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I’ve always assumed it was a state actor such as the NSA that invented it. Seems like the obvious step for such an organisation to take, even just for shits and

I’ve always assumed it was a state actor such as the NSA that invented it. Seems like the obvious step for such an organisation to take, even just for shits and giggles. There was an awful lot of talk about electronic gold and financial/crypto-havens in the 90s (see also Cryptonomicon) so it was brewing for a long time. Plus such an actor is one of the few who could keep quiet about it all this time - it’s part of the job. One would expect that we’d all know who Satoshi was by now, unless Satoshi was a state-sponsored collective effort.

wombat-man 3y ago
I'm pretty impressed that the secret has been kept this long. But I guess whoever made it is just living as one of the many people who were lucky to get in really early.
- changoplatanero 3y ago
  There's a somewhat credible theory that the inventor of bitcoin is dead now. That could explain why his bitcoins are untouched and why he doesn't emerge to claim credit for his invention.
  - gizajob 3y ago
    By the same token (no pun) the inventor might not have been alive in the first place, at least not as a singular individual. Individuals sitting on billions find it very hard to keep quiet about it.
    - meowface 3y ago
      I'd personally bet money on it being a solo project from him (until he open sourced it). I never saw compelling evidence for the collective theory. If you dig through all of his forum posts, emails, and code, it's entirely consistent with a solo dev reading a bunch of papers, combining ideas (digital currency + hashcash), iterating on some software, and interacting with his community.
      - gizajob 3y ago
        You’re correct. I’m not really denying any evidence, just there remain a bunch of mysteries around Satoshi’s identity, that all we can do is say “it could be this OR it could be this OR this could have happened OR they could have been this”. One can “or” oneself all day long in the face of a mystery or a paradox.
  - lesuorac 3y ago
    Even if he is alive the lottery curse is probably good enough reason to never claim them now. When the coins were only worth a few million he could've cashed out then but now he's just in for permanent trouble.
    - wombat-man 3y ago
      Well, whatever the process is to cash out coins you mined could be used I assume? Such a person could likely afford top legal talent. Also, lotteries in many states require you to claim with your real name. A corporation could be used for bitcoin.
      - lesuorac 3y ago
        Corporations hiding a name only obscures it from the general population. Kind of like how your social security number is private. Sophisticated criminals who actually are interested in targeting you can play your shell game until they figure out who you are.
  - meowface 3y ago
    It's definitely possible. But one could think of plenty of other hypotheses for why they're unmoved and why he hasn't taken credit. In my opinion, there was a real (but vague) clue to his identity that was not a red herring: the IP leak in the debug logs he sent to Hal Finney. He used Tor most of the time but briefly slipped up and likely divulged his real, residential IP address. If that's the case, then he was living in California, possibly around the LA area, as of January 2009. https://whoissatoshi.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/satoshi-in-california/ https://whoissatoshi.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/satoshi-in-cal...
    - bananapub 3y ago
      how is that a clue, given the best theory anyone has is that Hal Finney himself was Satoshi?
      - meowface 3y ago
        Because that's not the best theory anyone has.
bmulcahy 3y ago
>One would expect that we’d all know who Satoshi was by now, unless Satoshi was a state-sponsored collective effort. Or, if the creator died of ALS.
c7b 3y ago
There's math to show that the viability of a secret decreases rapidly as the number of people involved grows: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... The NSA couldn't even keep their data sniffing secret, the odds that they could keep the billion-dollar Bitcoin secret are not good (according to the theory above). There are more viable theories about Satoshi's identity and why/how he disappeared completely imho (eg Hal Finney). The paper and the name prove next to nothing, it's maybe a hint that one of the the creators might have had a US security clearance at some point.
- gizajob 3y ago
  I agree… but governmental actors prone to secrecy are in fact very very good at keeping official secrets. Their jobs and basically their lives depend on it, and they swear oaths ensuring not to break secrets as part of their work. There’s heaps we don’t know about that are kept top secret, by your logic we should know about absolutely all of it, and the proof is that we don’t. A good example being the work of Turing and Bletchley Park that was kept secret for a few decades after the end of WWII that nobody knew about due to the importance of the crypto skills learned in combatting the Soviets afterwards. Tommy Flowers even implemented the first programmable computer called Colossus to break German encryption, and it was ordered to be destroyed at the end of the war, leading the world to believe that ENIAC was the first programmable computer. Secrets are kept all the time.
karaterobot 3y ago
> Seems like the obvious step for such an organisation to take, even just for shits and giggles I don't understand this. What does the NSA get out of it? Developing it to study cryptography? Why not, but then why release it publicly? The fact that Bitcoin didn't replace fiat currency is something we know now, but recall that it was considered a possibility at the time. In the end, it just cost a lot of people a lot of money. Say what you want about the NSA, I don't think they would create something with a huge downside and no upside for them into the public for shits and giggles.
- sysadm1n 3y ago
  > What does the NSA get out of it? A transparent ledger which is easy to audit, for the purpose of catching cybercriminals.
  - bananapub 3y ago
    well that hasn't worked out very well, then? the elite tier of notional criminals don't get caught by that.
- gizajob 3y ago
  If something crypto-related is ripe for invention then they may as well invent it even just to keep an eye on it. Plus at the last count, they’re $60billion up if they did invent it, and don’t need the money right now.
- wyldberry 3y ago
  In no particular order: Pushes entities of interest towards using this new currency as part of sanctions evasion. Creates downstream effects in tech for expanding the technology. Promising parts can be used to obtain budget for things that are even more off the books. To this day one of the more prominent use cases of bitcoin/cryptocurrencies has been to turn USD into sanctioned currencies.
  - karaterobot 3y ago
    But hasn't it made it easier to get around sanctions, not harder?
kjkjadksj 3y ago
If it was NSA, you’d think there would be more back doors and so many millions of people wouldn’t be using it for drugs or fake ids.
- gizajob 3y ago
  Yeah but if such a system can be invented and be spread simply, then they may as well do it themselves.

wombat-man 3y ago

I'm pretty impressed that the secret has been kept this long. But I guess whoever made it is just living as one of the many people who were lucky to get in really early.

changoplatanero 3y ago
There's a somewhat credible theory that the inventor of bitcoin is dead now. That could explain why his bitcoins are untouched and why he doesn't emerge to claim credit for his invention.
- gizajob 3y ago
  By the same token (no pun) the inventor might not have been alive in the first place, at least not as a singular individual. Individuals sitting on billions find it very hard to keep quiet about it.
  - meowface 3y ago
    I'd personally bet money on it being a solo project from him (until he open sourced it). I never saw compelling evidence for the collective theory. If you dig through all of his forum posts, emails, and code, it's entirely consistent with a solo dev reading a bunch of papers, combining ideas (digital currency + hashcash), iterating on some software, and interacting with his community.
    - gizajob 3y ago
      You’re correct. I’m not really denying any evidence, just there remain a bunch of mysteries around Satoshi’s identity, that all we can do is say “it could be this OR it could be this OR this could have happened OR they could have been this”. One can “or” oneself all day long in the face of a mystery or a paradox.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  Even if he is alive the lottery curse is probably good enough reason to never claim them now. When the coins were only worth a few million he could've cashed out then but now he's just in for permanent trouble.
  - wombat-man 3y ago
    Well, whatever the process is to cash out coins you mined could be used I assume? Such a person could likely afford top legal talent. Also, lotteries in many states require you to claim with your real name. A corporation could be used for bitcoin.
    - lesuorac 3y ago
      Corporations hiding a name only obscures it from the general population. Kind of like how your social security number is private. Sophisticated criminals who actually are interested in targeting you can play your shell game until they figure out who you are.
- meowface 3y ago
  It's definitely possible. But one could think of plenty of other hypotheses for why they're unmoved and why he hasn't taken credit. In my opinion, there was a real (but vague) clue to his identity that was not a red herring: the IP leak in the debug logs he sent to Hal Finney. He used Tor most of the time but briefly slipped up and likely divulged his real, residential IP address. If that's the case, then he was living in California, possibly around the LA area, as of January 2009. https://whoissatoshi.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/satoshi-in-california/ https://whoissatoshi.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/satoshi-in-cal...
  - bananapub 3y ago
    how is that a clue, given the best theory anyone has is that Hal Finney himself was Satoshi?
    - meowface 3y ago
      Because that's not the best theory anyone has.

bmulcahy 3y ago

>One would expect that we’d all know who Satoshi was by now, unless Satoshi was a state-sponsored collective effort. Or, if the creator died of ALS.

c7b 3y ago

There's math to show that the viability of a secret decreases rapidly as the number of people involved grows: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... The NSA couldn't even keep their data sniffing secret, the odds that they could keep the billion-dollar Bitcoin secret are not good (according to the theory above). There are more viable theories about Satoshi's identity and why/how he disappeared completely imho (eg Hal Finney). The paper and the name prove next to nothing, it's maybe a hint that one of the the creators might have had a US security clearance at some point.

gizajob 3y ago
I agree… but governmental actors prone to secrecy are in fact very very good at keeping official secrets. Their jobs and basically their lives depend on it, and they swear oaths ensuring not to break secrets as part of their work. There’s heaps we don’t know about that are kept top secret, by your logic we should know about absolutely all of it, and the proof is that we don’t. A good example being the work of Turing and Bletchley Park that was kept secret for a few decades after the end of WWII that nobody knew about due to the importance of the crypto skills learned in combatting the Soviets afterwards. Tommy Flowers even implemented the first programmable computer called Colossus to break German encryption, and it was ordered to be destroyed at the end of the war, leading the world to believe that ENIAC was the first programmable computer. Secrets are kept all the time.

karaterobot 3y ago

> Seems like the obvious step for such an organisation to take, even just for shits and giggles I don't understand this. What does the NSA get out of it? Developing it to study cryptography? Why not, but then why release it publicly? The fact that Bitcoin didn't replace fiat currency is something we know now, but recall that it was considered a possibility at the time. In the end, it just cost a lot of people a lot of money. Say what you want about the NSA, I don't think they would create something with a huge downside and no upside for them into the public for shits and giggles.

sysadm1n 3y ago
> What does the NSA get out of it? A transparent ledger which is easy to audit, for the purpose of catching cybercriminals.
- bananapub 3y ago
  well that hasn't worked out very well, then? the elite tier of notional criminals don't get caught by that.
gizajob 3y ago
If something crypto-related is ripe for invention then they may as well invent it even just to keep an eye on it. Plus at the last count, they’re $60billion up if they did invent it, and don’t need the money right now.
wyldberry 3y ago
In no particular order: Pushes entities of interest towards using this new currency as part of sanctions evasion. Creates downstream effects in tech for expanding the technology. Promising parts can be used to obtain budget for things that are even more off the books. To this day one of the more prominent use cases of bitcoin/cryptocurrencies has been to turn USD into sanctioned currencies.
- karaterobot 3y ago
  But hasn't it made it easier to get around sanctions, not harder?

kjkjadksj 3y ago

If it was NSA, you’d think there would be more back doors and so many millions of people wouldn’t be using it for drugs or fake ids.

gizajob 3y ago
Yeah but if such a system can be invented and be spread simply, then they may as well do it themselves.