7 ms·

Did Bitcoin leak from an American spy lab?

35 points by jdkee 3y ago

jdkee 3y ago
See https://archive.ph/MTbIT https://archive.ph/MTbIT
wdb 3y ago
Conspiracy theorists appear not that creative
- MerelyMortal 3y ago
  Devil's advocate: There's no rule that conspiracies have to be elaborate or out-of-this-world or anything like that.
  - ChrisRR 3y ago
    If anything I'd say most conspiracies aren't half as interesting as conspiracy theorists make out. A network of lizard people who drink the blood of babies but a single rambling man happens to know all the details and is always only 5 minutes away from publishing them? Makes sense Systematic government lobbying in order to cause politicians to vote in the way that only benefits the rich but not the poor, while publicly focusing on minor issues so that major sweeping changes can be implemented without much notice? Well that seems unlikely.
- smoyer 3y ago
  Bitcoin leaked from an alien lab and was created from human tissue they sampled?
  - wodenokoto 3y ago
    That would explain Covid vaccines. Think about it.
- akomtu 3y ago
  Bitcoin was created by AI of the future who sent itself into the past to create a currency that would fund the AI's creation.
  - pyinstallwoes 3y ago
    And it did that by extending itself into the future first thereby entangling all time and space and creating a time chain block universe distributed computing architecture that can simulate any point along its existence which is coupled to multiple spacetime simultaneously since it exists everywhere moving forward. It’s also unfortunately an accelerant towards a black hole Due to incentivized maximum of using all spacetime coordinates for computronium-or-similar space filling requirements.
  - catchnear4321 3y ago
    it was less about the currency, more about the hardware. now that we are on to language models, printing money is cheaper than mining it.
    - contingencies 3y ago
      Creating hype around tokens with LLMs and hedging across virtual exchanges powered by artificial liquidity produced by cabal of token creators and exchange operators is apparently cheaper than accessing the physical world to create a physical token to appeal to millions of years of 'monkey have' instinct. Either way, it's monkeys all the way down.
maxbond 3y ago
Seems like a nothing burger. There's lots of prior art to Bitcoin - why should we scrutinize this paper in particular (as opposed to say, the work of Finney or Szabo)? The article gestures at a Japanese researcher being involved but that is a huge stretch. It also implies RSA "leaked" from GCHQ but I've never heard it suggested that that was a "leak" rather than an independent discovery (something that happens all the time in science[1], calculus being a popular example). Whereas the suggestion that say, Robert T. Morris writing one of the first worms at a time when buffer overflows weren't widely understood was related to his father's position as a chief scientist at NSA - that has some legs to it, as far as "leaks" from NSA are concerned. (I neither believe nor disbelieve this, it's just as believable to me that he learned it from hacker lore or even independently discovered it. Afaict he's never given an interview about it [other than to law enforcement and Cornell staff], unfortunately. If you're reading this RTM or someone who knows RTM, please consider giving an interview or oral history on this incredibly historic topic. I think 'rtm is actually RTM but they haven't commented in a decade. And I can't be the first person to ask this of them, they must have their reasons.). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_discoveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_discoveries
makingstuffs 3y ago
Personally think there’s a lot of weight behind the notion it was Paul LeRoux https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux
- ramblerman 3y ago
  Lol, really some random thug with a bit of technical skills? Given that extensive rap sheet on wikipedia, I highly doubt this is the kind of guy with the self control to sit on his bitcoin while it was worth north of 8 figures.
  - sebastianz 3y ago
    > random thug with a bit of technical skills? Did you actually read the wikipedia page? This is a highly intelligent person with no morals who orchestrated drug and arms smuggling cartel business on the entire planet for 15 years, murder, fraud and money laundering, of which some part is known, a big part of which he admitted to himself.
- mrkramer 3y ago
  >Personally think there’s a lot of weight behind the notion it was Paul LeRoux I'm glad that you elaborated why you think that's true, shame on me to expect anything. Bitcoin was all about transparency, fighting fraud and crime, coming to consensus on the chronology of transactions in an organized manner. The last thing that criminal and drug smuggler wanted was an organized system that holds everyone accountable in a transparent and fraud/crime-free way. It's too bad that Satoshi was as he put it "better with code than with words", because he didn't explain clearly what his goals and vision with Bitcoin were and because of that cypherpunks, crypto-anarchists and criminals overtook Bitcoin. And now Bitcoin has become the synonym for crime, drugs and the dark web. But I have to tell you police and law enforcement agencies like Bitcoin very much because of that aforementioned transaction transparency.
  - makingstuffs 3y ago
    If you clicked onto the Wikipedia page I linked you should have been provided with enough information to infer my reasoning. Shame on me to expect someone to click a source
ThinkBeat 3y ago
I dont support this theory. I do, however, think that BTC is a useful construct for intelligence agencies. Esp. in the time where people thought it was anonymous and untraceable, and thus, used for illicit purchases and transfers. There are limits to how much a tumbler can help you if you have just gotten. ransomware payment of a few million USD. The eventual centralized giant crypto trading, buying selling sites make it even better for intelligence agencies. Who could operate large minting farms and tumblers and sites for sell, buy, trade etc.
teleforce 3y ago
It's an open secret that based on many crypto experts and the ones who knew Hal Finney personally that he's the original author or one of the original authors of Bitcoin [1],[2],[3]. Apparently coding has certain style and signature, and everyone coding style is different especially C program where freestyle is the norm, in which the original Bitcoin codes was originally written in C. It's also claimed by some experts that the original coding for Bitcoin code released by the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto has Hal's "fingerprint" all over it [3],[4]. [1] Hal Finney and Bitcoin's Earliest Days: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-MBB-26228 https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-MBB-26228 [2] Remembering Hal Finney on the 14th Anniversary of the First Bitcoin Transaction: https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/01/12/remembering-hal-finney-on-the-14th-anniversary-of-the-first-bitcoin-transaction/ https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/01/12/remem... [3] The Developer Who Discovered Bitcoin's Original Codebase, Jim Blasko: https://hackernoon.com/the-developer-who-discovered-bitcoins-original-codebase-jim-blasko https://hackernoon.com/the-developer-who-discovered-bitcoins... [4] Uncovering Satoshi Nakamoto? A Look into the Techniques Used to Search for Bitcoins Creator: https://blockchainindustrygroup.org/uncovering-satoshi-nakamoto-a-look-into-the-techniques-used-to-search-for-bitcoins-creator/ https://blockchainindustrygroup.org/uncovering-satoshi-nakam...
- mortallywounded 3y ago
  Dave Kleimen is an interesting candidate for Satoshi, but I can't get by the way he died and yet didn't touch the vault of coins. It's hard to imagine... I don't think he had the technical chops for it either. Len Sassaman is still the top candidate in my book.
  - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
    > Len Sassaman is still the top candidate in my book. I agree with this judgement. Another hot candidate is in my opinion Nick Szabo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo).
    - mortallywounded 3y ago
thelastparadise 3y ago
> No. But the theory is spreading online Great so the economist is telling us with certainty something about the origin of Bitcoin. This seems to be a disingenuous, agenda-riddled article. Declaring a conclusion up front with certainty, on a topic still not well understood, is anti-intellectual and has no business on hn.
futureamish 3y ago
[flagged]

35 points by jdkee 3y ago

jdkee 3y ago

See https://archive.ph/MTbIT https://archive.ph/MTbIT

wdb 3y ago

Conspiracy theorists appear not that creative

MerelyMortal 3y ago
Devil's advocate: There's no rule that conspiracies have to be elaborate or out-of-this-world or anything like that.
- ChrisRR 3y ago
  If anything I'd say most conspiracies aren't half as interesting as conspiracy theorists make out. A network of lizard people who drink the blood of babies but a single rambling man happens to know all the details and is always only 5 minutes away from publishing them? Makes sense Systematic government lobbying in order to cause politicians to vote in the way that only benefits the rich but not the poor, while publicly focusing on minor issues so that major sweeping changes can be implemented without much notice? Well that seems unlikely.
smoyer 3y ago
Bitcoin leaked from an alien lab and was created from human tissue they sampled?
- wodenokoto 3y ago
  That would explain Covid vaccines. Think about it.
akomtu 3y ago
Bitcoin was created by AI of the future who sent itself into the past to create a currency that would fund the AI's creation.
- pyinstallwoes 3y ago
  And it did that by extending itself into the future first thereby entangling all time and space and creating a time chain block universe distributed computing architecture that can simulate any point along its existence which is coupled to multiple spacetime simultaneously since it exists everywhere moving forward. It’s also unfortunately an accelerant towards a black hole Due to incentivized maximum of using all spacetime coordinates for computronium-or-similar space filling requirements.
- catchnear4321 3y ago
  it was less about the currency, more about the hardware. now that we are on to language models, printing money is cheaper than mining it.
  - contingencies 3y ago
    Creating hype around tokens with LLMs and hedging across virtual exchanges powered by artificial liquidity produced by cabal of token creators and exchange operators is apparently cheaper than accessing the physical world to create a physical token to appeal to millions of years of 'monkey have' instinct. Either way, it's monkeys all the way down.

maxbond 3y ago

Seems like a nothing burger. There's lots of prior art to Bitcoin - why should we scrutinize this paper in particular (as opposed to say, the work of Finney or Szabo)? The article gestures at a Japanese researcher being involved but that is a huge stretch. It also implies RSA "leaked" from GCHQ but I've never heard it suggested that that was a "leak" rather than an independent discovery (something that happens all the time in science[1], calculus being a popular example). Whereas the suggestion that say, Robert T. Morris writing one of the first worms at a time when buffer overflows weren't widely understood was related to his father's position as a chief scientist at NSA - that has some legs to it, as far as "leaks" from NSA are concerned. (I neither believe nor disbelieve this, it's just as believable to me that he learned it from hacker lore or even independently discovered it. Afaict he's never given an interview about it [other than to law enforcement and Cornell staff], unfortunately. If you're reading this RTM or someone who knows RTM, please consider giving an interview or oral history on this incredibly historic topic. I think 'rtm is actually RTM but they haven't commented in a decade. And I can't be the first person to ask this of them, they must have their reasons.). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_discoveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_discoveries

makingstuffs 3y ago

Personally think there’s a lot of weight behind the notion it was Paul LeRoux https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux

ramblerman 3y ago
Lol, really some random thug with a bit of technical skills? Given that extensive rap sheet on wikipedia, I highly doubt this is the kind of guy with the self control to sit on his bitcoin while it was worth north of 8 figures.
- sebastianz 3y ago
  > random thug with a bit of technical skills? Did you actually read the wikipedia page? This is a highly intelligent person with no morals who orchestrated drug and arms smuggling cartel business on the entire planet for 15 years, murder, fraud and money laundering, of which some part is known, a big part of which he admitted to himself.
mrkramer 3y ago
>Personally think there’s a lot of weight behind the notion it was Paul LeRoux I'm glad that you elaborated why you think that's true, shame on me to expect anything. Bitcoin was all about transparency, fighting fraud and crime, coming to consensus on the chronology of transactions in an organized manner. The last thing that criminal and drug smuggler wanted was an organized system that holds everyone accountable in a transparent and fraud/crime-free way. It's too bad that Satoshi was as he put it "better with code than with words", because he didn't explain clearly what his goals and vision with Bitcoin were and because of that cypherpunks, crypto-anarchists and criminals overtook Bitcoin. And now Bitcoin has become the synonym for crime, drugs and the dark web. But I have to tell you police and law enforcement agencies like Bitcoin very much because of that aforementioned transaction transparency.
- makingstuffs 3y ago
  If you clicked onto the Wikipedia page I linked you should have been provided with enough information to infer my reasoning. Shame on me to expect someone to click a source

ThinkBeat 3y ago

I dont support this theory. I do, however, think that BTC is a useful construct for intelligence agencies. Esp. in the time where people thought it was anonymous and untraceable, and thus, used for illicit purchases and transfers. There are limits to how much a tumbler can help you if you have just gotten. ransomware payment of a few million USD. The eventual centralized giant crypto trading, buying selling sites make it even better for intelligence agencies. Who could operate large minting farms and tumblers and sites for sell, buy, trade etc.

teleforce 3y ago

It's an open secret that based on many crypto experts and the ones who knew Hal Finney personally that he's the original author or one of the original authors of Bitcoin [1],[2],[3]. Apparently coding has certain style and signature, and everyone coding style is different especially C program where freestyle is the norm, in which the original Bitcoin codes was originally written in C. It's also claimed by some experts that the original coding for Bitcoin code released by the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto has Hal's "fingerprint" all over it [3],[4]. [1] Hal Finney and Bitcoin's Earliest Days: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-MBB-26228 https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-MBB-26228 [2] Remembering Hal Finney on the 14th Anniversary of the First Bitcoin Transaction: https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/01/12/remembering-hal-finney-on-the-14th-anniversary-of-the-first-bitcoin-transaction/ https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/01/12/remem... [3] The Developer Who Discovered Bitcoin's Original Codebase, Jim Blasko: https://hackernoon.com/the-developer-who-discovered-bitcoins-original-codebase-jim-blasko https://hackernoon.com/the-developer-who-discovered-bitcoins... [4] Uncovering Satoshi Nakamoto? A Look into the Techniques Used to Search for Bitcoins Creator: https://blockchainindustrygroup.org/uncovering-satoshi-nakamoto-a-look-into-the-techniques-used-to-search-for-bitcoins-creator/ https://blockchainindustrygroup.org/uncovering-satoshi-nakam...

mortallywounded 3y ago
Dave Kleimen is an interesting candidate for Satoshi, but I can't get by the way he died and yet didn't touch the vault of coins. It's hard to imagine... I don't think he had the technical chops for it either. Len Sassaman is still the top candidate in my book.
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > Len Sassaman is still the top candidate in my book. I agree with this judgement. Another hot candidate is in my opinion Nick Szabo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo).
  - mortallywounded 3y ago

thelastparadise 3y ago

> No. But the theory is spreading online Great so the economist is telling us with certainty something about the origin of Bitcoin. This seems to be a disingenuous, agenda-riddled article. Declaring a conclusion up front with certainty, on a topic still not well understood, is anti-intellectual and has no business on hn.

futureamish 3y ago

[flagged]