11 ms·

Why I Don't Think Craig Wright is Satoshi

41 points by danielrm26 7y ago

q3k 7y ago
Well, of course. Can we stop giving him attention, please?
- AznHisoka 7y ago
  I have to agree. The media and everyone is taking his bait and giving him undue attention. Nobody thinks Craig is Satoshi. Nobody!
perl4ever 7y ago
Setting aside the footnote about his private key, I find the logic annoying even if the conclusion is correct, because it's purely begging the question, IMO. It reminds me of the argument that the moon landings were faked because the astronauts would have been killed by the Van Allen radiation belts. The only real answer to that is, well, they tried it and they weren't. But that doesn't resolve anything for doubters.
mikorym 7y ago
> he’s definitely brilliant enough to do the work That was not the impression I got from him. He did a cheap trick (on his own computer!) that would make a novice think he is Satoshi (he called a variable and then misspelt it deliberately to deceive the observer). Maybe I just don't like the word brilliant.
bitwize 7y ago
I thought everything pointed to Paul Le Roux being Satoshi?
- epx 7y ago
  I'd bet $1 in Nick Szabo.
  - bdcravens 7y ago
    My money has always been on Hal Finney. Timing of his death and Satoshi's silence seems too coincidental, to say nothing of the fact that the first p2p transfer was between Hal and Satoshi, and Hal's credentials. Also can't ignore that the person who was falsely portrayed to be Satoshi due to his name (Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto) lived 2 blocks from Hal.
    - tim333 7y ago
      The work was probably done by Finney and Szabo together. As Satoshi is a fictional entity it could represent either or both of them. Though I think the writing under the name Satoshi was probably mostly Szabo.
      - bitwize 7y ago
        That was my thinking at first as well. When I heard the name and that it was a pseudonym I thought of two things: * a shadowy genius from a Dan Brown novel (like Ensei Tankado from Digital Fortress) * Nicolas Bourbaki (who was a group of people) But Le Roux is as smart as a group of mathematicians, and is much more the sort of person who would come up with ultralibertarian solutions like Bitcoin (being, you know, a criminal mastermind and all).
    - clubm8 7y ago
      >Timing of his death and Satoshi's silence seems too coincidental But does that mean he singularly created, or that some secret sharing scheme won't unlock the credentials without all inventors?
      - bdcravens 7y ago
        If you're referring to the coins in The Tulip Trust, I don't know that there was ever a claim that only the inventors were involved. No, there's no guarantee that Bitcoin was singularly invented. I'm not even convinced Craig wasn't part of that team. I'm just convinced he's not the singular inventor.
- joyjoyjoy 7y ago
  Yes. Becomes more and more likely. I mean, this is really amazing. This guy would have won the noble price in economics by now.
- clubm8 7y ago
  > I thought everything pointed to Paul Le Roux being Satoshi? I guess if a criminal is going to write their own encryption software (Truecrypt) it's not out of the realm of possibility they'd also create their own currency...
- ksaj 7y ago
  I recently worked with a nutcase in Toronto who repeatedly tried to convince me that he invented bitcoin, but it was stolen by an East European fellow he mistakenly shared the info with. He got rather pissy with me when I didn't share his enthusiasm for that version of the story, and told him I'm pretty sure Le Roux is the droid he was looking for. Crazy loons in failing fantasy quantum startups... I feel sorry for anyone who is stuck trying to separate the reality from the fiction with such people.
PatrolX 7y ago
Correct, Wright is not Satoshi. Because Satoshi is a project, not a person.
apo 7y ago
> And I think he’s definitely brilliant enough to do the work. It's part of the scam. Bamboozle the target with technobabble. Target lacks the skills to independently verify the claim or even recognize the vocabulary is just plain wrong. The technical lack of understanding has been documented repeatedly and in depth. Still, people insist in heaping misplaced praise on this huckster's intellect. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-how-many-wrongs-make-wright https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-how-many-wrongs-m... Not only does Wright's temperament not match Satoshi's, but Satoshi actually knew what he was talking about.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  "Bamboozle the target with technobabble. Target lacks the skills to independently verify the claim or even recognize the vocabulary is just plain wrong." Ah yes, an adage of my old Staff Sergeant (who probably borrowed it himself) "if you can't convince them with brilliance, confuse them with bullshit".
  - cesarb 7y ago
    The canonical wording of that phrase seems to be "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit." according to https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._C._Fields https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._C._Fields
    - brianpgordon 7y ago
      A related quote is- "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." s/software design/piece of public technical writing/ and you have a pretty good match for Wright.
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  Exactly. I wrote this in another thread, applicable here too: -- >Also, Craig Wright doesn't have the technical understanding to have written the Bitcoin implementation. Listen to him speak. If you're honest with yourself, and if you code, you'll realize that he's likely never written much running code at all, much less a full implementation of a complex cryptographic and network protocol. This is an important observation. Craig gives himself away every time he presents at a conference. His talks just throw up a bunch impressive technical jargon and graphics, but then completely fail to weave it all together into a coherent whole, leaving only a disjointed mess. It fools people who aren't watching closely and thinking critically. But Satoshi Nakamoto being possibly one of the greatest connectors and integrators of disparate technical ideas in our time, Craig Wright he is not. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372374
WalterBright 7y ago
Hal Finney. Hal was a quiet, unassuming fellow who you had to get to know before you discovered he was incredibly smart. Hal could never attend class, flip through a textbook on an unfamiliar subject, and then ace the final exam at Caltech. What would take me a solid 3 months of work. The Satoshi thing is just the kind of prank Hal would have done.
- modeless 7y ago
  You knew him personally? I've always suspected him of all the candidates.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    My freshman year he was a sophomore in the next room in the hall. Hal would take us on midnight runs to Tommy's in his VW bug. We weren't buddies (I was an immature brat, some would say I still am) but Hal was always nice to me (as he was to everyone).
- jl2718 7y ago
  Perhaps he projected too much of his own intelligence onto his fake personality when Satoshi went from being unable to code at all to writing a full client, albeit with some help, in a few months. But Hal’s coins are known and locked up for his daughter. He would not have lost the rest. What would he have done with them?
- Boulth 7y ago
  I'm also voting for Hal. He was responsible for large parts of PGP and the extensible protocol design there largely reminded me of Bitcoin (coincidentally I studied technical intricacies of both). Also this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372117
  - dmix 7y ago
    I could easily see an American programmer talented enough to create something like Bitcoin using a Japanese cover name as well.
tech_tuna 7y ago
Satoshi's real name is Keyser Söze.
mcv 7y ago
To me, the damning evidence is that Craig Wright tried to trick people into thinking he signed something with Satoshi's key when it turned out it was merely clever digital sleight of hand. Losing the key is possible, but employing a trick like that is a big warning sign that you're fake.
thrwaway6542 7y ago
Satoshi wrote the bitcoin whitepaper, a nine-page document: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf can't you test Wright's claim by just saying "walk us through how you wrote this paper. the thought process, how it came to fruition. what was on your mind. you included a number of references, where did you get these? just, the whole process, etc." presumably wright would hem and haw and not say anything. -- EDIT: I'm puzzled by the downvotes. I've been accused of not writing something myself, and it's easy to defend by just showing my work, drafts, etc. anyone who's ever written anything can speak really easily, maybe after a quick glance to look at it again. talking about the creative process is a pretty solid defense of authorship in my opinion.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  You can test Wright just by going through his Twitter account (now suspended) and seeing his incompetence in plain sight. Or go through Satoshi's old mailing list posts to see how reasonable, humble, technical, and well-spoken he was. And then read anything Wright has ever written.
  - thrwaway6542 7y ago
    you're right, but it's not "hard" evidence. asking someone to work you through the process of a technical paper they had written is more of a technical question.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      Sounds like something Wright could bullshit on the spot. He's had years of practice basically doing what you suggest. You're just asking for yet more theatrics, not anything technical.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  He would likely technobabble his way through. It's a ten-year old document; that's enough time for anyone to construct a reasonable narrative.
Lowkeyloki 7y ago
Maybe it's just me, but who cares who Satoshi is? Knowing wouldn't change anything.
- lsiq 7y ago
  Well, for one reason, if Satoshi is alive; he can easily crash the entire bitcoin market if his wallets start selling currency. If he's dead, (which is the case if he's Finney), then that is a not a risk. If he is alive, then the likelyhood of him cashing out at some point is pretty high. He may be only be waiting for the moment when there is enough liquidity in the market for him to dump it all at once - and we're probably not quite there yet, he's said to have just under 1M BTC.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- robbrown451 7y ago
  Just because it isn't an interesting mystery to you, doesn't mean it isn't (or shouldn't be) an interesting mystery to anyone else.
  - Lowkeyloki 7y ago
    That's a completely fair point.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  Once upon a time this was true. However, many parties have placed stakes in the ground regarding the identity claim. Here's a non-exhaustive list of a few. - Calvin Ayre - billionaire (mostly from online gambling sites) who has backed Wright and BSV (Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision), who along with holders of BSV, would lose big if Wright's Satoshi's claims come unwound - US Copyright office - if veracity of Wright's Satoshi claims are disproven, they would revoke his copyright grant - the entire cryptocurrency market - Wright claims he will sell off his (Satoshi's) mined coins when the trust allegedly releases them to him in about a year. We're talking over 1 million BTC (+ forked coins, like BCH, BTG, and BSV). For years the movement of those coins has been watched; the second they start moving, the market will panic. Billions of dollars in value will be destroyed overnight. - Australian Tax Office - Wright has been in hot-water with them before; his possession of a $10B asset would be very interesting to them.
axymak 7y ago
It's only you. Most of the people in cryptosphere knows that he is a self-claimed SATOSHI.
joyjoyjoy 7y ago
I think I am quite sure who Satoshi is. Paul Le Roux.
democracy 7y ago
I am wondering if we can find his c/c++ code from 2008/2009 and compare with bitcoin early releases - that would clarify a few doubts...
- democracy 7y ago
  Ah ok, looks like there is no code that he wrote, that is pretty much enough to know :)
clubm8 7y ago
Why do we think Satoshi is a singular person? My pet theory is "Satoshi" was multiple people. IIRC there was even speculation about one programmer who sadly passed away shortly after Bitcoin's launch. If someone(s) used some variation of Shamir's Secret Sharing to lock up the credentials the death of one could have made them inaccessible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir's_Secret_Sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir's_Secret_Sharing
democracy 7y ago
https://www.stopcraigwright.com/screenshots https://www.stopcraigwright.com/screenshots "Tonight I am downloading Java Security courses" - haha, that's epic...

41 points by danielrm26 7y ago

q3k 7y ago

Well, of course. Can we stop giving him attention, please?

AznHisoka 7y ago
I have to agree. The media and everyone is taking his bait and giving him undue attention. Nobody thinks Craig is Satoshi. Nobody!

perl4ever 7y ago

Setting aside the footnote about his private key, I find the logic annoying even if the conclusion is correct, because it's purely begging the question, IMO. It reminds me of the argument that the moon landings were faked because the astronauts would have been killed by the Van Allen radiation belts. The only real answer to that is, well, they tried it and they weren't. But that doesn't resolve anything for doubters.

mikorym 7y ago

> he’s definitely brilliant enough to do the work That was not the impression I got from him. He did a cheap trick (on his own computer!) that would make a novice think he is Satoshi (he called a variable and then misspelt it deliberately to deceive the observer). Maybe I just don't like the word brilliant.

bitwize 7y ago

I thought everything pointed to Paul Le Roux being Satoshi?

epx 7y ago
I'd bet $1 in Nick Szabo.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  My money has always been on Hal Finney. Timing of his death and Satoshi's silence seems too coincidental, to say nothing of the fact that the first p2p transfer was between Hal and Satoshi, and Hal's credentials. Also can't ignore that the person who was falsely portrayed to be Satoshi due to his name (Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto) lived 2 blocks from Hal.
  - tim333 7y ago
    The work was probably done by Finney and Szabo together. As Satoshi is a fictional entity it could represent either or both of them. Though I think the writing under the name Satoshi was probably mostly Szabo.
    - bitwize 7y ago
      That was my thinking at first as well. When I heard the name and that it was a pseudonym I thought of two things: * a shadowy genius from a Dan Brown novel (like Ensei Tankado from Digital Fortress) * Nicolas Bourbaki (who was a group of people) But Le Roux is as smart as a group of mathematicians, and is much more the sort of person who would come up with ultralibertarian solutions like Bitcoin (being, you know, a criminal mastermind and all).
  - clubm8 7y ago
    >Timing of his death and Satoshi's silence seems too coincidental But does that mean he singularly created, or that some secret sharing scheme won't unlock the credentials without all inventors?
    - bdcravens 7y ago
      If you're referring to the coins in The Tulip Trust, I don't know that there was ever a claim that only the inventors were involved. No, there's no guarantee that Bitcoin was singularly invented. I'm not even convinced Craig wasn't part of that team. I'm just convinced he's not the singular inventor.
joyjoyjoy 7y ago
Yes. Becomes more and more likely. I mean, this is really amazing. This guy would have won the noble price in economics by now.
clubm8 7y ago
> I thought everything pointed to Paul Le Roux being Satoshi? I guess if a criminal is going to write their own encryption software (Truecrypt) it's not out of the realm of possibility they'd also create their own currency...
ksaj 7y ago
I recently worked with a nutcase in Toronto who repeatedly tried to convince me that he invented bitcoin, but it was stolen by an East European fellow he mistakenly shared the info with. He got rather pissy with me when I didn't share his enthusiasm for that version of the story, and told him I'm pretty sure Le Roux is the droid he was looking for. Crazy loons in failing fantasy quantum startups... I feel sorry for anyone who is stuck trying to separate the reality from the fiction with such people.

PatrolX 7y ago

Correct, Wright is not Satoshi. Because Satoshi is a project, not a person.

apo 7y ago

> And I think he’s definitely brilliant enough to do the work. It's part of the scam. Bamboozle the target with technobabble. Target lacks the skills to independently verify the claim or even recognize the vocabulary is just plain wrong. The technical lack of understanding has been documented repeatedly and in depth. Still, people insist in heaping misplaced praise on this huckster's intellect. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-how-many-wrongs-make-wright https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-how-many-wrongs-m... Not only does Wright's temperament not match Satoshi's, but Satoshi actually knew what he was talking about.

dvtrn 7y ago
"Bamboozle the target with technobabble. Target lacks the skills to independently verify the claim or even recognize the vocabulary is just plain wrong." Ah yes, an adage of my old Staff Sergeant (who probably borrowed it himself) "if you can't convince them with brilliance, confuse them with bullshit".
- cesarb 7y ago
  The canonical wording of that phrase seems to be "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit." according to https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._C._Fields https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._C._Fields
  - brianpgordon 7y ago
    A related quote is- "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." s/software design/piece of public technical writing/ and you have a pretty good match for Wright.
SkyMarshal 7y ago
Exactly. I wrote this in another thread, applicable here too: -- >Also, Craig Wright doesn't have the technical understanding to have written the Bitcoin implementation. Listen to him speak. If you're honest with yourself, and if you code, you'll realize that he's likely never written much running code at all, much less a full implementation of a complex cryptographic and network protocol. This is an important observation. Craig gives himself away every time he presents at a conference. His talks just throw up a bunch impressive technical jargon and graphics, but then completely fail to weave it all together into a coherent whole, leaving only a disjointed mess. It fools people who aren't watching closely and thinking critically. But Satoshi Nakamoto being possibly one of the greatest connectors and integrators of disparate technical ideas in our time, Craig Wright he is not. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372374

WalterBright 7y ago

Hal Finney. Hal was a quiet, unassuming fellow who you had to get to know before you discovered he was incredibly smart. Hal could never attend class, flip through a textbook on an unfamiliar subject, and then ace the final exam at Caltech. What would take me a solid 3 months of work. The Satoshi thing is just the kind of prank Hal would have done.

modeless 7y ago
You knew him personally? I've always suspected him of all the candidates.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  My freshman year he was a sophomore in the next room in the hall. Hal would take us on midnight runs to Tommy's in his VW bug. We weren't buddies (I was an immature brat, some would say I still am) but Hal was always nice to me (as he was to everyone).
jl2718 7y ago
Perhaps he projected too much of his own intelligence onto his fake personality when Satoshi went from being unable to code at all to writing a full client, albeit with some help, in a few months. But Hal’s coins are known and locked up for his daughter. He would not have lost the rest. What would he have done with them?
Boulth 7y ago
I'm also voting for Hal. He was responsible for large parts of PGP and the extensible protocol design there largely reminded me of Bitcoin (coincidentally I studied technical intricacies of both). Also this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20372117
- dmix 7y ago
  I could easily see an American programmer talented enough to create something like Bitcoin using a Japanese cover name as well.

tech_tuna 7y ago

Satoshi's real name is Keyser Söze.

mcv 7y ago

To me, the damning evidence is that Craig Wright tried to trick people into thinking he signed something with Satoshi's key when it turned out it was merely clever digital sleight of hand. Losing the key is possible, but employing a trick like that is a big warning sign that you're fake.

thrwaway6542 7y ago

Satoshi wrote the bitcoin whitepaper, a nine-page document: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf can't you test Wright's claim by just saying "walk us through how you wrote this paper. the thought process, how it came to fruition. what was on your mind. you included a number of references, where did you get these? just, the whole process, etc." presumably wright would hem and haw and not say anything. -- EDIT: I'm puzzled by the downvotes. I've been accused of not writing something myself, and it's easy to defend by just showing my work, drafts, etc. anyone who's ever written anything can speak really easily, maybe after a quick glance to look at it again. talking about the creative process is a pretty solid defense of authorship in my opinion.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
You can test Wright just by going through his Twitter account (now suspended) and seeing his incompetence in plain sight. Or go through Satoshi's old mailing list posts to see how reasonable, humble, technical, and well-spoken he was. And then read anything Wright has ever written.
- thrwaway6542 7y ago
  you're right, but it's not "hard" evidence. asking someone to work you through the process of a technical paper they had written is more of a technical question.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Sounds like something Wright could bullshit on the spot. He's had years of practice basically doing what you suggest. You're just asking for yet more theatrics, not anything technical.
bdcravens 7y ago
He would likely technobabble his way through. It's a ten-year old document; that's enough time for anyone to construct a reasonable narrative.

Lowkeyloki 7y ago

Maybe it's just me, but who cares who Satoshi is? Knowing wouldn't change anything.

lsiq 7y ago
Well, for one reason, if Satoshi is alive; he can easily crash the entire bitcoin market if his wallets start selling currency. If he's dead, (which is the case if he's Finney), then that is a not a risk. If he is alive, then the likelyhood of him cashing out at some point is pretty high. He may be only be waiting for the moment when there is enough liquidity in the market for him to dump it all at once - and we're probably not quite there yet, he's said to have just under 1M BTC.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
robbrown451 7y ago
Just because it isn't an interesting mystery to you, doesn't mean it isn't (or shouldn't be) an interesting mystery to anyone else.
- Lowkeyloki 7y ago
  That's a completely fair point.
bdcravens 7y ago
Once upon a time this was true. However, many parties have placed stakes in the ground regarding the identity claim. Here's a non-exhaustive list of a few. - Calvin Ayre - billionaire (mostly from online gambling sites) who has backed Wright and BSV (Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision), who along with holders of BSV, would lose big if Wright's Satoshi's claims come unwound - US Copyright office - if veracity of Wright's Satoshi claims are disproven, they would revoke his copyright grant - the entire cryptocurrency market - Wright claims he will sell off his (Satoshi's) mined coins when the trust allegedly releases them to him in about a year. We're talking over 1 million BTC (+ forked coins, like BCH, BTG, and BSV). For years the movement of those coins has been watched; the second they start moving, the market will panic. Billions of dollars in value will be destroyed overnight. - Australian Tax Office - Wright has been in hot-water with them before; his possession of a $10B asset would be very interesting to them.

axymak 7y ago

It's only you. Most of the people in cryptosphere knows that he is a self-claimed SATOSHI.

joyjoyjoy 7y ago

I think I am quite sure who Satoshi is. Paul Le Roux.

democracy 7y ago

I am wondering if we can find his c/c++ code from 2008/2009 and compare with bitcoin early releases - that would clarify a few doubts...

democracy 7y ago
Ah ok, looks like there is no code that he wrote, that is pretty much enough to know :)

clubm8 7y ago

Why do we think Satoshi is a singular person? My pet theory is "Satoshi" was multiple people. IIRC there was even speculation about one programmer who sadly passed away shortly after Bitcoin's launch. If someone(s) used some variation of Shamir's Secret Sharing to lock up the credentials the death of one could have made them inaccessible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir's_Secret_Sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir's_Secret_Sharing

democracy 7y ago

https://www.stopcraigwright.com/screenshots https://www.stopcraigwright.com/screenshots "Tonight I am downloading Java Security courses" - haha, that's epic...