10 ms·

Validating Satoshi (Or Not)

116 points by chermanowicz 10y ago

blowski 10y ago
Seems to me like there are two possible scenarios here: 1. Craig Wright is telling the truth, but has released a bad proof to misdirect everyone into believing he is not Satoshi. Maybe he's just having a laugh. 2. Craig Wright is lying. Even if he's not Satoshi, he seems smart enough to know he wouldn't get away with releasing shoddy proofs. Perhaps he thought the mainstream media would say "Craig Wright invented Bitcoin" and anyone that disagreed would be called a conspiracy nut. Perhaps this was a kind of pump-and-dump where he expected the price to change significantly and make a killing out of doing it. He doesn't care what people think of him if he's just made $20 million. Could it have anything to do with his ongoing legal troubles with the tax authorities in Australia? At this stage, I'm seeing plenty of people saying "Here's why Craig Wright isn't Satoshi" and that's interesting and useful. But I haven't seen anyone establish why Craig Wright would be lying. Also, it's interesting that "The Real Satoshi" has not posted something saying he's not Craig Wright, as we have seen with previous "exposés".
- throwaway7767 10y ago
  > Also, it's interesting that "The Real Satoshi" has not posted something saying he's not Craig Wright, as we have seen with previous "exposés". AFAIK that's only happened once, in the Dorian case. In that case, the media and papparazzos were hounding a frail old man who was clearly very uncomfortable with the whole thing. Craig Wright seems to just love being in the spotlight. So there's no reason to deny the claims for empathic reasons. It would suck for the real Satoshi to create an expectation that he'll have to individually refute all these claims, I imagine he has other things to do.
  - blowski 10y ago
    This is the post I was referring to: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/10/bitcoin-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-denies-being-craig-wright-maybe https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/10/bitcoin-c... Again, no proof that the real Satoshi posted this (as mentioned in the article) so I realise we're dealing with many layers of hypotheticals.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
      In the Dorian case, the same account also posted a warning that Satoshi's account was compromised around the same time.
      - ryanlol 10y ago
        The Dorian post was made by the hacker that took satoshis email account with a gmx exploit (lol inspect element). And no, I'm not speculating.
        blowski 10y ago
        Do you have a source for that?
        ryanlol 10y ago
        My eyes.
        dimino 10y ago
        What do your elf eyes see?
        ryanlol 10y ago
        Quite normal eyes. And they observed said hacker doing that. I can't very well cite sources as I'd normally be the one being cited.
        blowski 10y ago
        I'll confess, possibly showing ignorance, that I have no idea who you are and thus no idea how seriously to trust what you're saying. I'm sceptical because somebody on Reddit claimed to have sent the Dorian message over Telnet.
- acqq 10y ago
  > I haven't seen anyone establish why Craig Wright would be lying. If you don't understand, I'm actually in possession of 400 million dollars bound to a trust, not available to me until 2020, but if you send me your bank details and help me in current affairs I promise I'll compensate you with the 10 percent of the whole sum. I'm also famous, maybe they'll even get me a Nobel prize, I'm playing I'm hard to get, anyway, and you can be too if you confirm that I proved to you too I'm the one who I claim to be. Think about it, there will be even a Hollywood movie about us. For the start, see I've already agreed for more exclusives. And oh, I can help your case for introducing bigger blocks to Bitcoin. There's going to be this nice conference in NY where you can present your argument exactly on the first day of my "big announcement."
  - blowski 10y ago
    Yeah I get the generalities of "so he can be rich". What can he do with the reputation of "the guy who claimed to be Satoshi"? He's smart enough to know people wouldn't have believed him with the proof he's released.
    - acqq 10y ago
      He just expected for uncertainty to last a little longer. Even now he has the chance to sell the book and movie rights. "How I made BBC believe me." From the Economist's article: "About six months ago, before he was publicly outed in the technology press, he approached Andrew O’Hagan, a Scottish novelist who wrote an “unauthorised autobiography” of Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks. Since then the author, whose most recent novel, “The Illuminations”, was longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, has had complete access to Mr Wright and his family, as well as to his research and business colleagues. Mr O’Hagan is writing a long article for the London Review of Books on Mr Wright and “his journey towards revealing his work.” (Mr O’Hagan, too, has come to be convinced that Mr Wright is Mr Nakamoto.)" http://www.lrb.co.uk/2016/05/01/andrew-ohagan/the-search-for-satoshi http://www.lrb.co.uk/2016/05/01/andrew-ohagan/the-search-for... "Online exclusive · 1 May 2016: The full, long-form account will be published here later this month." "In a world exclusive for the London Review of Books, Andrew O’Hagan spent many months with Craig Wright, the man responsible for what Bill Gates has called ‘the technical tour de force of this generation’." As I've already said in another comment, I can't wait reading O’Hagan's story. He should publish it even if he understands that he'll thus show how credulous he was.
- 4ad 10y ago
  > Also, it's interesting that "The Real Satoshi" has not posted something saying he's not Craig Wright, as we have seen with previous "exposés". Perhaps Wright is gambling that Satoshi is dead (for whatever reason, foul play or not). The purpose of his previous (original) Satoshi scam was to ascertain that nobody has access to Satoshi's private keys. Wright can't get Satoshi's bitcoins, but presumably if people think he is Satoshi, this would help him with his other tax evasion scams he seems to be involved in. Perhaps it doesn't even matter if the tech community immediately realised that he is lying, all he needs is some reasonable belief in the other laypeople he is scamming. Gavin might have been bought, or Gavin knows that Satoshi is dead, and Wright threatened Gavin, pretending he was the one who killed Satoshi.
  - blowski 10y ago
    That's an interesting take, and I guess with the kind of money at stake here, it's not unrealistic.
    - ifdefdebug 10y ago
      He'd have to know whom to kill, not? And that would bring him nearer to the person that anybody else in this world.
      - blowski 10y ago
        Another storyline: Satoshi and Wright were involved on Bitcoin from the beginning. Satoshi did the tech, Wright did the marketing. It starts off as just another of Wright's wacky business scams, but actually takes off. Satoshi dies, Wright takes advantage by telling everyone he's Satoshi, but can't actually get Satoshi's coins.
        illumin8 10y ago
        We'll probably never know, but god, these story lines are getting a bit ridiculous. We have stories of Wright orchestrating complex staged technology theatre which involves hijacking DNS on a wifi network he controls and forcing an unaltered Electrum client on a clean laptop to connect to bitcoin nodes that he controls to fake the signature verification for Gavin. We're talking about 2 or 3 different MITM attacks necessary to pull off such a stunt, in front of people who obviously understand Bitcoin and are skeptical because of the December story. I just think the speculation on possible stories for what really happened is getting a little out of hand.
- celticninja 10y ago
  The other satoshi was outed against his will and had to prove a negative ie that he was not SN. The real SN helped out. This claim was of being the real SN which can be proved so the real SN did not need to get involved.
- jolux 10y ago
  what exactly is the evidence for number 1? occam's razor seems to suggest it's false. it doesn't make any sense why he would double cross us. he clearly doesn't care that we know he's satoshi if 1 is true.
  - blowski 10y ago
    For me at least, it doesn't make any sense that Satoshi wouldn't reveal his own identity in the first place. Almost nothing about this story makes sense, and we have to deal with a lot of conjecture and misinformation. For someone as dumb as me when it comes to Bitcoin and blockchain technology, it's hard to tell fact from unfounded assertion in just about every post I read.
    - jolux 10y ago
      some people are just secretive. I liken Satoshi's disappearance to that of _why and as such I find it very odd that they would go to all this trouble into tricking us into thinking they're not Satoshi Nakamoto when they could have just never revealed themselves in the first place. In short, if you are Satoshi, what's the point of deceiving everyone into thinking you aren't when the only reason people think you are is because you chose to say so?
    - ethbro 10y ago
      > it doesn't make any sense that Satoshi wouldn't reveal his own identity in the first place If I were disrupting the banking industry, I wouldn't be too eager to forgo anonymity either. That's a lot of money that stands to be lost for some already very rich people.
      - blowski 10y ago
        I see where you're coming from, but I doubt the finance industry is worried that they're going to be put out of business - if anything, right now they view Bitcoin as another source of revenue. There have been a lot of inventors that have killed off much bigger businesses, and I can't think of any that wanted to stay anonymous.
- ebbv 10y ago
  There's a third possibility not many seem to want to consider; he's telling the truth and it turns out the real Satoshi isn't the benevolent genius everyone imagined him to be. He's a fuck up con man.
  - blowski 10y ago
    I totally agree with you. The community doesn't want to believe there's even the possibility that Bitcoin was invented by a scammer, because by implication, it would mean we were scammed. It could just be this is the tech community's version of crop circles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle) or tree fairies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies). Very smart people fell for those hoaxes at the time, and put a lot of effort into explaining why it wasn't a hoax - even when the original hoaxers revealed themselves. Perhaps Wright paid somebody to develop the Blockchain technology. Perhaps he developed it himself and then lost the original key, assuming the project was worth nothing. Perhaps he was one of a group of people, and that group has now decided to nominate him as the frontman for the technology, perceiving that the whole Satoshi thing is holding back its development.
- bambax 10y ago
  Yes. From the article: > 3. He probably would have gotten away with it if the signature itself wasn’t googlable by Redditors. Did he think this wouldn't happen? He got the hash in some way, did he think nobody else would be able to find it? He looks like a conman, but a clever one; this is very weak so far... except if there is another move in the works that we don't know yet.
  - twoodfin 10y ago
    I think it probably serves his interests pretty well to have his name plastered all over the Google results for "Satoshi Nakamoto" and vice versa. Hell, right now he's the only person in any of the page title results for q=bitcoin. He presumably doesn't care about scamming the inner circle of Bitcoin, but does care about building up the façade of a reputation in order to scam other people.
  - blowski 10y ago
    > except if there is another move in the works that we don't know yet Exactly. He has promised to release more evidence, and for all we know, by this time next week there will be incontrovertible evidence that he is Satoshi beyond all reasonable doubt. Maybe he's releasing the evidence in a trickle because he's loving the attention, and he has some PR team advising him this is the best way to get it. Maybe he's doing it because he doesn't give a f* and enjoys reading about how "he's not the real Satoshi" and then he says "here you go, it's me". Of course, maybe he's not the real Satoshi.
  - ryan-c 10y ago
    FWIW, it is possible to make the signature ungoogleable. I posted an example on twitter: https://twitter.com/ryancdotorg/status/727302056432672768 https://twitter.com/ryancdotorg/status/727302056432672768 I think, however, that this would have given him at most an additional 48 hours before discovery.
- gtrubetskoy 10y ago
  This cannot be proven, but I am inclined to think that "Satoshi" was a team of people, a covert (and now defunct) project of some sort, NSA or whatever. So far the way Satoshi has acted would conform to that.
- eternalban 10y ago
  My money is scenario 3: There never was a Satoshi. BC is a product of a state actor.
tcoppi 10y ago
Not that I think Craig Wright has presented any evidence that he is Satoshi, but if the anonymous creator of Truecrypt can be an international drug lord and weapons dealer, why can't the anonymous creator of a cryptocurrency be a serial fraud and tax evader?
- manuelflara 10y ago
  Well, when people say Craig Wright is a fraud they mean "he's not the real Satoshi". So obviously, he can't be a fraud in this context and also be the creator of Bitcoin. People really aren't caring at all wether he's been evading taxes or not, as that's something for the Australian government to worry about.
  - tcoppi 10y ago
    I meant a fraud more in the sense of the fake doctorates and his specious resume.
  - splintercell 10y ago
    In fact having committed fraud and evaded Tax would make you more qualified to be Satoshi.
  - jjuel 10y ago
    Turns out a tax evader is a fraud. That is a conman. So it does actually turn out to be relevant here. If he lies about other things (taxes, degrees, etc.) why wouldn't he lie about this? If someone was really blackmailing him to come out because he is the real Satoshi (as he said in the BBC video) then wouldn't they want him to show true undeniable proof?
- wcummings 10y ago
  If anything, being a tax evader makes him more likely to be Satoshi, in my mind.
  - curun1r 10y ago
    Yes, especially if he's been accused of being Satoshi previously and doesn't want the world to know that. What better way for the real Satoshi to throw people off his trail than to claim to be Satoshi and offer up proof that you know will eventually be debunked? If your goal is to eventually start spending the large quantity of initially-mined Bitcoins, it seems like the first step would be to ensure that they're never traced back to you, especially if you don't want to pay taxes on the proceeds. And getting crossed off the list of potential Satoshis is a good first step.
r721 10y ago
Can somebody explain to me, what is this? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/03/bitcoin_craig_wright/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/03/bitcoin_craig_wright... Is it satire or real Craig Wright?
- spenczar5 10y ago
  This is satire.
  - r721 10y ago
    I thought so, but there's even author page: http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/3144 http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/3144 , and no indication anywhere - looks like defamation case then :)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ryanlol 10y ago
      The article explicitly states that the author is not the same Craig Wright claiming to be Satoshi.
- jere 10y ago
  If the convoluted hilarious title didn't give it away then the 1991 quote (given by Churchill) here attributed to Albert Einstein (who died in 1955) should do it.
  - r721 10y ago
    Yeah, probably I didn't notice subtleties at first (because I'm not a native speaker), but still satire is usually published at designated places. Imagine finding a ridiculous column under your own name on TechCrunch in Security section.
    - ryanlol 10y ago
tibbon 10y ago
If the person known as Satoshi wanted to verify their identity, couldn't they simply agree to create a transaction on the Blockchain from some BTC directly from the first few blocks (https://blockchain.info/block/000000006a625f06636b8bb6ac7b960a8d03705d1ace08b1a19da3fdcc99ddbd https://blockchain.info/block/000000006a625f06636b8bb6ac7b96...)?
gort 10y ago
I'm no crypto guy, but what's all this about different versions of OpenSSL succeeding or failing to validate a signature? That sounds like it should be interesting in its own right...
- acqq 10y ago
  The bash command line given by Wright had a bug (or an intentional error, e.g. to slow down the verification attempts, or confuse o whatever) (& instead of &&). Kaminsky missed to recognize that.

116 points by chermanowicz 10y ago

Seems to me like there are two possible scenarios here: 1. Craig Wright is telling the truth, but has released a bad proof to misdirect everyone into believing he is not Satoshi. Maybe he's just having a laugh. 2. Craig Wright is lying. Even if he's not Satoshi, he seems smart enough to know he wouldn't get away with releasing shoddy proofs. Perhaps he thought the mainstream media would say "Craig Wright invented Bitcoin" and anyone that disagreed would be called a conspiracy nut. Perhaps this was a kind of pump-and-dump where he expected the price to change significantly and make a killing out of doing it. He doesn't care what people think of him if he's just made $20 million. Could it have anything to do with his ongoing legal troubles with the tax authorities in Australia? At this stage, I'm seeing plenty of people saying "Here's why Craig Wright isn't Satoshi" and that's interesting and useful. But I haven't seen anyone establish why Craig Wright would be lying. Also, it's interesting that "The Real Satoshi" has not posted something saying he's not Craig Wright, as we have seen with previous "exposés".

throwaway7767 10y ago
> Also, it's interesting that "The Real Satoshi" has not posted something saying he's not Craig Wright, as we have seen with previous "exposés". AFAIK that's only happened once, in the Dorian case. In that case, the media and papparazzos were hounding a frail old man who was clearly very uncomfortable with the whole thing. Craig Wright seems to just love being in the spotlight. So there's no reason to deny the claims for empathic reasons. It would suck for the real Satoshi to create an expectation that he'll have to individually refute all these claims, I imagine he has other things to do.
- blowski 10y ago
  This is the post I was referring to: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/10/bitcoin-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-denies-being-craig-wright-maybe https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/10/bitcoin-c... Again, no proof that the real Satoshi posted this (as mentioned in the article) so I realise we're dealing with many layers of hypotheticals.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
    In the Dorian case, the same account also posted a warning that Satoshi's account was compromised around the same time.
    - ryanlol 10y ago
      The Dorian post was made by the hacker that took satoshis email account with a gmx exploit (lol inspect element). And no, I'm not speculating.
      - blowski 10y ago
        Do you have a source for that?
        ryanlol 10y ago
        My eyes.
        dimino 10y ago
        What do your elf eyes see?
        ryanlol 10y ago
        Quite normal eyes. And they observed said hacker doing that. I can't very well cite sources as I'd normally be the one being cited.
        blowski 10y ago
        I'll confess, possibly showing ignorance, that I have no idea who you are and thus no idea how seriously to trust what you're saying. I'm sceptical because somebody on Reddit claimed to have sent the Dorian message over Telnet.
acqq 10y ago
> I haven't seen anyone establish why Craig Wright would be lying. If you don't understand, I'm actually in possession of 400 million dollars bound to a trust, not available to me until 2020, but if you send me your bank details and help me in current affairs I promise I'll compensate you with the 10 percent of the whole sum. I'm also famous, maybe they'll even get me a Nobel prize, I'm playing I'm hard to get, anyway, and you can be too if you confirm that I proved to you too I'm the one who I claim to be. Think about it, there will be even a Hollywood movie about us. For the start, see I've already agreed for more exclusives. And oh, I can help your case for introducing bigger blocks to Bitcoin. There's going to be this nice conference in NY where you can present your argument exactly on the first day of my "big announcement."
- blowski 10y ago
  Yeah I get the generalities of "so he can be rich". What can he do with the reputation of "the guy who claimed to be Satoshi"? He's smart enough to know people wouldn't have believed him with the proof he's released.
  - acqq 10y ago
    He just expected for uncertainty to last a little longer. Even now he has the chance to sell the book and movie rights. "How I made BBC believe me." From the Economist's article: "About six months ago, before he was publicly outed in the technology press, he approached Andrew O’Hagan, a Scottish novelist who wrote an “unauthorised autobiography” of Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks. Since then the author, whose most recent novel, “The Illuminations”, was longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, has had complete access to Mr Wright and his family, as well as to his research and business colleagues. Mr O’Hagan is writing a long article for the London Review of Books on Mr Wright and “his journey towards revealing his work.” (Mr O’Hagan, too, has come to be convinced that Mr Wright is Mr Nakamoto.)" http://www.lrb.co.uk/2016/05/01/andrew-ohagan/the-search-for-satoshi http://www.lrb.co.uk/2016/05/01/andrew-ohagan/the-search-for... "Online exclusive · 1 May 2016: The full, long-form account will be published here later this month." "In a world exclusive for the London Review of Books, Andrew O’Hagan spent many months with Craig Wright, the man responsible for what Bill Gates has called ‘the technical tour de force of this generation’." As I've already said in another comment, I can't wait reading O’Hagan's story. He should publish it even if he understands that he'll thus show how credulous he was.
4ad 10y ago
> Also, it's interesting that "The Real Satoshi" has not posted something saying he's not Craig Wright, as we have seen with previous "exposés". Perhaps Wright is gambling that Satoshi is dead (for whatever reason, foul play or not). The purpose of his previous (original) Satoshi scam was to ascertain that nobody has access to Satoshi's private keys. Wright can't get Satoshi's bitcoins, but presumably if people think he is Satoshi, this would help him with his other tax evasion scams he seems to be involved in. Perhaps it doesn't even matter if the tech community immediately realised that he is lying, all he needs is some reasonable belief in the other laypeople he is scamming. Gavin might have been bought, or Gavin knows that Satoshi is dead, and Wright threatened Gavin, pretending he was the one who killed Satoshi.
- blowski 10y ago
  That's an interesting take, and I guess with the kind of money at stake here, it's not unrealistic.
  - ifdefdebug 10y ago
    He'd have to know whom to kill, not? And that would bring him nearer to the person that anybody else in this world.
    - blowski 10y ago
      Another storyline: Satoshi and Wright were involved on Bitcoin from the beginning. Satoshi did the tech, Wright did the marketing. It starts off as just another of Wright's wacky business scams, but actually takes off. Satoshi dies, Wright takes advantage by telling everyone he's Satoshi, but can't actually get Satoshi's coins.
      - illumin8 10y ago
        We'll probably never know, but god, these story lines are getting a bit ridiculous. We have stories of Wright orchestrating complex staged technology theatre which involves hijacking DNS on a wifi network he controls and forcing an unaltered Electrum client on a clean laptop to connect to bitcoin nodes that he controls to fake the signature verification for Gavin. We're talking about 2 or 3 different MITM attacks necessary to pull off such a stunt, in front of people who obviously understand Bitcoin and are skeptical because of the December story. I just think the speculation on possible stories for what really happened is getting a little out of hand.
celticninja 10y ago
The other satoshi was outed against his will and had to prove a negative ie that he was not SN. The real SN helped out. This claim was of being the real SN which can be proved so the real SN did not need to get involved.
jolux 10y ago
what exactly is the evidence for number 1? occam's razor seems to suggest it's false. it doesn't make any sense why he would double cross us. he clearly doesn't care that we know he's satoshi if 1 is true.
- blowski 10y ago
  For me at least, it doesn't make any sense that Satoshi wouldn't reveal his own identity in the first place. Almost nothing about this story makes sense, and we have to deal with a lot of conjecture and misinformation. For someone as dumb as me when it comes to Bitcoin and blockchain technology, it's hard to tell fact from unfounded assertion in just about every post I read.
  - jolux 10y ago
    some people are just secretive. I liken Satoshi's disappearance to that of _why and as such I find it very odd that they would go to all this trouble into tricking us into thinking they're not Satoshi Nakamoto when they could have just never revealed themselves in the first place. In short, if you are Satoshi, what's the point of deceiving everyone into thinking you aren't when the only reason people think you are is because you chose to say so?
  - ethbro 10y ago
    > it doesn't make any sense that Satoshi wouldn't reveal his own identity in the first place If I were disrupting the banking industry, I wouldn't be too eager to forgo anonymity either. That's a lot of money that stands to be lost for some already very rich people.
    - blowski 10y ago
      I see where you're coming from, but I doubt the finance industry is worried that they're going to be put out of business - if anything, right now they view Bitcoin as another source of revenue. There have been a lot of inventors that have killed off much bigger businesses, and I can't think of any that wanted to stay anonymous.
ebbv 10y ago
There's a third possibility not many seem to want to consider; he's telling the truth and it turns out the real Satoshi isn't the benevolent genius everyone imagined him to be. He's a fuck up con man.
- blowski 10y ago
  I totally agree with you. The community doesn't want to believe there's even the possibility that Bitcoin was invented by a scammer, because by implication, it would mean we were scammed. It could just be this is the tech community's version of crop circles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle) or tree fairies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies). Very smart people fell for those hoaxes at the time, and put a lot of effort into explaining why it wasn't a hoax - even when the original hoaxers revealed themselves. Perhaps Wright paid somebody to develop the Blockchain technology. Perhaps he developed it himself and then lost the original key, assuming the project was worth nothing. Perhaps he was one of a group of people, and that group has now decided to nominate him as the frontman for the technology, perceiving that the whole Satoshi thing is holding back its development.
bambax 10y ago
Yes. From the article: > 3. He probably would have gotten away with it if the signature itself wasn’t googlable by Redditors. Did he think this wouldn't happen? He got the hash in some way, did he think nobody else would be able to find it? He looks like a conman, but a clever one; this is very weak so far... except if there is another move in the works that we don't know yet.
- twoodfin 10y ago
  I think it probably serves his interests pretty well to have his name plastered all over the Google results for "Satoshi Nakamoto" and vice versa. Hell, right now he's the only person in any of the page title results for q=bitcoin. He presumably doesn't care about scamming the inner circle of Bitcoin, but does care about building up the façade of a reputation in order to scam other people.
- blowski 10y ago
  > except if there is another move in the works that we don't know yet Exactly. He has promised to release more evidence, and for all we know, by this time next week there will be incontrovertible evidence that he is Satoshi beyond all reasonable doubt. Maybe he's releasing the evidence in a trickle because he's loving the attention, and he has some PR team advising him this is the best way to get it. Maybe he's doing it because he doesn't give a f* and enjoys reading about how "he's not the real Satoshi" and then he says "here you go, it's me". Of course, maybe he's not the real Satoshi.
- ryan-c 10y ago
  FWIW, it is possible to make the signature ungoogleable. I posted an example on twitter: https://twitter.com/ryancdotorg/status/727302056432672768 https://twitter.com/ryancdotorg/status/727302056432672768 I think, however, that this would have given him at most an additional 48 hours before discovery.
gtrubetskoy 10y ago
This cannot be proven, but I am inclined to think that "Satoshi" was a team of people, a covert (and now defunct) project of some sort, NSA or whatever. So far the way Satoshi has acted would conform to that.
eternalban 10y ago
My money is scenario 3: There never was a Satoshi. BC is a product of a state actor.

tcoppi 10y ago

Not that I think Craig Wright has presented any evidence that he is Satoshi, but if the anonymous creator of Truecrypt can be an international drug lord and weapons dealer, why can't the anonymous creator of a cryptocurrency be a serial fraud and tax evader?

manuelflara 10y ago
Well, when people say Craig Wright is a fraud they mean "he's not the real Satoshi". So obviously, he can't be a fraud in this context and also be the creator of Bitcoin. People really aren't caring at all wether he's been evading taxes or not, as that's something for the Australian government to worry about.
- tcoppi 10y ago
  I meant a fraud more in the sense of the fake doctorates and his specious resume.
- splintercell 10y ago
  In fact having committed fraud and evaded Tax would make you more qualified to be Satoshi.
- jjuel 10y ago
  Turns out a tax evader is a fraud. That is a conman. So it does actually turn out to be relevant here. If he lies about other things (taxes, degrees, etc.) why wouldn't he lie about this? If someone was really blackmailing him to come out because he is the real Satoshi (as he said in the BBC video) then wouldn't they want him to show true undeniable proof?
wcummings 10y ago
If anything, being a tax evader makes him more likely to be Satoshi, in my mind.
- curun1r 10y ago
  Yes, especially if he's been accused of being Satoshi previously and doesn't want the world to know that. What better way for the real Satoshi to throw people off his trail than to claim to be Satoshi and offer up proof that you know will eventually be debunked? If your goal is to eventually start spending the large quantity of initially-mined Bitcoins, it seems like the first step would be to ensure that they're never traced back to you, especially if you don't want to pay taxes on the proceeds. And getting crossed off the list of potential Satoshis is a good first step.

r721 10y ago

Can somebody explain to me, what is this? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/03/bitcoin_craig_wright/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/03/bitcoin_craig_wright... Is it satire or real Craig Wright?

spenczar5 10y ago
This is satire.
- r721 10y ago
  I thought so, but there's even author page: http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/3144 http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/3144 , and no indication anywhere - looks like defamation case then :)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryanlol 10y ago
    The article explicitly states that the author is not the same Craig Wright claiming to be Satoshi.
jere 10y ago
If the convoluted hilarious title didn't give it away then the 1991 quote (given by Churchill) here attributed to Albert Einstein (who died in 1955) should do it.
- r721 10y ago
  Yeah, probably I didn't notice subtleties at first (because I'm not a native speaker), but still satire is usually published at designated places. Imagine finding a ridiculous column under your own name on TechCrunch in Security section.
  - ryanlol 10y ago

tibbon 10y ago

If the person known as Satoshi wanted to verify their identity, couldn't they simply agree to create a transaction on the Blockchain from some BTC directly from the first few blocks (https://blockchain.info/block/000000006a625f06636b8bb6ac7b960a8d03705d1ace08b1a19da3fdcc99ddbd https://blockchain.info/block/000000006a625f06636b8bb6ac7b96...)?

gort 10y ago

I'm no crypto guy, but what's all this about different versions of OpenSSL succeeding or failing to validate a signature? That sounds like it should be interesting in its own right...

acqq 10y ago
The bash command line given by Wright had a bug (or an intentional error, e.g. to slow down the verification attempts, or confuse o whatever) (& instead of &&). Kaminsky missed to recognize that.