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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, mere
by meowface 11y 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 11y 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.
- meowface 11y agoI agree that it seems extremely absurd Bitcoin experts would fall for that. I'm very interested to see how this story develops.
- rdl 11y agoYou say that like there haven't been a bunch of huge crypto/key management/ security/risk management fuckups throughout the world of Bitcoin from the start.
- zipwitch 11y agoIt doesn't seem at all absurd to me that an expert at any subject, speaking to someone else they believe is another honest expert, but who is actually an experienced con-artist / fraudster, can be fooled. Don't think of it as one cryptographer deceiving another via cryptography. Think of it more like a Penn & Teller trick (to use an example of some well-known experts in the art of deceit - not that I think for a moment they'd ever actually defraud someone) only with the computers and cryptography. The actual deception is likely so far outside the mark's expectations and normal thought processes that the possibility of it never even occurs to them.
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- meowface 11y agoAnd Gavin's Bitcoin commit access just got revoked. I wonder if he was hacked, or if they think he's gone rogue. Or if they're just doing it as a precaution.
- danielweber 11y agoWhat's the reference for this? Where can I see his commit access being revoked?
- petertodd 11y agoNote that the genesis block is block _#0_, not block #1 When Bitcoin was publicly released, only the genesis block existed, so every block after that point could have been mined by anyone.
- rdl 11y agoI think Gavin was just lazy in how he validated this (he probably was misdirected by a conman Wright into focusing on validating the signature, not on assessing whether the signature and key actually meant anything....turns out it was a non fresh message, so it wasn't proof that the human in front of him actually controlled the key.) Neither Jon Matonis nor Ian Grigg have said they actually did real validations themselves, just that they talked with the guy. If he is a conman (which is what seems to be the case) I wouldn't fault them too much for falling for him.
- branchless 11y agoWhy not fault them? Because it's not their area of expertise? They should get someone in to verify. Is this a real journalist or someone at a tabloid?
- danielweber 11y agoIf you ask a journalist to verify something, they will bring in an expert to do it, not attempt to mathematically verify it themselves.
- facepalm 11y agoWhy not post a public message that everybody could verify? The discussion about clean notebooks is useless.
- branchless 11y ago> information that allows us to go through the verification process independently was provided too late for us to do so fully "Too late" ? They are in charge of their publication schedule, I believe. The economist is a very weak publication. Anyone taking a lead from them on economics should think about how poor the above statement is and wonder about their rigor in other areas.
- CydeWeys 11y agoThey are not in charge of the publication schedule for several reasons: 1. They all have lives, and likely work regular hours. 2. They cannot control what other news outlets release and when. A skeptical story from The Economist in the presence of lots of credulous releases from other outlets is better than silence. 3. They are a print publication. They can't hold up an entire release for one story. Actually, out of all the major outlets, I'm most impressed by The Economist's coverage. The BBC and CNN fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
- noir-york 11y agoYou either know little about economics, the Economist, or both. The Economist did not "fall" for Wright, and does not believe the claims made.
- jcranmer 11y agoMost articles are written for their hard-copy weekly publication, which needs to be finalized and sent to the printers on Thursdays (I don't know what time nor which timezone) to make it to their customers' houses by Saturday.
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