pie-in-the-sky ideas that convince a lot of people around him, but that definitely are in the grey area between legitimate and fraud. He is able to drown people in quasi-technical talk and on big ideas and is very personable (we also have a word for people who take fraudulent action via their charms). He avoids people who are actual experts in the areas he himself professes to be an expert in, and when he is in relevant forums or other online communities he downplays his achievements. Some examples: He claimed to be published in infosec, but rather than writing for the usual outlets he wrote for political blogs on infosec topics[4] (often poorly). He added his two supercomputers to the top 500 index (which is self reported) but never participated in the online communities, but he did brag about it in investment material. He didn't interact with professors or students at universities, but did teach a remote webinar course on supercomputing at a pay-for school[4] and finally, with Bitcoin - in investment material and to employees he was a domain expert and the founder but he was never a regular in online communities or conferences (although it seems he got to a point of even convincing Bitcoin experts that he knew what he was talking about) He is currently being pursued in Australia by tax authorities not because, as was commonly reported, not paying taxes on the Satoshi coins (you don't pay tax in Australia until gains are realized) but because he was one of the largest claimants of R&D tax concessions in Australia (larger than Google and Atlassian) and this is a common area of fraud (create a fake company, say you employe 50 people, claim that 'R&D spend' back - similar to sales tax fraud). One more point of doubt - but I leave it because it is a bit ad hominem - it turns out that you can't work for long in Sydney without knowing someone who worked for Wright in one of his schemes or knowing someone who knew someone. Turns out I had 2 friends who worked with him at various points. Both offered characterizations of Wright as being crazy and deceiving. He is very convincing in the short term, but things start to unwind over time. One is still, despite being mildly burnt by him, partly convinced he may have had something to do with Bitcoin because "he is just that crazy, you learn not to be surprised by stuff" - but then snapped out of it. Is this really Satoshi? It isn't - i'm going to start from the perspective that Wright has pulled off (another) impressive fraud. I'm more interested in figuring out how the hell he did this. edit: that didn't take long. It appears there is evidence in this thread, on reddit and on Twitter that the 'verification' falls short and is just an old bitcoin transaction[6] edit: I just got this from another former employee of Wright's - "best conman i've ever met" [0] https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-this-unknown-australian-genius/ https://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakam... [1] http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-friend-invented-bi-1746958692 http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-frie... [2] https://www.wired.com/2015/12/new-clues-suggest-satoshi-suspect-craig-wright-may-be-a-hoaxer/ https://www.wired.com/2015/12/new-clues-suggest-satoshi-susp... [3] http://gizmodo.com/the-mystery-of-craig-wright-and-bitcoin-isnt-solved-yet-1747576675 http://gizmodo.com/the-mystery-of-craig-wright-and-bitcoin-i... [4] https://theconversation.com/lulzsec-anonymous-freedom-fighters-or-the-new-face-of-evil-2605 https://theconversation.com/lulzsec-anonymous-freedom-fighte... [5] https://www.itmasters.edu.au/free-short-course-programming-super-computers/ https://www.itmasters.edu.au/free-short-course-programming-s... [6] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hf4s2/craig_wright_reveals_himself_as_satoshi_nakamoto/d2pf5op https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hf4s2/craig_wrigh...

chjj 10y ago

This is absolutely fake and already debunked, as mentioned on the bitcointalk forums: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1457039.msg14728531#msg14728531 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1457039.msg14728531#... The signature Wright posted is a signature from a transaction on the blockchain (and therefore cannot be a signature of a Nobel prize refusal speech or whatever other message he claims): https://blockchain.info/tx/828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69d9e06e5b54ea597eef5fb3ffef509fe https://blockchain.info/tx/828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69... The above tx's scriptSig: 3045022100c12a7d54972f26d14cb311339b5122f8c187417dde1e8efb6841f55c34220ae0022066632c5cd4161efa3a2837764eee9eb84975dd54c2de2865e9752585c53e7cce01 The signature Wright posted: $ echo 'MEUCIQDBKn1Uly8m0UyzETObUSL4wYdBfd4ejvtoQfVcNCIK4AIgZmMsXNQWHvo6KDd2Tu6euEl13VTC3ihl6XUlhcU+fM4=' | base64 -d | xxd -p 3045022100c12a7d54972f26d14cb311339b5122f8c187417dde1e8efb68 41f55c34220ae0022066632c5cd4161efa3a2837764eee9eb84975dd54c2 de2865e9752585c53e7cce

nitrogen 10y ago
Note to mods: the really long signature line makes the page unreadable on mobile; probably too late for OP to edit.
- acqq 10y ago
  It would be good if the HN software during accepting the post which contains "the really long lines" inserts automatically pre tags around.

meowface 10y ago

Reposting my other comment: I think Wright is just a smooth-talking conman with some crypto experience. I'm betting he met Gavin and other (unfortunately, merely "supposed" at this point...) experts in person, talked shop for a while, then took out his laptop and staged verifying the signature of blocks 1 and 9 with dummy commands. (Edit: Gavin actually claimed it was a clean computer, not one that Wright brought. Disregard that.) The Economist actually states this directly: >Mr Wright has also demonstrated this verification in person to The Economist—and not just for block 9, but block 1. Such demonstrations can be stage-managed; and information that allows us to go through the verification process independently was provided too late for us to do so fully. Still, as far as we can tell he indeed seems to be in possession of the keys, at least for block 9. This assessment is shared by two bitcoin insiders who have sat through the same demonstration: Jon Matonis, a bitcoin consultant and former director of the Bitcoin Foundation, and Gavin Andresen, Mr Nakamoto’s successor as the lead developer of the cryptocurrency’s software (he has since passed on the baton, but is still contributing to the code). Relevant bit: >Such demonstrations can be stage-managed; and information that allows us to go through the verification process independently was provided too late for us to do so fully. For Gavin's demonstration, he claims Wright validated the signatures on a "clean" computer, with the implication that it could not be staged. >Part of that time was spent on a careful cryptographic verification of messages signed with keys that only Satoshi should possess. But even before I witnessed the keys signed and then verified on a clean computer that could not have been tampered with, I was reasonably certain I was sitting next to the Father of Bitcoin. So, either the clean computer wasn't really clean, or Gavin's complicit in the scam, or Wright does have Satoshi's private keys and may be Satoshi. Either way, why would Satoshi want to prove it yet only demonstrate proof to a few people in private rather than putting a message and signature online for anyone to verify?

comboy 10y ago
> I think Wright is just a smooth-talking conman with some crypto experience. I'm betting he met Gavin and other (unfortunately, merely "supposed" at this point...) experts in person, talked shop for a while, then took out his laptop and staged verifying the signature of blocks 1 and 9 with dummy commands. I don't believe that anybody with the most basic understanding of cryptography would fall for that. I don't think there is a slightest chance that Gavin would. So the most interesting part of the story to me is why did he publish his blog post.. Something made him do that, but it's beyond doubt to me that he did not take part in planning of this operation.

blakeross 10y ago

"One of the most useful lessons I learned from working at Facebook had nothing to do with technology: Doubt the media. Always doubt the media." (https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your-thinking-ad825a9b4653 https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your-thinking-...) I'm happy to see that The Economist, at least, has a healthy sense of skepticism.

nxzero 10y ago

Satoshi is Satoshi; please leave things be.

bshimmin 10y ago

I'm not sure whether I actually care if he is or if he isn't - there's just so much good material in this story: hidden super computers and theology degrees and all sorts of craziness. The only thing that could really improve it would be a link to Paul Le Roux!

IkmoIkmo 10y ago

It's kinda sad this is being reported by credible journals, it's super likely to be completely false. I'm glad on HN the link states it's just a claim, and that on the economist it's phrased as a question: 'is he Satoshi?' (the rule being in 99/100 cases, the answer is no.) But I've seen otherwise.

bambax 10y ago
Agence France Presse (AFP) says in English "Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright on Monday revealed himself as the creator of the virtual Bitcoin currency to media outlets..." which in French becomes "Bitcoin: le véritable créateur de la monnaie numérique est Craig Wright". This translates as "the actual inventor of the virtual Bitcoin currency IS Craig Wright", conditionals or precautions be damned; and it's printed as is all over the French press this morning.
- IkmoIkmo 10y ago
  Yup, Dutch media it was less bad but still not great. Instead of saying it was a 'claim', or preferably not writing anything about this scam, they wrote 'Wright admits he's Satoshi' in the title. This 'admitting' implies everyone thought he was Satoshi, and he confirmed it. When in reality, everyone thinks he's definitely not it, and he claimed it without proof. Then in the article they make completely false claims about him signing messages he didn't etc. It's really sad, there wasn't a hint of skepticism that was present in the Economist which I thought was poor itself already.

bobowzki 10y ago

Maybe he is trying to get Nakamoto to out himself..? His claim is ridiculous.

neuropie 10y ago

The proof contains some strange bash commands, using & instead of &&: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610192

zobby 10y ago
Well, for that command line he didn't had to wait for the first instruction to return true, so he can use &

brunomarx 10y ago

I don't believe he would be so naive to publish this without having checked that matter with transaction 828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69d9e06e5b54ea597eef5fb3ffef509fe before.

daemonk 10y ago

If this is fake, is this some kind of ploy to flush out the real Satoshi? Or a publicity stunt?

alfiedotwtf 10y ago

Just remember that The Economist a few years ago published a story on Steorn's Perpetual Motion machine. You don't go to The Economist when you want hard hitting investigative journalism - you go The Economist when you need investor money.

DharmaPolice 10y ago
Wikipedia says that the Steorn thing was a paid advertisement. That's a little different to what's going on here.
icebraining 10y ago
It was a (full-page) ad, not a story, not even a "sponsored" one, as the layout was quite distinct: http://dispatchesfromthefuture.com/images/steorn_economist_ad.jpg http://dispatchesfromthefuture.com/images/steorn_economist_a...
- alfiedotwtf 10y ago
  What's the difference between this and Nature having a full page ad for a Homeopathy clinic?

mattanical 10y ago

Guess the only way he can really prove he is S.N. is that he transfers cca. million bitcoins to himself for everyone to see ;) ...Wanna see that happen, lol. (most probably S.N. is a group not a person).

mattanical 10y ago

brunomarx 10y ago

It seems, we either have someone lying or a SHA-256 collision.

keithpeter 10y ago

>> In future, he explained, the blockchain could become so vast that it could keep track of every Visa transaction, every stock-exchange transaction, every bank transaction and much more. “We could even create an individual account for that tissue”, he said, pointing to a paper napkin on the table. << Quote from OA. Would this not short circuit any form of privacy? Or would various agencies and individuals still have to show that the various 'napkin accounts' that make up one's daily transaction count belonged to the same person? I'm less concerned with the identity of Nakamoto and more concerned with the shape of the future!

aab0 10y ago
> Would this not short circuit any form of privacy? As far as I can tell, Wright wants to extend the blockchain considerably, adding opcodes to get Turing-complete functionality. Among other things, he's hinted at using ring signatures for tracking things, which would give one both secure control and anonymity. (I think Monero and its descendants may have stolen that thunder, though.)

eggy 10y ago

What I find fascinating about all of this as a normal techie, not a crypto specialist, is whether he is Satoshi or not, the idea of "Satoshi" in all its guessing will be bigger than Craig Steven Wright, or I would say even the real Satoshi if he came out and proved it. We romance our notions of who is behind something to the point where that notion is too grand to be filled by an ordinary (pretty smart) human being. Only Craig Steven Wright for sure, and possibly the real Satoshi, knows the truth. Whomever it is, he can cash out to the tune of $450 million! Fun being on the sidelines here, but I do have a heavy intellectual, emotional investment in the idea of Bitcoin, and I hope it carries on.

return0 10y ago

So does the bitcoin community prefer it if the real satoshi comes forward or not? It seems that many would prefer a leader to set the future of bitcoin, eventhough that's counter to its principles.

cm3 10y ago

My impression is that these things happen in order to try to force the real Satoshi to come forward. I wouldn't be surprised if guys like Wright are paid and supported by others to do this. I hope Satoshi will never be revealed and don't see what that would provide anyway. Just leave them be.

jdlee0 10y ago

There's more chicanery in Wright's code [1] In the posted image of EcDSA.verify.sh, he base64 decodes $signiture, but this is uninitialised. The path is stored in $signature. http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-significance/ http://www.drcraigwright.net/jean-paul-sartre-signing-signif...

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bobwaycott 10y ago

What is up with this specific comment thread being so horribly wide on mobile? Why isn't CSS enforcing a width and wrapping the page?

dang 10y ago
It's a bug that we need to fix. I've seen similar things in other threads, but it doesn't come up that often. If anyone has ideas about what's going on here, emailing them to hn@ycombinator.com might help speed up the fixing process. (The core HN programmers have a... somewhat fraught relationship with CSS.)
DanBC 10y ago
This thread contains several posts that have very long, unbroken, lines. If those lines had started with four (two?) spaces they've have got different CSS - the pre-formatting would have put the very long unbroken line inside a different box with scrollbars. Here's one example post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610111
- bobwaycott 10y ago
  The top comment seems to be the one that sets the tone, and it doesn't look like anything should be in a code block: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610101 Edit: oddly, going directly to that comment looks better than going to the main thread. It's still smaller than normal on mobile, but nowhere near as bad as the main thread. Here's what things look like for me in Safari on iOS: https://imgur.com/a/KVrSX https://imgur.com/a/KVrSX

joeyspn 10y ago

Here we go again... anatomy of a new "satoshi unmasked!" story: - Big media spreads bs claims (check) - BTC price drop (check) - Community CSI debunks story (check) - New core devs drama chapter (check) - Back to "normal" __

homero 10y ago

Beyond fake

max_ 10y ago

I wont believe so unless he signs the first block

deleted 10y ago

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MariuszGalus 10y ago

This guy > http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2016/05/articles/main/20160430_blp539.jpg http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac... < cannot possibly be Satoshi Nakamoto. He looks, feels, and smells like a conman. It only takes one red flag to question credibility and this guy has several. 1. Contradicts himself, privacy vs brokering a deal with major media outlets for a story. 2. Faking LinkedIn experience & degrees. 3. Associates believe he is 'crazy' and a 'conman' 4. Failed the writing syntax test comparing his multiple published works to the original posts and bitcoin paper and eventually... 5. ...Shifting blame or holes in his story towards the DEAD known people who've worked on Bitcoin or who had contact with Satoshi in the past. 6. SGI does not acknowledge him or his claimed statements regarding his relationship with SGI. 7. And I'm not going to go any further... the point is, he has too many 'excuses' for every little thing. I understand he wants to be infallible and unchallenged in his claim, but just the number of alibis and excuses he dishes out, sans his questionable private-key proof, leaves a gut feeling that he's not Satoshi and smells of con.

koluft 10y ago
Don't judge people by their looks when their actions speak far louder.
- MariuszGalus 10y ago
  Sorry, I'm just taking this a bit personally because I know a guy who ruined a few peoples' lives by telling lies habitually and scamming for investors. For me, Dr. Wright relates to him and already as a bias I paint a bad image.

discardorama 10y ago

Simple. Satoshi owns millions of BTC. Anyone claiming to be Satoshi should just spend a small chunk of BTC from that initial block as a challenge response.

EGreg 10y ago

Satoshi Nakamoto was most likely a group, like Bourbaki.

known 10y ago
I second it

brunomarx 10y ago

https://github.com/patio11/wrightverification https://github.com/patio11/wrightverification

richtr 10y ago

BBC interview with Craig Wright (video, 4m50s) http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36168863 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36168863

altotrees 10y ago

Unless Craig Wright comes out with further proof, proof that is undeniable and unquestionable, I am left feeling sick to my stomach. I have read several articles this morning which tout this event as total fact (BBC, Venturebeat, NPR and more), and it just saddens me. If this is a hoax, I have lost even more respect for these outlets. If this is a hoax, I have also lost respect for Gavin Andersen, unless he has an ulterior motive for backing Wright in the first place, or was hacked as some have speculated. Whenever this kind of "unveiling" happens, I get disheartened. It makes a serious technical community and set of ides I care very much about look like little more than a soap-opera or disorganized group of gossip-hounds, as protrayed in major media outlets, overshadowing everything else. Total bummer (until further proof and/or notice).

scott_s 10y ago

On the academic side of things, he has a very thin paper trail: http://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/w/Wright:Craig_S= http://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/w/Wright:Craig_S= and http://dl.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81488659808&coll=DL&dl=ACM&trk=0&cfid=779669783&cftoken=67111435 http://dl.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81488659808&coll=DL&dl=... I'm not saying the real Satoshi has to be an academic computer scientist, but if someone with a significant academic publication record in cryptography stepped forward, I would take it much more seriously. Of course, this is secondary to the fact that Wright has not signed a new message with the original Satoshi key.

toopok4k3 10y ago

Why is no one talking about Dave Kleiman, the wheelchaired man who died in 2013? He was supposedly a friend of Wright. My gut feeling is that he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright just sounds like an fraudulent opportunist who tries to bank by all means necessary from knowing the guys secret.

jbpetersen 10y ago
Nick Szabo as Satoshi is my own hypothesis.

headgasket 10y ago

sit the guy in a room. Fire up sublime, emacs, vim, or whatever IDE. Give him an hour to write an app in C++ to solve something trivial that he does not know in advance, such as the 8 queens problem. End of debate. The guy most likely cannot code to save his life.

auggierose 10y ago

Well, he either is Satoshi, or a genius conman. I would love for him to be Satoshi, it would be a great story. It's also ridiculous that people think they would be able to derive the personality of someone from a paper he wrote.

grondilu 10y ago

That looks like an extremely elaborated way to make a claim that could normally be done in a few lines. And even if the claim would require a long explanation, for instance if Satoshi lost or destroyed the keys for the first few blocks, or the passwords to his accounts on several forums where he used to write, there would be no need for him to do this explanation himself. The burden of the proof his on him, but not the explanation of the proof.

danielweber 10y ago
The LiteCoin founder showed how easy it was: https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/727157971428331520 https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/727157971428331520

bitmapbrother 10y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't Craig Wright initiating a Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi's wallet to a retailer, of a reporter's choosing, be all the proof you would need to validate his claims? If he has access to Satoshi's wallet then that's all the proof he needs.

deleted 10y ago

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mamadontloveme 10y ago

What is this - some kind of really, really weird hiring campaign for crypto folks?

neugier 10y ago

Might the reason they were fooled so easily be, that they were flattered, that Satoshi would reveal himself to them, but not the community directly?

martin1975 10y ago

Satoshi can also log into bitcointalk.org where the real Satoshi communicated with the public for quite some time during and after the release of the bitcoin client. Can Wright log into it and post or is he gonna claim he forgot his password? Oh wait, a password can be reset. Oh no, he forgot his password to the email he registered on BitcoinTalk.org.. Damn... I guess we're SOL :).

aab0 10y ago
No, he can't. That email was probably the hacked one, and Theymos locked the Bitcointalk account ages ago. And that's a dumb method of proof compared to cryptographic ones anyway - how many times has Bitcointalk been hacked now? 2? 3?

gnuvince 10y ago

Why do people care about the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto?

acomjean 10y ago
I don't know. Its kind of like "celebrity culture". I'm a little bit of an outlier on these things (I lack a facebook account) There is something in human brains that makes us really want to know about social network around us. Despite the strange URL this article tries to expain it [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-ooze/201503/why-caring-about-celebrities-can-be-good-you https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-ooze/201503/why...

known 10y ago

Hoax

krick 10y ago

Does it even matter? Why?

Houshalter 10y ago

This comment section is unreadable on mobile. Why is it so wide?

deleted 10y ago

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