5 ms·

Reading Satoshi's writings and comments I often got the impression that his intentions were pure. But it is and should be painfully obvious that the only things

by pen2l 4y ago

Reading Satoshi's writings and comments I often got the impression that his intentions were pure. But it is and should be painfully obvious that the only things crypto has principally enabled or made efficient are sophisticated scam work/ransomware, background sex work, and drug trade. To really top it off: it was all at the expense of a small country's carbon footprint. So I keep having this thought that if Satoshi really is worth his salt, he would transfer his existing funds (of about 50 billion USD) to an assortment of charities because such an action would be quite the statement in declaring that the crypto experiment has been an abject failure and it's time to stop wasting our time and move on. Better he make this impactful statement, better him the person who started it all be behind the action to finish it, than to have to continue in this painful and agonizing path we are on.

GLGirty 4y ago
If Satoshi is cryptohacker turned drug lord Paul LeRoux, you can wait a while for that.
- pen2l 4y ago
  Which he obviously isn't; Le Roux was nothing more than a crime boss, thought to be more technically adept than what a sober look at things would suggest (E4M's source code was stolen from his earlier employer).
  - sireat 4y ago
    Why do you say obviously? I am really curious why Le Roux has been ruled out even by the author of the book about him "The Mastermind" by Evan Ratliff - quite a good read. Le Roux seemed like a good candidate to be Satoshi - a Windows C++ programmer with serious crypto knowledge(most other crypto oldschoolers were on Linux/BSD), as the book states he liked adopt other persona on forums, he obviously had a strong anti-government bent, so far that is not much but more importantly he was dealing with his real life crime empire and had baskets of money laying around the house. it is hard to imagine Satoshi not spending some money once BTC got over $1 - unless he was really really not worried about money. Of course he could have just lost the keys... There has to be some crucial detail which book does not mention why Le Roux is ruled out so conclusively. I'd be curious if any code similarity analysis has been done on old LeRoux codebases and original Bitcoin code.
    - pen2l 4y ago
      Satoshi and Le Roux both coded C++ but the code they wrote is very different, stylistically and otherwise (tabs vs. spaces, commenting style, approach to things like RNG). Linguistics tics are different in writings. Satoshi has an academic streak to him, he's probably some unknown dude in Germany. La Roux sometimes made grammar/spelling mistakes, Satoshi was pretty much always perfect. It's also strange that Le Roux, being a criminal kingpin with lots of operations, never implemented BTC use in any of his enterprises... why did he choose not to? When the Dorian saga happened, Satoshi posted on p2pfoundation to clear up that Dorian wasn't him with his original account, I think Le Roux was in prison at that time. He's still in prison, he's been cooperating with the US government. US is definitely not letting him go anywhere for the shit he's done, everything from drug cartel work, helping Iranian and North Korean governments acquire weapons, etc. One more delicious detail: Le Roux in a letter to SDNY judge wrote that he wants to invent ways to mine BTC efficiently. Really it comes down to the fact that Le Roux was involved with a whole bunch of stuff, and when you have this much surface area to scan you'd think you could come upon with just one strong piece of evidence... but there is nil, he's just another criminal warlord, luckily now in the custody of the US government: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-ca2-20-03410/pdf/USCOURTS-ca2-20-03410-0.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-ca2-20-03410/pd...
Fatnino 4y ago
But he's dead and his keys lost
skrebbel 4y ago
What if he lost it all? I bet satoshi generated tons of bitcoin while testing his miner that went straight to /dev/null and just kept that blockchain when going live because of why not
- samatman 4y ago
  This is not what happened. The genesis block is the first publicly mined block, by definition. Nothing which happened before it is part of the blockchain.
yieldcrv 4y ago
> But it is and should be painfully obvious that the only things crypto has principally enabled or made efficient how have you quantified that, and how would you go about doing so? It isn't obvious to me. It also seems like your standard is quite flexible, like even if you quantified that use and didn't find the results you wanted, you would say that the subset of transactions that did fit your results were "enabled" and "made efficient".
- palata 4y ago
  I think it's not that hard: - Number of scams/crimes enabled by crypto in the last decade: a ton - Number of constructive, noncriminal use-cases observed in the last decade: zero By "constructive", I mean a use-case for which it is the best solution, which rules out every single blockchain use that is not a cryptocurrency. And the cryptocurrencies are the ones enabling the crime and scams.
jbirer 4y ago
This tells me that you misunderstood Satoshi's motivations completely, filling in your own ones instead. His goal was to create uncontrollable and indestructible money, not "save the world" or create "morally just money for puritan purposes". And he did do just that.
- pen2l 4y ago
  Satoshi would have been content with the current state of crypto, being a de facto vehicle for ransomware, serving as a tool for pushing society down the toilet drain? Consider his unease when Wikileaks started soliciting funds in BTC. If he were all about uncontrollable money he would not have sounded unhappiness about his ballgame being used by Wikileaks.
omgomgomgomg 4y ago
I do not think the intentions were poor. He obviously copied the freedom dollar concept and even said they have a couple years until the government catches up. He knew what happened to the previous own currency people so he stayed anonymous.

by pen2l 4y ago

GLGirty 4y ago

If Satoshi is cryptohacker turned drug lord Paul LeRoux, you can wait a while for that.

pen2l 4y ago
Which he obviously isn't; Le Roux was nothing more than a crime boss, thought to be more technically adept than what a sober look at things would suggest (E4M's source code was stolen from his earlier employer).
- sireat 4y ago
  Why do you say obviously? I am really curious why Le Roux has been ruled out even by the author of the book about him "The Mastermind" by Evan Ratliff - quite a good read. Le Roux seemed like a good candidate to be Satoshi - a Windows C++ programmer with serious crypto knowledge(most other crypto oldschoolers were on Linux/BSD), as the book states he liked adopt other persona on forums, he obviously had a strong anti-government bent, so far that is not much but more importantly he was dealing with his real life crime empire and had baskets of money laying around the house. it is hard to imagine Satoshi not spending some money once BTC got over $1 - unless he was really really not worried about money. Of course he could have just lost the keys... There has to be some crucial detail which book does not mention why Le Roux is ruled out so conclusively. I'd be curious if any code similarity analysis has been done on old LeRoux codebases and original Bitcoin code.
  - pen2l 4y ago
    Satoshi and Le Roux both coded C++ but the code they wrote is very different, stylistically and otherwise (tabs vs. spaces, commenting style, approach to things like RNG). Linguistics tics are different in writings. Satoshi has an academic streak to him, he's probably some unknown dude in Germany. La Roux sometimes made grammar/spelling mistakes, Satoshi was pretty much always perfect. It's also strange that Le Roux, being a criminal kingpin with lots of operations, never implemented BTC use in any of his enterprises... why did he choose not to? When the Dorian saga happened, Satoshi posted on p2pfoundation to clear up that Dorian wasn't him with his original account, I think Le Roux was in prison at that time. He's still in prison, he's been cooperating with the US government. US is definitely not letting him go anywhere for the shit he's done, everything from drug cartel work, helping Iranian and North Korean governments acquire weapons, etc. One more delicious detail: Le Roux in a letter to SDNY judge wrote that he wants to invent ways to mine BTC efficiently. Really it comes down to the fact that Le Roux was involved with a whole bunch of stuff, and when you have this much surface area to scan you'd think you could come upon with just one strong piece of evidence... but there is nil, he's just another criminal warlord, luckily now in the custody of the US government: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-ca2-20-03410/pdf/USCOURTS-ca2-20-03410-0.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-ca2-20-03410/pd...

Fatnino 4y ago

But he's dead and his keys lost

skrebbel 4y ago

What if he lost it all? I bet satoshi generated tons of bitcoin while testing his miner that went straight to /dev/null and just kept that blockchain when going live because of why not

samatman 4y ago
This is not what happened. The genesis block is the first publicly mined block, by definition. Nothing which happened before it is part of the blockchain.

yieldcrv 4y ago

> But it is and should be painfully obvious that the only things crypto has principally enabled or made efficient how have you quantified that, and how would you go about doing so? It isn't obvious to me. It also seems like your standard is quite flexible, like even if you quantified that use and didn't find the results you wanted, you would say that the subset of transactions that did fit your results were "enabled" and "made efficient".

palata 4y ago
I think it's not that hard: - Number of scams/crimes enabled by crypto in the last decade: a ton - Number of constructive, noncriminal use-cases observed in the last decade: zero By "constructive", I mean a use-case for which it is the best solution, which rules out every single blockchain use that is not a cryptocurrency. And the cryptocurrencies are the ones enabling the crime and scams.

jbirer 4y ago

This tells me that you misunderstood Satoshi's motivations completely, filling in your own ones instead. His goal was to create uncontrollable and indestructible money, not "save the world" or create "morally just money for puritan purposes". And he did do just that.

pen2l 4y ago
Satoshi would have been content with the current state of crypto, being a de facto vehicle for ransomware, serving as a tool for pushing society down the toilet drain? Consider his unease when Wikileaks started soliciting funds in BTC. If he were all about uncontrollable money he would not have sounded unhappiness about his ballgame being used by Wikileaks.

omgomgomgomg 4y ago

I do not think the intentions were poor. He obviously copied the freedom dollar concept and even said they have a couple years until the government catches up. He knew what happened to the previous own currency people so he stayed anonymous.