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The Alternative Genesis Block of Bitcoin
- nicelyjunaid2 4y ago[dead]
- erumnaz 4y ago[dead]
- erumnaz 4y ago[dead]
- abubaqar112 4y ago[dead]
- harunbpltl 4y ago[dead]
- Theoson 4y agoThis is one of the best, keep it up
- Theoson 4y agoSatoshi: “Writing a description for this thing for general audiences is bloody hard.” https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/threads/79/?view=satoshi https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/thre... Elon Musk: “Bloody hell, I’m going to have to write a blog. Can’t fit this into tweets.” https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/943887056492564480 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/943887056492564480
- emon_sanglap 4y ago[dead]
- anamul430470 4y ago[dead]
- fahad763 4y ago[dead]
- SRO1 4y ago[dead]
- rakpolo25 4y ago[dead]
- bababeed 4y agoHighly specific commonalities between Satoshi Nakamoto and PayPal co-founder Elon Musk https://medium.com/coinmonks/highly-specific-commonalities-between-satoshi-nakamoto-and-co-founder-of-paypal-elon-musk-4120f36da702 https://medium.com/coinmonks/highly-specific-commonalities-b...
- Smaug123 4y agoI'm not sure if the author is a programmer as such, but there are a few inferences which seem unjustified to me. For example, > However, it is possible to reveal a very important detail about Satoshi Nakamoto’s personality. The fact that Satoshi chose the genesis block with a certain timestamp (which included the sentence in the UK Times article) makes one realize how much preparation and meticulousness was behind Satoshi’s identity. This is immediately following a code snippet in which it is clear that some value must be hard-coded; it would be the work of seconds to think up a value that was funny or meaningful. I don't see why this indicates any preparation or meticulousness. Another example: > The other comment that arouses curiosity is this one: //// is this all we want to do if there's a file error like this? > Who was Satoshi referring to when speaking in the plural? Isn't this completely normal in programming? I only ever use the plural first person in code unless I'm specifically referring to myself as a human (in the same way that academic writing uses the plural).
- rajman187 4y agoAs a funny aside, the author of one of the early works on wavelets [1] employed the first person plural pronoun with a footnote on the first page defining it as the “Royal we” [1] https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.1994-2280 https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.1994-2280
- crecker 4y agoHi! OP here, thanks for your comment. Please note that I'm not a native English speaker so probably during translation I might have miswritten concepts as I intended. Let me explain. The fact that he released the first genesis block on 3rd January 2009 with the sentence of UK Times article is not casual. We can see from the first version of the source code that his network was ready many days before that date. Was he waiting for "fixing issues"? No, he ended up clearly with a release that contained many errors (e.g. amount created in genesis block can not be spent). > Isn't this completely normal in programming? I only ever use the plural first person in code unless I'm specifically referring to myself as a human (in the same way that academic writing uses the plural). Yeah, I do agree. However if you notice there are some comments written in a particular style ( with double slashes //) and there are some others written with four slashes. It's really weird to have both styles on codes, unless there are more people (>= 1) that work on the code or that reviews the code. In addition to this, please understand that none of my content must be taken as the only truth in this world, so I'm open to any discussions about those weird things I noticed :)
- thisisnotapipe 4y ago[dead]
- kuba___ 4y agodespite he's mentioned in this article he is barely mentioned - paul le roux. he had skills, money and the timing of his capture and satoshi's disappearance are right.
- crecker 4y agoThanks, I did not know about this!
- olalonde 4y agoNick Szabo[0] is the more likely candidate in my opinion, but I doubt that it's either of them. Adam Back was quite late to the game and initially dismissed Bitcoin. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo
- zadler 4y agoAdam back wasn't late to the game, he was there in 1998.
- olalonde 4y agoTo the Bitcoin game. He only started showing interest in Bitcoin when it was well into the multi billion$ market cap.
- sph 4y agoEvery time people mention Szabo, and every time someone needs to debunk this rumour. I'm on the phone, so it won't be me this time. One of the many argument against this theory is that Szabo is not much of a computer programmer, and Satoshi was very fluent with C++ among other skills. There's Hal Finney, the creator of PGP, which was a good programmer, a cypherpunk, and died a few years ago. The fact that Satoshi has shown inhuman restraint in showing up or saying a single world since 201x would be neatly explained if they were dead. I already talked at length about this, but no human would be able to keep their mouth shut and assets frozen if they were alive today and held a few billion dollars and spiritual reigns of the most controversial economic invention of the century. Not a single one. Let alone with the best opsec ever seen not to be nabbed, identified or killed by any of the major intelligence agencies in the world. Occam's razor.
- TekMol 4y agoThe article links to the first version of the source code: https://s3.amazonaws.com/nakamotoinstitute/code/bitcoin-nov08.tgz https://s3.amazonaws.com/nakamotoinstitute/code/bitcoin-nov0... Reading it now. It seems beautiful except for the strange fact that there is a random number of empty lines between the code blocks. Why would someone who obiviously likes the beauty of code and writing in general not fix those?
- crecker 4y ago> Why would someone who obiviously likes the beauty of code and writing in general not fix those? Because that code is heavily edited, prepared for a review. For sure there are some missing comments (e.g. see "debug print" on line 112 compared to line 1042).
- TekMol 4y agoWho edited it? And why did they leave everything else intact except for those empty lines between the function blocks?
- crecker 4y agoWho knows? The person or people behind Satoshi identity. I believe that the person who posted that source code on BitcoinTalk forum has already stated that he merely copied&pasted the code (so he did not introduce any weird formatting).
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- 5350-uiop-1130 4y agoAdam Back seems like the kind of clumsy genius who would lose his seed phrase and also somehow manage to hide in plain sight. I read somewhere that satoshi nakamoto means central intelligence in japanese, not sure if thats true.
- adastra22 4y agoAdam Back is neither a genius nor satoshi.
- Kiro 4y agoHow do you know?
- adastra22 4y agoWell, I know Adam Back personally, but this is an anon account so I won’t say more. He has also made numerous flubs when describing bitcoin that betray a lack of understanding of the incentives underlying bitcoin which satoshi would have known. The type of ecash he wrote about prior to bitcoin was fundamentally very different. Bitcoin is not an evolution of hashcash like systems. It is fundamentally different by embracing an eventually consistent model which was antithetical to the approaches taken by Back, Szabo, etc.
- sph 4y ago> satoshi nakamoto means central intelligence in japanese It does not.
- drexlspivey 4y agoSeed phrases did not exist until at least 4 years later
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y agoI need to stop commenting on this board.
- kang 4y agoThe original thread is more interesting: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=382374.msg4108815#msg4108815 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=382374.msg4108815#ms... ...& bitcointalk has many more ideas OP might wanna fill his blog with
- crecker 4y agoThanks, I might expand this in a new article :) This seemed to be too long for some readers.
- kang 4y ago
- crecker 4y agoVerbose? Explaining data structures to newbie is verbose, isn't it? Off-topic? And then a different hash from the hardcoded value in the code? Not quite sure. You need to verify your sources. You can easily verify the hash of the pre-genesis block yourself: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7o0ejr/has_anyone_tried_to_reverse_the_original/ibkdsd1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7o0ejr/has_anyone_trie... If you mean a different hash from the actual genesis block of Bitcoin, released on 3rd January 2009, of course it's different. We're talking about two different networks.
- how_rude 4y agoHow rude.
- keeran 4y agoYet there it is at the top of HN.
- pcdoodle 4y agoWho peed in your cheerios this morning?
- wslh 4y ago
- vmsp 4y agoSlightly off topic, but the site seems to be generated by "Olivetti 0.104.3". Has anyone heard of this static site generator? Google's not helping.
- crecker 4y agoHahah it's gohugo but I wanted to customize a little bit. It's a funny easter egg to mention the incredible genius behind Olivetti
- wslh 4y agoThe most accurate and serious articles about the analysis of Satoshi Nakamoto early days is from our co-founder Sergio Lerner [1]. For example [2]. He is an authority in the field (you can easily check that) so in any case I recommend OP to review the data with him. [1] https://bitslog.com/ https://bitslog.com/ [2] https://bitslog.com/2020/08/22/the-patoshi-mining-machine/ https://bitslog.com/2020/08/22/the-patoshi-mining-machine/
- crecker 4y agoThanks!
- MatthewCampbell 4y ago> Unfortunately, due to a problem also present in the first public version of Bitcoin, Satoshi could never spend the money from that transaction. What evidence suggests that this was unintentional? It offers a sense of fairness and objectivity from the originator, without generalizing the concept of a transactionless block or requiring any special logic to enforce it.
- crecker 4y agoGreat question. I can't say this was intentional or not. To people interested, it was only one line of code missing: he ""forgot"" to include the first transaction to the mapTransactions.
- hurlern 4y agoWhat if the identity of Satoshi Nakimoto is just some guy who almost no-one has ever heard of, not a famous cryptographer? Perhaps he's a software developer working a modest job in some company somewhere, chuckling to himself as he reads all these outlandish conspiracy theories about his identity. Maybe he retired to make cheese as a hobby. Maybe he's now an old man with a pipe and a walking stick who regularly enjoys the company of his grandkids. Maybe he died and took the secret with him to the grave. Not as fun to think about, but if so, it'll happen some day, and the mystery will remain forever.
- antupis 4y agoI would say Nakamoto was probably Hal Finley and guy is dead so we probably never know the truth.
- im3w1l 4y ago> the source code does not contain all the files needed to generate a binary. This strikes me as the action of a self-conscious individual, that also needs the validation of an external group because he is working alone.
- crecker 4y agoYes, correct. But why including such specific parts? This was my question after that phrase :)
- FabHK 4y agoIt's a bad article. As one example: > The transaction in the first block is a coinbase transaction ― consisting of an input and an output. We recognize that it is a coinbase transaction (i.e. coin creation) from one key element: The number of inputs is equal to 1 (this condition is explicit in Satoshi’s code). That's not what's characteristic for a coinbase transaction, many transactions might have only one input. What's characteristic is that the input comes out of no-where, so to speak, and has no predecessor. In other words, it's the second part of the condition below, not the first one, that characterises CoinBase: bool IsCoinBase() const { return (vin.size() == 1 && vin[0].prevout.IsNull()); }
- crecker 4y ago> That's not what's characteristic for a coinbase transaction, many transactions might have only one input. Yes, you're correct. Thank you for the clarification, however I wanted to mark the check found on the source code. By the way, "bad article": I think you're a little bit over exaggerating.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago> By the way, "bad article": I think you're a little bit over exaggerating. With all due respect, you might be a little bit biased.
- crecker 4y agoWith all due respect, you're not adding anything to discussion. HN really surprises me every day. :/
- top_secret_fact 4y ago
- crecker 4y agoLet me ring you in a bit. Can I also order a pizza?
- chatterhead 4y ago
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- sherlocknakamot 4y ago[dead]
- dnhk21 4y agoIt recently surfaced that Elon Musk's x.com email was active on the original Cypherpunk mailing list. https://mailing-list-archive.cryptoanarchy.wiki/authors/x_x_at_x_com_/ https://mailing-list-archive.cryptoanarchy.wiki/authors/x_x_... In 1998.
- finaltrap 4y ago[dead]
- finaltrap 4y ago
- moistly 4y agoGood god, it’s a Dan Brown novel come to life.