16 ms·

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof

54 points by sindreaa 10y ago

jgrahamc 10y ago
Don't need any more proof that transferring BTC from a block that Satoshi controlled. Don't need reams of explanation or blog posts or anything else.
- mbgaxyz 10y ago
  True, but possession of private keys does not prove identity. Having Gavin confirm that this is indeed the person he spoke with thoughout the years is also important. We'll just have to wait and see what happens next. Craig has certainly left us with a cliffhanger...
  - throwanem 10y ago
    He really hasn't. His ordinary proof has already been debunked, repeatedly and in detail, so now he's spinning a bunch of bullshit to convince the foolishly credulous they should trust him in spite of the plain facts of the matter.
    - ifdefdebug 10y ago
      I'm not sure. Gavin has high reputation, and he has not yet revoked his support for Craig's claim. Maybe there will come irrefutable cryptographic proof around the next days. Or maybe not. AAMOF, in yesterdays post, he talked about crypto, but he did not claim it to be proof for anything. Today he is announcing proof for the next days. We'll see...
      - throwanem 10y ago
        I'm not sure why Andresen's reputation has anything to do with the presence or absence of irrefutable cryptographic proof. In the event, such proof is not merely absent but has been shown to be falsified, which is both dispositive of bad faith on Wright's part, and totally in keeping with his own reputation. He's a con man. This is a con. What more do you need, a couple stone tablets and a mountaintop?
      - captn3m0 10y ago
        Do we have any explanation on why Gavin hasn't revoked his post yet? He seems to be tweeting supportive articles as well. Are we still going with the "account was hacked" theory?
        vanattab 10y ago
        >>Are we still going with the "account was hacked" theory? No he has appeared in person and confirmed the story.
        TillE 10y ago
        People who get scammed are usually reluctant to admit it, even to themselves. I expect he'll come around in the next few days if and when there's no public proof forthcoming from Wright.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    No, but possession is strong evidence that all scammers have avoided because they're fake. The parent's requirement is both obvious and simple for the real Satoshi. It should therefore be the minimum standard. More so given the layers and layers of bullshit that crop up around this particular claim.
  - mwambua 10y ago
    Even if it doesn't prove identity, it's certainly significant. The ability to move around the genesis blocks is huge... whether or not he is the original Satoshi.
  - wbhart 10y ago
    In his BBC interview he seemed to avoid directly saying that he was Satoshi or agreeing with the reporter that he was claiming to be him. When asked if he was Satoshi he skirted the issue by saying that he was one of the original people. So I'm not at all sure there is a single individual called Satoshi. We certainly know from his writing that Craig Wright is not the one who came up with the significant ideas behind bitcoin. He's not smart enough.
- jerf 10y ago
  And why not now? Or indeed, why not a month ago? If the goal is to convince people that he is Satoshi, and he really was Satoshi, this would never be his best choice of action. Given that goal, what conceivable reason is there to delay this simple action? The most probable conclusion is pretty simple. I'll cop to hedging a bit with "probable", but in the event that this claim turns out to be true, it would be fair to ask questions about why on Earth this was considered to be the correct way to prove the claim.
  - blowski 10y ago
    Maybe, just maybe, he's enjoying dragging it out and watching all these doubters post their reasons why it's not him. Imagining this whole story a year from now, with Craig Wright incontrovertibly proved to be Satoshi, the way he's done it would give him maximum PR value. Or he could be a lying douchebag who's assuming that he will be associated with Satoshi in the general public consciousness after the media gets bored of the story and expects to profit from that.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      > Maybe, just maybe, he's enjoying dragging it out and watching all these doubters post their reasons why it's not him. I have to admit, it would be awesome to see this as an elaborate way to get send a "fuck you" to all the people that accused him of fraud initially, when he claims we was trying to just lay low and let it pass. It would be the most elaborate trolling ever carried out.
    - jerf 10y ago
      "he's enjoying dragging it out and watching all these doubters post their reasons why it's not him." Then, as Satoshi, who is the founder of BitCoin and owner of quite a lot of them, who must be quite intelligent to be able to have created the system in the first place, he must also be quite colossally stupid and bereft of self-interest to not realize that proving the founder of BitCoin deliberately generated that much drama is likely to significantly negatively affect his substantial BitCoin holding by making a lot of people reassess the stability of BitCoin if the creator is suddenly proved to be this drama-prone. We must also hypothesize a very rapid flip between someone who has successfully hidden the identity for this many years, the very definition of Minimum Drama, suddenly flipping to Maximum Drama. It's not an impossible theory... which I mean, it's not impossible, and should it prove to be true, I won't apologize for this analysis because I think it'll still hold.... but it's an awfully precise one.
tcoppi 10y ago
Watching this unfold is simply fascinating to me from a sociological point of view. The number of scammers, liars, and pure weirdos that have gravitated to Bitcoin is incredible. I am simultaneously entertained, and saddened that people like this are able to wield such power over the community.
- tacos 10y ago
  It's reaching the point where you have to consider external motivations to damaging Bitcoin's credibility. The only thing keeping me out of full-on tinfoil hat mode is that this stuff just felt shady and douchebag riddled from day one.
  - bsder 10y ago
    The fact that coins could be "mined" was the problem from day 1. This created a pyramid scheme/gold rush system that tainted everything. Of course, if you are holding a large chunk of the initial coins, this is exactly what you want. In addition, there are always lots of people willing to fall for pyramid schemes, so it's good to bootstrap adoption. Once Bitcoin finishes being "mined out", we'll see if it has any value. I suspect that answer is "not".
reso 10y ago
All we need is a signed message. That's all, Craig.
tunesmith 10y ago
This is a prime opportunity for skeptics to identify for themselves, ahead of time, the clear conditions where 1) If Wright meets them, they will accept he is Satoshi 2) If Wright doesn't, then they will not A great exercise in avoiding the moving of goalposts, by setting a clear expectation ahead of time.
- ifdefdebug 10y ago
  If he's going to move Satoshi's coin, AND Gavin keeps up his support, then I will accept he is Satoshi.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    It seems like this would settle it for most people. When people saw the claim "this is signed with Satoshi's key", they didn't say "that's not enough", they said "bullshit". Moving the coin and giving an unambiguous explanation of his so-far confusing 'reveal' would do it for me.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I have the impression that basic goalposts are widely accepted. If Wright can provide signatures or transactions for the original block, he will be accepted as someone special, if not necessarily Satoshi. If he can't, he certainly won't be accepted. If he can do that, then it comes down to deciding how he came by those private keys. It's certainly good to pre-register standards, but it's also a really hard question; Wright gave no indication of what evidence types he'll be using, so it's hard to pre-judge every sort of evidence he might offer. My one other expectation would be that he would explain why the "signature" that got him onto BBC wasn't what he claimed it was. If he is Satoshi, it's a damned odd thing to use a faked signature for his basic proof.
- kbenson 10y ago
  That would bring far too much rationality and accountability to this subject and the people driving the discussion.
- ultramancool 10y ago
alva 10y ago
If by some extremely small chance he is Satoshi And his identity was close to being revealed (I think his name was first lingering in the ether around August), this could be a truly beautiful sleight of hand. Purposely release 'proof' you know could be quickly refuted. Get the papers covering you with lots of photos and unnecessary blurb about companies you have been involved in. Drag the whole ordeal out over a week or two. Would come across as a complete loony, attention seeker in the tech community no? Quickly forgotten about and dismissed as Satoshi for a long time. Do note! I do not imagine this is the case, but wouldn't it be great if it was?
- kbenson 10y ago
  The only thing greater would be if he actually was both a complete loony and all his claims were true. It would be interesting to have something as important and useful as Bitcoin have an origin such as that.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 10y ago
  If the intent is to escape the "15 minutes of fame", this doesn't work... because you still endure the 15 minutes of fame. If the intent is to escape authorities and supervillains, this fails as well. They don't tend to discredit things without an actual investigation, which will reveal the ruse.
- Russell91 10y ago
  Another interesting scenario is that Satoshi is working directly with Craig in order to lend his authority on the little/big-blockian debate to Craig. This would explain the mountain of evidence as well as Craig's apparent incompetence. Of course this conspiracy has a low prior probability due to it's complexity, but it does explain why the inventor of bitcoin would be 1) taking of screenshots of buggy code in notepad, 2) using factorial notation to enumerate combinatorics of bitstrings, and 3) being so generally dislikable.
kbenson 10y ago
> For some there is no burden of proof high enough, no evidence that cannot be dismissed as fabrication or manipulation. This is the nature of belief and swimming against this current would be futile. Regardless of whether his claims are true or not, this portion seems self evident. People have too much invested emotionally in the outcome of this, for some reason, to allow this to be settled easily. One only needs to look at some of the discussions regarding this on HN to see people pointing at a single piece of evidence that can be interpreted multiple ways to make absolutist claims about this subject.
- woodman 10y ago
  Given the context, a trustless cryptographic system, the phrases "self evident" and "the nature of belief" are really out of place. This could all be easily settled - no faith required.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Given that I was referring to the irrational behavior of the people involved in the discussion as a sociological event, and was not referring to the cryptographic system at all, I don't think they are out of place at all. > This could all be easily settled - no faith required. My point is that I think there will be some people, far more than we should be comfortable with, which at this point have invested themselves so much emotionally in the outcome, that no proof will be enough. There's always some possible explanation, no matter how outlandish.
    - woodman 10y ago
      > ...behavior of the people involved in the discussion... It is the context of the "sociological event" that I refer to, not the discussion about the discussion that you seem to have in mind. > There's always some possible explanation, no matter how outlandish. You are describing the satisfiability problem, where a lot of contrived problems are obviously impossible to satisfy. That isn't emotionally driven goalpost moving, that is a strict adherence to reason.
fapjacks 10y ago
This thing stinks exactly like when those two guys claimed to have shot and killed a bigfoot, and "within a few days" they were going to "prove it" once and for all. They ended up of course having a rubber costume in a freezer. This post has totally hammered it home for me. I have everything I need to know that this guy is a scamming compulsive liar.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Lxr 10y ago
The guy is clearly an attention seeker, he has provided literally zero proof he’s anyone noteworthy so let’s move on. He will likely continue to trickle these convoluted and increasingly desperate blog posts as people gradually forget about him.
- narrator 10y ago
  This is reminding me of watching a free energy scam unfold. Lots of big announcements, pending big announcements, some half ass attempts at validation, some more news of tinkering and delay, etc, etc. He still can't come up with the signature or the excess energy.
  - TillE 10y ago
    Exactly. Everything about the way this has been handled raises the classic red flags of a scam, pseudoscientific or otherwise. The evasiveness, the obfuscation, the private controlled circumstances under which "proof" is provided. He has a claim that would take five minutes to conclusively prove, but he keeps spinning it out.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
cylinder 10y ago
If he is lying, what does he gain by all this?
- raverbashing 10y ago
  I'm not implying this is the case here, but see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_lying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_lying
- jonny_eh 10y ago
  Getting $$ from investors in a planned venture? Speaking gigs? Consulting gigs? Having people think you invented bitcoin can be quite valuable.
- jamesdwilson 10y ago
  From a redditor: "I posted this detailed analysis describing a likely motivation for Craig needing to "prove" he is Satoshi. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3w9xec/just_think_we_deserve_an_explanation_of_how_craig/cxuo6ac https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3w9xec/just_think_... The short version is that he made fictional investments in a company by claiming to have transferred his personal "interest" in $29m of bitcoin to the target company. (I.e. no blockchain transfer, just a legal document claiming to transfer that amount of bitcoin.) He then claimed substantial cash R&D credits from those transactions. Australian taxation office (ATO) began investigating. He has paperwork showing the transactions, but knows that ATO might dig around and want to see verification that he truly owned $32m of bitcoin. To cover that, he claims he put all his bitcoin in a trust, where the trustee was another early bitcoiner. Unfortunately, that friend has now passed away, and the private keys are lost. In order for the BS to be even vaguely plausible, he needs to show that he originally had access to $32m of bitcoin. This is why he pretends to be Satoshi."
  - hardlianotion 10y ago
    Doesn't seem that smart to preempt the investigation though. Seems better to lay low and submit "proofs" quietly to ATO and hope for the best...
- 10y ago
theli0nheart 10y ago
If Dr. Wright is indeed taking us for a ride, he doesn't seem worried that the "real" Satoshi won't come out and expose him as a fraud (like he did a few years ago with Dorian Nakamoto). Although the circumstances were different then, the chances of this happening are absolutely non-zero, and it could happen at any time. Why continue pushing the issue and drawing attention, which only adds to the risk of this happening? I'm not saying at all that this is indicative that Dr. Wright is Satoshi, but IMO it's definitely interesting.
- geofft 10y ago
  Did he really? The message was in March 2014 from the "Satoshi Nakamoto" account on p2pfoundation.ning.com: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topic/listForContributor?user=0ye0gncqg772o http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topic/listForContributor... which at one point (probably) belonged to Satoshi, but by September 2014 (almost certainly) belonged to someone else. The account was only used three times before that, in February 2009, to write a post about Bitcoin and two replies. It's certainly possible that if one non-Satoshi person gained access to the account between 2009 and 2014, multiple people could have, and that the person who sent the March 2014 message was just an unrelated kindhearted person who wanted the paparazzi to stop bothering Dorian Nakamoto.
- oluckyman 10y ago
  I'm not aware of any evidence that his "Dr." title is accurate.
Animats 10y ago
Well, if he really is, he has something like a billion dollars worth of Bitcoins. There are still all those early blocks that never move. "Soon, I will provide proof" sounds religious, not factual.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wrongc0ntinent 10y ago
Is it possible he is making an offer to Satoshi? That he's willing to take on the persona permanently (and maybe at a cost)?
jonny_eh 10y ago
> For some there is no burden of proof high enough later: > You should be sceptical. You should question. I would. So he's saying people are being too skeptical, and then he says people should be skeptical. This guy really has no idea what he's talking about. There's no way he's Satoshi, he reads like a con-artist.

54 points by sindreaa 10y ago

Don't need any more proof that transferring BTC from a block that Satoshi controlled. Don't need reams of explanation or blog posts or anything else.

mbgaxyz 10y ago
True, but possession of private keys does not prove identity. Having Gavin confirm that this is indeed the person he spoke with thoughout the years is also important. We'll just have to wait and see what happens next. Craig has certainly left us with a cliffhanger...
- throwanem 10y ago
  He really hasn't. His ordinary proof has already been debunked, repeatedly and in detail, so now he's spinning a bunch of bullshit to convince the foolishly credulous they should trust him in spite of the plain facts of the matter.
  - ifdefdebug 10y ago
    I'm not sure. Gavin has high reputation, and he has not yet revoked his support for Craig's claim. Maybe there will come irrefutable cryptographic proof around the next days. Or maybe not. AAMOF, in yesterdays post, he talked about crypto, but he did not claim it to be proof for anything. Today he is announcing proof for the next days. We'll see...
    - throwanem 10y ago
      I'm not sure why Andresen's reputation has anything to do with the presence or absence of irrefutable cryptographic proof. In the event, such proof is not merely absent but has been shown to be falsified, which is both dispositive of bad faith on Wright's part, and totally in keeping with his own reputation. He's a con man. This is a con. What more do you need, a couple stone tablets and a mountaintop?
    - captn3m0 10y ago
      Do we have any explanation on why Gavin hasn't revoked his post yet? He seems to be tweeting supportive articles as well. Are we still going with the "account was hacked" theory?
      - vanattab 10y ago
        >>Are we still going with the "account was hacked" theory? No he has appeared in person and confirmed the story.
      - TillE 10y ago
        People who get scammed are usually reluctant to admit it, even to themselves. I expect he'll come around in the next few days if and when there's no public proof forthcoming from Wright.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  No, but possession is strong evidence that all scammers have avoided because they're fake. The parent's requirement is both obvious and simple for the real Satoshi. It should therefore be the minimum standard. More so given the layers and layers of bullshit that crop up around this particular claim.
- mwambua 10y ago
  Even if it doesn't prove identity, it's certainly significant. The ability to move around the genesis blocks is huge... whether or not he is the original Satoshi.
- wbhart 10y ago
  In his BBC interview he seemed to avoid directly saying that he was Satoshi or agreeing with the reporter that he was claiming to be him. When asked if he was Satoshi he skirted the issue by saying that he was one of the original people. So I'm not at all sure there is a single individual called Satoshi. We certainly know from his writing that Craig Wright is not the one who came up with the significant ideas behind bitcoin. He's not smart enough.
jerf 10y ago
And why not now? Or indeed, why not a month ago? If the goal is to convince people that he is Satoshi, and he really was Satoshi, this would never be his best choice of action. Given that goal, what conceivable reason is there to delay this simple action? The most probable conclusion is pretty simple. I'll cop to hedging a bit with "probable", but in the event that this claim turns out to be true, it would be fair to ask questions about why on Earth this was considered to be the correct way to prove the claim.
- blowski 10y ago
  Maybe, just maybe, he's enjoying dragging it out and watching all these doubters post their reasons why it's not him. Imagining this whole story a year from now, with Craig Wright incontrovertibly proved to be Satoshi, the way he's done it would give him maximum PR value. Or he could be a lying douchebag who's assuming that he will be associated with Satoshi in the general public consciousness after the media gets bored of the story and expects to profit from that.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    > Maybe, just maybe, he's enjoying dragging it out and watching all these doubters post their reasons why it's not him. I have to admit, it would be awesome to see this as an elaborate way to get send a "fuck you" to all the people that accused him of fraud initially, when he claims we was trying to just lay low and let it pass. It would be the most elaborate trolling ever carried out.
  - jerf 10y ago
    "he's enjoying dragging it out and watching all these doubters post their reasons why it's not him." Then, as Satoshi, who is the founder of BitCoin and owner of quite a lot of them, who must be quite intelligent to be able to have created the system in the first place, he must also be quite colossally stupid and bereft of self-interest to not realize that proving the founder of BitCoin deliberately generated that much drama is likely to significantly negatively affect his substantial BitCoin holding by making a lot of people reassess the stability of BitCoin if the creator is suddenly proved to be this drama-prone. We must also hypothesize a very rapid flip between someone who has successfully hidden the identity for this many years, the very definition of Minimum Drama, suddenly flipping to Maximum Drama. It's not an impossible theory... which I mean, it's not impossible, and should it prove to be true, I won't apologize for this analysis because I think it'll still hold.... but it's an awfully precise one.

tcoppi 10y ago

Watching this unfold is simply fascinating to me from a sociological point of view. The number of scammers, liars, and pure weirdos that have gravitated to Bitcoin is incredible. I am simultaneously entertained, and saddened that people like this are able to wield such power over the community.

tacos 10y ago
It's reaching the point where you have to consider external motivations to damaging Bitcoin's credibility. The only thing keeping me out of full-on tinfoil hat mode is that this stuff just felt shady and douchebag riddled from day one.
- bsder 10y ago
  The fact that coins could be "mined" was the problem from day 1. This created a pyramid scheme/gold rush system that tainted everything. Of course, if you are holding a large chunk of the initial coins, this is exactly what you want. In addition, there are always lots of people willing to fall for pyramid schemes, so it's good to bootstrap adoption. Once Bitcoin finishes being "mined out", we'll see if it has any value. I suspect that answer is "not".

reso 10y ago

All we need is a signed message. That's all, Craig.

tunesmith 10y ago

This is a prime opportunity for skeptics to identify for themselves, ahead of time, the clear conditions where 1) If Wright meets them, they will accept he is Satoshi 2) If Wright doesn't, then they will not A great exercise in avoiding the moving of goalposts, by setting a clear expectation ahead of time.

ifdefdebug 10y ago
If he's going to move Satoshi's coin, AND Gavin keeps up his support, then I will accept he is Satoshi.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  It seems like this would settle it for most people. When people saw the claim "this is signed with Satoshi's key", they didn't say "that's not enough", they said "bullshit". Moving the coin and giving an unambiguous explanation of his so-far confusing 'reveal' would do it for me.
Bartweiss 10y ago
I have the impression that basic goalposts are widely accepted. If Wright can provide signatures or transactions for the original block, he will be accepted as someone special, if not necessarily Satoshi. If he can't, he certainly won't be accepted. If he can do that, then it comes down to deciding how he came by those private keys. It's certainly good to pre-register standards, but it's also a really hard question; Wright gave no indication of what evidence types he'll be using, so it's hard to pre-judge every sort of evidence he might offer. My one other expectation would be that he would explain why the "signature" that got him onto BBC wasn't what he claimed it was. If he is Satoshi, it's a damned odd thing to use a faked signature for his basic proof.
kbenson 10y ago
That would bring far too much rationality and accountability to this subject and the people driving the discussion.
ultramancool 10y ago

alva 10y ago

If by some extremely small chance he is Satoshi And his identity was close to being revealed (I think his name was first lingering in the ether around August), this could be a truly beautiful sleight of hand. Purposely release 'proof' you know could be quickly refuted. Get the papers covering you with lots of photos and unnecessary blurb about companies you have been involved in. Drag the whole ordeal out over a week or two. Would come across as a complete loony, attention seeker in the tech community no? Quickly forgotten about and dismissed as Satoshi for a long time. Do note! I do not imagine this is the case, but wouldn't it be great if it was?

kbenson 10y ago
The only thing greater would be if he actually was both a complete loony and all his claims were true. It would be interesting to have something as important and useful as Bitcoin have an origin such as that.
NoMoreNicksLeft 10y ago
If the intent is to escape the "15 minutes of fame", this doesn't work... because you still endure the 15 minutes of fame. If the intent is to escape authorities and supervillains, this fails as well. They don't tend to discredit things without an actual investigation, which will reveal the ruse.
Russell91 10y ago
Another interesting scenario is that Satoshi is working directly with Craig in order to lend his authority on the little/big-blockian debate to Craig. This would explain the mountain of evidence as well as Craig's apparent incompetence. Of course this conspiracy has a low prior probability due to it's complexity, but it does explain why the inventor of bitcoin would be 1) taking of screenshots of buggy code in notepad, 2) using factorial notation to enumerate combinatorics of bitstrings, and 3) being so generally dislikable.

kbenson 10y ago

> For some there is no burden of proof high enough, no evidence that cannot be dismissed as fabrication or manipulation. This is the nature of belief and swimming against this current would be futile. Regardless of whether his claims are true or not, this portion seems self evident. People have too much invested emotionally in the outcome of this, for some reason, to allow this to be settled easily. One only needs to look at some of the discussions regarding this on HN to see people pointing at a single piece of evidence that can be interpreted multiple ways to make absolutist claims about this subject.

woodman 10y ago
Given the context, a trustless cryptographic system, the phrases "self evident" and "the nature of belief" are really out of place. This could all be easily settled - no faith required.
- kbenson 10y ago
  Given that I was referring to the irrational behavior of the people involved in the discussion as a sociological event, and was not referring to the cryptographic system at all, I don't think they are out of place at all. > This could all be easily settled - no faith required. My point is that I think there will be some people, far more than we should be comfortable with, which at this point have invested themselves so much emotionally in the outcome, that no proof will be enough. There's always some possible explanation, no matter how outlandish.
  - woodman 10y ago
    > ...behavior of the people involved in the discussion... It is the context of the "sociological event" that I refer to, not the discussion about the discussion that you seem to have in mind. > There's always some possible explanation, no matter how outlandish. You are describing the satisfiability problem, where a lot of contrived problems are obviously impossible to satisfy. That isn't emotionally driven goalpost moving, that is a strict adherence to reason.

fapjacks 10y ago

This thing stinks exactly like when those two guys claimed to have shot and killed a bigfoot, and "within a few days" they were going to "prove it" once and for all. They ended up of course having a rubber costume in a freezer. This post has totally hammered it home for me. I have everything I need to know that this guy is a scamming compulsive liar.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Lxr 10y ago

The guy is clearly an attention seeker, he has provided literally zero proof he’s anyone noteworthy so let’s move on. He will likely continue to trickle these convoluted and increasingly desperate blog posts as people gradually forget about him.

narrator 10y ago
This is reminding me of watching a free energy scam unfold. Lots of big announcements, pending big announcements, some half ass attempts at validation, some more news of tinkering and delay, etc, etc. He still can't come up with the signature or the excess energy.
- TillE 10y ago
  Exactly. Everything about the way this has been handled raises the classic red flags of a scam, pseudoscientific or otherwise. The evasiveness, the obfuscation, the private controlled circumstances under which "proof" is provided. He has a claim that would take five minutes to conclusively prove, but he keeps spinning it out.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

cylinder 10y ago

If he is lying, what does he gain by all this?

raverbashing 10y ago
I'm not implying this is the case here, but see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_lying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_lying
jonny_eh 10y ago
Getting $$ from investors in a planned venture? Speaking gigs? Consulting gigs? Having people think you invented bitcoin can be quite valuable.
jamesdwilson 10y ago
From a redditor: "I posted this detailed analysis describing a likely motivation for Craig needing to "prove" he is Satoshi. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3w9xec/just_think_we_deserve_an_explanation_of_how_craig/cxuo6ac https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3w9xec/just_think_... The short version is that he made fictional investments in a company by claiming to have transferred his personal "interest" in $29m of bitcoin to the target company. (I.e. no blockchain transfer, just a legal document claiming to transfer that amount of bitcoin.) He then claimed substantial cash R&D credits from those transactions. Australian taxation office (ATO) began investigating. He has paperwork showing the transactions, but knows that ATO might dig around and want to see verification that he truly owned $32m of bitcoin. To cover that, he claims he put all his bitcoin in a trust, where the trustee was another early bitcoiner. Unfortunately, that friend has now passed away, and the private keys are lost. In order for the BS to be even vaguely plausible, he needs to show that he originally had access to $32m of bitcoin. This is why he pretends to be Satoshi."
- hardlianotion 10y ago
  Doesn't seem that smart to preempt the investigation though. Seems better to lay low and submit "proofs" quietly to ATO and hope for the best...
10y ago

theli0nheart 10y ago

If Dr. Wright is indeed taking us for a ride, he doesn't seem worried that the "real" Satoshi won't come out and expose him as a fraud (like he did a few years ago with Dorian Nakamoto). Although the circumstances were different then, the chances of this happening are absolutely non-zero, and it could happen at any time. Why continue pushing the issue and drawing attention, which only adds to the risk of this happening? I'm not saying at all that this is indicative that Dr. Wright is Satoshi, but IMO it's definitely interesting.

geofft 10y ago
Did he really? The message was in March 2014 from the "Satoshi Nakamoto" account on p2pfoundation.ning.com: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topic/listForContributor?user=0ye0gncqg772o http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topic/listForContributor... which at one point (probably) belonged to Satoshi, but by September 2014 (almost certainly) belonged to someone else. The account was only used three times before that, in February 2009, to write a post about Bitcoin and two replies. It's certainly possible that if one non-Satoshi person gained access to the account between 2009 and 2014, multiple people could have, and that the person who sent the March 2014 message was just an unrelated kindhearted person who wanted the paparazzi to stop bothering Dorian Nakamoto.
oluckyman 10y ago
I'm not aware of any evidence that his "Dr." title is accurate.

Animats 10y ago

Well, if he really is, he has something like a billion dollars worth of Bitcoins. There are still all those early blocks that never move. "Soon, I will provide proof" sounds religious, not factual.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

wrongc0ntinent 10y ago

Is it possible he is making an offer to Satoshi? That he's willing to take on the persona permanently (and maybe at a cost)?

jonny_eh 10y ago

> For some there is no burden of proof high enough later: > You should be sceptical. You should question. I would. So he's saying people are being too skeptical, and then he says people should be skeptical. This guy really has no idea what he's talking about. There's no way he's Satoshi, he reads like a con-artist.