10 ms·

Hal Finney Was Not Satoshi Nakamoto

113 points by greyface- 3y ago

tempmac 3y ago
what happens if wallet from satoshi is stolen and poured into the market for quick bucks? what happens if "satoshi" gets desperate for quick cash? idk this seems to be a major financial risk for bitcoiners, not altruism...
- maipen 3y ago
  It's been more than 10 years since there was activity. The market would crash but eventualy recover. There's really nothing dramatic about it.
  - monsieurbanana 3y ago
    Even if you were right on both of your points it still would be dramatic. Behind every marker crash there's people's lives changing forever.
    - maipen 3y ago
      > Behind every marker crash there's people's lives changing forever. Absolutely. My reply was directed towards bitcoin as a technology. The market volatility but more important the constant manipulators and bad actors really have a negative impact in people's lifes. But most often we see this happening to people that are invested in crypto but not users of it. Because they keep their money on exchanges, they are not taking advantage to the security and self sovereignty that comes with crypto. There is no evidence that bitcoin will die or wouldn't recover from market dumps. However there's plenty examples of exchanges going under or stealing people's assets forever.
    - toenail 3y ago
      Nobody knows how much Satoshi mined. And a rational actor would not "dump" coins on the market for giggles, but for profit, hence avoid a market crash. Besides, bitcoin currently has a trading volume of around 10 billion per day, hard to crash that.
- sschueller 3y ago
  Yes, all those known wallets should be burned if anyone really cared about the stability of bitcoin. Others aka "shit coins" do not have this massive amount of cash that could all of a sudden be spent causing a huge crash. Although very unlikely that anyone will ever crack those keys it is possible that the keys are found by someone or Satoshi himself spends it. The bitcoin core maximalists should focus on fixing their block including moving to PoS instead of pissing on all other coins constantly.
  - toenail 3y ago
    > fixing their block including moving to PoS POW fixed a problem POS does not solve, it is an entirely decentralized, trustless system. It is not possible to move to POS, the only coins who can do that are coins that are not decentralized and trustless to begin with.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  If it's "poured" into the market, the value will crash so whoever's trying to sell them won't make as much money. That said, at this point, any activity in that wallet will cause a huge stir in the community. That said, there's probably a nontrivial amount of processing power currently being used to crack that wallet / find the secret key. A theory is that Satoshi themselves lost access to their own wallet, so if there is activity, it may mean someone got the private key. Anyway yeah, it is a huge risk, and it's proven by the billions scammed from people when new coins were created and the creators themselves held onto a lot of the coins themselves to sell when the hype cycle is trending upwards.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  lots of bitcoin from large old blocks have moved before, it is news within the crypto space and pretty fun drama. bitcoin from blocks from when satoshi was mining have moved before, and people start rumors that this exact thing is occurring and turned out not to be a satoshi block. price dips have happened over these movements. the rumor mill is pretty cyclical. the price dips have had less and less magnitude over the years, as there are so many computing bullish and bearish forces in bitcoin now. headlines today that move bitcoin up 1% would have crashed bitcoin 35% a decade ago. bitcoin has a lot more liquidity now, or in some periods of time has a lot more liquidity than now. a large sell can be absorbed. people's confidence in the bitcoin concept doesn't really shake just because someone selling ... runs out of things to sell. many large bitcoin holders don't want govbucks, or state currency. they can do so much with their bitcoin, mostly earning yield by depositing it into something yield producing in the crypto economy, investing in other projects, supporting causes they believe in. it isn't important to them if a team or merchants gets govbucks somewhere down the line or immediately.
toenail 3y ago
https://evanhatch.medium.com/len-sassaman-and-satoshi-e483c85c2b10 https://evanhatch.medium.com/len-sassaman-and-satoshi-e483c8...
- api 3y ago
  It’s obviously someone or a small group in this circle. Continuing to keep a low profile makes a lot of sense given all the negativity surrounding Bitcoin and the criminal figures that might come looking for Satoshi’s keys. What if Len forgot, when he took his own life, that he was the only one with the private key to the Satoshi wallet? Even if he wasn’t the only or even primary author that could explain that wallet being dead.
- bloopernova 3y ago
  What a fascinating and in-depth article, thank you for linking to it.
- mersenne 3y ago
  To me, Len Sassaman is the best Satoshi Nakamoto that we know of.
tromp 3y ago
> Who, we ask, is so altruistic as to create a new monetary system but not use it to enrich themselves? Bitcoin's supply schedule, in which half of all Bitcoin is mined in the first four years, guaranteed a Bitcoin wealth concentration on the early miners, especially considering how few there were. At long intervals, Satoshi would be the only one, mining on his laptop. A truly altruistic system would not confer such a huge advantage on early miners, for example by fixing the block reward. Then each generation would be able to mine the same amount of bitcoin, instead of each next generation getting 32x less than the current one. Such a steady supply would also make Bitcoin much less the vehicle for speculation that it has turned into. Of course, then the supply wouldn't have a finite cap, it would be limited by time only. Still, that would already make it very different from fiat, with the yearly supply inflation rate going down steadily toward 0 (known as being dis-inflationary). Eventually, the supply rate would more or less balance the inevitable coin loss rate [1]. [1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-supply-1169a188d153 https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...
- toenail 3y ago
  > A truly altruistic system would not confer such a huge advantage on early miners Bitcoin never claimed to be and is not altruistic. And the same can be said about almost all investments, you need information early, you need to judge the information correctly, and you need to move in. Same with bitcoin.
  - aniforprez 3y ago
    GP said nothing about bitcoin claiming to be anything. They're directly quoting the article
    - toenail 3y ago
      Your point being?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
thisisnotapipe 3y ago
[dead]
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  I've always been really turned off by this religious fawning over random crypto personalities, including Hoskinson despite their contributions, the primary similarity is that fans get married to the first personality they get exposed to and elevate that person. just like religion. there is nothing objective about that, there is nothing important about Charles Hoskinson's "surprise Ask Me Anything" Adam Back has always been floated as a creator for like a decade
chx 3y ago
Remind me why we dropped Paul Le Roux as Satoshi. I thought it fit rather well: he had the motivation, the knowledge and the disappearance of Satoshi also fit.
- automatic6131 3y ago
  Well, if any of Satoshi's wallets move after Paul Le Roux is released in 2045 or so, we'll have a smoking gun ;)
  - mirzap 3y ago
    He was arrested in 2012 and sentenced in 2020. If time spent in jail counts, he'll get out much earlier than 2045.
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      Time spent in pre-trial detention almost always counts in the USA.
- rurban 3y ago
  We didn't drop him, we just will not know for a some more decades
- sireat 3y ago
  I asked this question about a year ago. Paul Le Roux had the motivation, the knowledge, the multitude of projects, the ability/drive to take on different persona. Plus Le Roux coded crypto projects in C++ on Windows unlike most of his peers. The timelines also fit with Le Roux going into custody when Satoshi dissappeared. Also with 100Ms in USD sitting in laundry baskets around his apartment, Le Roux would not have needed to worry about BTC until it was too late. I had someone reply that Satoshi and Le Roux coding styles were too different: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33127079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33127079
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
api 3y ago
The tabs vs spaces thing is pretty conclusive. Really.
- fzzzy 3y ago
  The fact that you say that means that it is a perfect tool for someone with knowledge of operational security and a desire to cover their tracks.
RyanAdamas 3y ago
>Sure, but Occam’s Razor applies. Why go to such lengths to sow disinformation in a private communication? It would have been far simpler for Hal to have just responded at a different time rather than leaving this proverbial needle in the haystack that would have never been revealed had Hearn not published the emails. Occam's Razor, as the author enjoyed using, would suggest that someone knowingly creating a rival to a hegemonic currency system would need plausible deniability as to who they are and what they are doing. Having a partner in crime would not be inconceivable and they wouldn't need to be Satoshi. "Hal used tabs while Satoshi used spaces (this is a massive never-ending debate between developers) Hal preferred his debug statements not to be indented while Satoshi’s maintained indentation with surrounding code Hal made comments with block style multi-line markers while Satoshi preferred to create many single-line comments with double slashes Hal used snake_case for his function names while Satoshi used camelCase There are probably far more differences that are more subtle, but these jumped out from just a few minutes of eyeballing the codebases." These are irrelevant. Someone of Hal's intelligence and skill who was a decades long cypherpunk would understand the importance of obfuscating ones own styles. Lastly, I find it interesting that the Silicon Valley elite did the ice bucket challenge 2 weeks before Hal died.
- Beijinger 3y ago
  "Lastly, I find it interesting that the Silicon Valley elite did the ice bucket challenge 2 weeks before Hal died." Sorry, I don't get this. Please elaborate.
  - RyanAdamas 3y ago
    Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg did their Ice Bucket Challenges on August 14th 2014 and Hal died August 28th 2014 of ALS.
    - dboreham 3y ago
      Not parent but I still don't understand.
jeremiahguy 3y ago
[flagged]
orra 3y ago
The thing I don't understand: if Satoshi is still alive, surely they'd have spent some of that money. They're filthy rich, so why not enjoy it? I get that you can't cash out 5% of any market in one go, without tanking prices. But you can do it gradually.
- lisper 3y ago
  If Satoshi cashed out even a single satoshi the market would crash because now the odds of him cashing out the rest will have just risen dramatically.
  - orra 3y ago
    Plausible, but I would have thought if it's gradual, there would be a recovery. But maybe Satoshi has substantial other Bitcoin, not associated with the pseudonym, so they don't want to take any chances?
    - dewey 3y ago
      Wouldn't every known early address be monitored quite heavily? The amount wouldn't matter as much as the fact that _something_ moved and being proof that someone still has access to the keys.
  - drawkbox 3y ago
    Eventually with quantum computing or other advancements, someone will break the encryption and potentially swipe the part of Satoshi's coin. Bitcoin, and other crypto in general even more with higher concentration of early owners, will always be precarious because of this concentration. Whoever has control of the early issued coins, holds a leverage that is dangerous and has extortion properties. Satoshi owns 5% of bitcoin. Other crypto coins are more concentrated and more problematic. This isn't like a large institutional investor in a public stock, this is a large percentage of all currency. The rug pull was set from the beginning.
    - CyberDildonics 3y ago
mkl 3y ago
> Bitcoin is better off with Satoshi's identity remaining unknown. A human can be criticized and politically attacked. A myth will withstand the test of time. There's another reason. Because there's no entity controlling bitcoin, the SEC doesn't consider it a security, unlike all other cryptocurrencies. > “Everything other than bitcoin,” Gensler told me, “you can find a website, you can find a group of entrepreneurs, they might set up their legal entities in a tax haven offshore, they might have a foundation, they might lawyer it up to try to arbitrage and make it hard jurisdictionally or so forth.” In other words, there are people behind these cryptocurrencies using a variety of complex and legally opaque mechanisms, but at the most basic level, they are trying to promote their tokens and entice investors. (Bitcoin, because of its unique history and creation story, is fundamentally different from other crypto projects in this respect.) > “They might drop their tokens overseas at first and contend or pretend that it’s going to take six months before they come back to the U.S.,” he continued. “But at the core,” he argued, “these tokens are securities because there’s a group in the middle and the public is anticipating profits based on that group.” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/gary-gensler-on-meeting-with-sbf-and-his-crypto-crackdown.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/gary-gensler-on-meet... (https://archive.ph/EzNmO https://archive.ph/EzNmO)
Timja 3y ago
I think there is some systematic reason why people like Satoshi, Buckethead, Banksy, etc are not uncovered. In each case, I doubt that it really is hard to figure out who they are. Maybe it is the way the press and social media work. You get as many clicks for a wild theory as you get for a properly researched opinion. As for Satoshi Nakamoto: The most obvious candidate seems to be Adam Back. His invention of proof of work, his biography, character, writing style and role as the CEO of the company behind the main wallet software all point to him. Also, his current communication "Bitcoin looks like something that was discovered rather than invented". That's something a creator typically says about a particularly great piece of work they did. Are there any arguments why he might not be the inventor of Bitcoin?
- Hamuko 3y ago
  Is there another Buckethead that I'm not aware of, because the one that I'm thinking of has a pretty well-established identity.
  - Timja 3y ago
    Oh, interesting. So he only keeps his face secret, not his identity? I remember reading an interview with Ozzy Osbourne who said he refused to work with Buckethead because it spooked him that BH always kept a mask on, even when they talked in private.
    - Hamuko 3y ago
      You can also find some pictures of his face on Google if you just search his name. I'd say Buckethead is closer to Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo than he is to Banksy.
    - FFP999 3y ago
      [dead]
    - mhh__ 3y ago
      He did an interview a while ago
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drawkbox 3y ago
The identity probably isn't one person but there are people that stand out. Nick Szabo has been potentially mentioned as Satoshi for sometime [1] due to him working on decentralized currencies since 1998 with Bit Gold [2]. Elon Musk mentioned Nick Szabo on Lex Fridman's podcast as Szabo was also doing Bit Gold prior and is heavy into crypto and currencies. [3] > "Obviously I don't know who created bitcoin ... it seems as though Nick Szabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas," said Musk, adding, "he claims not to be Nakamoto ... but he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind it than anyone else." > Szabo is best known as the inventor of one of bitcoin’s predecessors, Bit Gold, and digital smart contracts—which eventually evolved to become a key part of the ethereum blockchain. Szabo has previously denied he's Satoshi Nakamoto, telling financial author Dominic Frisby in 2014, "I'm afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I'm used to it." Szabo's full name is Nicholas Szabo [4]. Just seems quite a bit like Satoshi Nakamoto. It feels like there is something there potentially. He uses his initials for his Pseudonyms (N.S) Nakamoto Satoshi = Bitcoin Nicholas Saberhagen = Monero Bit Gold was maybe to test out interest, then when the real one was made it would be more anonymous. If you think about it, bitcoin being anonymous is a feature as it makes it seem less centralized eventhough Satoshi owns a large chunk of it. Today companies or individuals will control a large chunk of other coins/platforms and it feels more centralized or even autocratic. At any time those big fish could wreak havoc. Satoshi seems more hands off. Another potential reason is the money it would generate and the recognition would attract too much attention. The successful decentralized currency like bitcoin might have been foreseen as a threat to the creator after it takes off and gains in value. From the wiki on Nick Szabo, he is more 'reclusive' and not wanting to be known. On his blog he mentioned his intent on creating a live version of the currency as Bit Gold was more of a prototype/demo and was never launched. Even the name Bit Gold and bitcoin are very similar as is the name Nicholas Szabo (N.S.) and Satoshi Nakamoto (S.N.) in a few ways. Satoshi Nakamoto always seems like a purposeful shroud of a name, looking for someone by that name is probably not going to find them: > Nathaniel Popper wrote in The New York Times that "the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo." In 2008, prior to the release of bitcoin, Szabo wrote a comment on his blog about the intent of creating a live version of his hypothetical currency. [1] Hal Finney was the first to receive 10 bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto [5][6]. Hal Finney was the next employee after Phil Zimmermann at PGP. So he knew the potential for being pursued by governments for software creations. Hal, who died in 2014 unfortunately, probably knew Satoshi and would have known he was shrouding/anonymous for good reasons as seen in the PGP history just before that and around the same time bit gold was being created. The very likely people to be Satoshi Nakamoto are Nick Szabo and Hal Finney due to the early interactions and transactions, and potentially Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, but that seems unlikely they would use their real name [7]. Maybe it was all three or someone else entirely, these guys are just around the early days and some of the first transactions. Either that or someone or some group saw the need for decentralized currency from their efforts and then front ran them and made it seem more like them to help shroud themselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_speculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_sp... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Bit_gold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Bit_gold [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/12/28/elon-musk-reveals-bitcoin-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-theory-admits-he-doesnt-get-ethereum-and-issues-dogecoin-mars-prediction-amid-crypto-price-crash/?sh=629b6a185d0e https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/12/28/elon-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_speculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_sp... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist)#Bitcoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Possible_identities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Possible_iden...
iamgopal 3y ago
Is it possible ( novice with respect to blockchain here ) , to crack the wallet , with all the computing power of the bitcoin mining ?
- tromp 3y ago
  The computing power behind bitcoin mining is just computing gazillions of SHA256 hashes. Which is useless for recovering Satoshi's private key, as that requires solving the Discrete Logarithm Problem for Elliptic Curves. But even the amount of energy used in all Bitcoin mining falls short of the energy needed to solve a single instance of DLP using the best-known methods, by a factor greater than a billion billion.
- drexlspivey 3y ago
  No, otherwise miners would be cracking wallets instead of mining bitcoins
  - lagniappe 3y ago
    They are. This is the foundation of the BTC collider project [0]. By the way, wallets do get cracked this way, but less through technical supremacy and more about brute force. [0] - https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/about https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/about
    - drexlspivey 3y ago
      Afaik they haven't found anything except some puzzle coins being hidden behind increasing difficulty wallets. Only way they can crack a wallet is if the softwate generated the wallet uses some poor sources of entropy or has a vulnerability.
      - ryan-c 3y ago
        Yeah, regardless of whether you think bitcoin mining is a waste of electricity, those guys are definitely wasting electricity. The puzzle coins have faster-than-brute-force attacks available as an option.
csomar 3y ago
I really wonder how nobody has looked into this deep enough: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/89532/how-did-nakamoto-untraceably-pay-for-registering-bitcoin-org https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/89532/how-did-na... Or maybe law enforcement already did, and Satoshi is either quite more secretive, them, or dead.
- Stagnant 3y ago
  Assuming Satoshi paid for the domain via cash there might not be much to look into.
imglorp 3y ago
Have state actors playing a longer honeypot sort of game been ruled out? Because btc is only pseudoanonymous, letting you observe and maybe link transaction sources and recipients, it gives SOME insight into the global movements of funds which were previously totally opaque and untraceable, such as cash, gold, and offshore instruments where there might be NONE. So for a small investment of a few cryptographic experts' time, a state actor has new insights into political opponents, tax dodges, arms and contraband sales. The amount of insights scales with crypto's adoption and is always greater than the opaque instruments.
- almost_usual 3y ago
  Bitcoin is more damaging to surveillance than helpful. Cash is being phased every year. The $10,000 limit in the USA was established in 1970, I guarantee it won’t be adjusted for inflation.
  - jonahbenton 3y ago
    Nah. The blockchain is forever and there are all these breadcrumb producing onramps.
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      Its probably a lot easier to do a better job of covering your tracks with cash than with bitcoin.
      - almost_usual 3y ago
        Absolutely but the point I’m making is that I don’t see cash existing in the near future.
        kjkjadksj 3y ago
        The cash economy is huge though. Probably not as visible as if you are more wealthy perhaps and frequent more upscale businesses, but at least in socal there are many many businesses that work on a cash only basis for a variety of reasons.
serhack_ 3y ago
An analysis about the first version of source code of Bitcoin https://serhack.me/articles/story-behind-alternative-genesis-block-bitcoin/ https://serhack.me/articles/story-behind-alternative-genesis...
apantel 3y ago
Train an LLM on all of Satoshi’s known correspondences, then have it grade the correspondences of each suspected Satoshi candidate to determine who actually writes like him.
- h2odragon 3y ago
  similar things have been done; but we're far beyond the point where evidence will change minds on this question.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  So... NOT Craig Wright, then. Got it.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Thats if the brilliant ephemeral ghost like Satoshi was dumb enough to write and code in a publicly identifiable style though.
anthomtb 3y ago
> Hal preferred his debug statements not to be indented while Satoshi’s maintained indentation with surrounding code Silly takeaway from a serious article but...after seeing the code snippets in TFA, this is something I will begin doing. It looks like it makes it much easier to differentiate debug code from "the real thing".
acco102 3y ago
Good document: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361456322_Satoshi_Nakamoto_and_the_Origins_of_Bitcoin_--_Narratio_in_Nomine_Datis_et_Numeris https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361456322_Satoshi_N... Maybe Paul Le Roux is Satoshi.
Sylvester00 3y ago
[flagged]
almost_usual 3y ago
Bitcoin is one of those technologies that I have been skeptical of for over a decade but within the past year it’s finally starting to click for me. I don’t own any yet but I don’t think it’s ever going away.
- noman-land 3y ago
  What changed?
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    Maybe it’s price resilience after zero interest rates went away was just too impressive
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      Price resilience? It’s lost 50% of its value in the last 2 years. Its as volatile as $AMC or $GME and is talked about in the same circles. Its a meme investment like many others.
      - yieldcrv 3y ago
        commodities trading (in most markets) never involved permabull expectations like stocks. instead they are cyclical or “seasonal”, and bitcoin has performed the exact same way in many other cycles over the last decade, before “meme stocks” were a thing. bitcoin spot declined from all time highs. but to point out your stocks, $AMC and $GME and many other pandemic era stocks have declined way more than 50% from all time highs. there were questions of whether bitcoin would be of interest or attract capital outside of a zero interest rate environment, and its surpassed all expectations on that front.
  - almost_usual 3y ago
    It’s been resilient to boom and bust cycles, it’s stable and safe for those who live in third world countries with hyperinflation, it’s extremely hard to eliminate or control since it’s decentralized.
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yieldcrv 3y ago
> The actual identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is irrelevant to the security, evolution, and future operation of the Bitcoin network. I was surprised how hard that was for people to understand, last decade. We should just have a compilation of ignorant things that important people said about Bitcoin 10 years ago. Even nocoiners are alot more enlightened in their conversations now. Enlightened as in the goal post moved, but at least it moved.
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113 points by greyface- 3y ago

what happens if wallet from satoshi is stolen and poured into the market for quick bucks? what happens if "satoshi" gets desperate for quick cash? idk this seems to be a major financial risk for bitcoiners, not altruism...

maipen 3y ago
It's been more than 10 years since there was activity. The market would crash but eventualy recover. There's really nothing dramatic about it.
- monsieurbanana 3y ago
  Even if you were right on both of your points it still would be dramatic. Behind every marker crash there's people's lives changing forever.
  - maipen 3y ago
    > Behind every marker crash there's people's lives changing forever. Absolutely. My reply was directed towards bitcoin as a technology. The market volatility but more important the constant manipulators and bad actors really have a negative impact in people's lifes. But most often we see this happening to people that are invested in crypto but not users of it. Because they keep their money on exchanges, they are not taking advantage to the security and self sovereignty that comes with crypto. There is no evidence that bitcoin will die or wouldn't recover from market dumps. However there's plenty examples of exchanges going under or stealing people's assets forever.
  - toenail 3y ago
    Nobody knows how much Satoshi mined. And a rational actor would not "dump" coins on the market for giggles, but for profit, hence avoid a market crash. Besides, bitcoin currently has a trading volume of around 10 billion per day, hard to crash that.
sschueller 3y ago
Yes, all those known wallets should be burned if anyone really cared about the stability of bitcoin. Others aka "shit coins" do not have this massive amount of cash that could all of a sudden be spent causing a huge crash. Although very unlikely that anyone will ever crack those keys it is possible that the keys are found by someone or Satoshi himself spends it. The bitcoin core maximalists should focus on fixing their block including moving to PoS instead of pissing on all other coins constantly.
- toenail 3y ago
  > fixing their block including moving to PoS POW fixed a problem POS does not solve, it is an entirely decentralized, trustless system. It is not possible to move to POS, the only coins who can do that are coins that are not decentralized and trustless to begin with.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
If it's "poured" into the market, the value will crash so whoever's trying to sell them won't make as much money. That said, at this point, any activity in that wallet will cause a huge stir in the community. That said, there's probably a nontrivial amount of processing power currently being used to crack that wallet / find the secret key. A theory is that Satoshi themselves lost access to their own wallet, so if there is activity, it may mean someone got the private key. Anyway yeah, it is a huge risk, and it's proven by the billions scammed from people when new coins were created and the creators themselves held onto a lot of the coins themselves to sell when the hype cycle is trending upwards.
yieldcrv 3y ago
lots of bitcoin from large old blocks have moved before, it is news within the crypto space and pretty fun drama. bitcoin from blocks from when satoshi was mining have moved before, and people start rumors that this exact thing is occurring and turned out not to be a satoshi block. price dips have happened over these movements. the rumor mill is pretty cyclical. the price dips have had less and less magnitude over the years, as there are so many computing bullish and bearish forces in bitcoin now. headlines today that move bitcoin up 1% would have crashed bitcoin 35% a decade ago. bitcoin has a lot more liquidity now, or in some periods of time has a lot more liquidity than now. a large sell can be absorbed. people's confidence in the bitcoin concept doesn't really shake just because someone selling ... runs out of things to sell. many large bitcoin holders don't want govbucks, or state currency. they can do so much with their bitcoin, mostly earning yield by depositing it into something yield producing in the crypto economy, investing in other projects, supporting causes they believe in. it isn't important to them if a team or merchants gets govbucks somewhere down the line or immediately.

toenail 3y ago

https://evanhatch.medium.com/len-sassaman-and-satoshi-e483c85c2b10 https://evanhatch.medium.com/len-sassaman-and-satoshi-e483c8...

api 3y ago
It’s obviously someone or a small group in this circle. Continuing to keep a low profile makes a lot of sense given all the negativity surrounding Bitcoin and the criminal figures that might come looking for Satoshi’s keys. What if Len forgot, when he took his own life, that he was the only one with the private key to the Satoshi wallet? Even if he wasn’t the only or even primary author that could explain that wallet being dead.
bloopernova 3y ago
What a fascinating and in-depth article, thank you for linking to it.
mersenne 3y ago
To me, Len Sassaman is the best Satoshi Nakamoto that we know of.

tromp 3y ago

> Who, we ask, is so altruistic as to create a new monetary system but not use it to enrich themselves? Bitcoin's supply schedule, in which half of all Bitcoin is mined in the first four years, guaranteed a Bitcoin wealth concentration on the early miners, especially considering how few there were. At long intervals, Satoshi would be the only one, mining on his laptop. A truly altruistic system would not confer such a huge advantage on early miners, for example by fixing the block reward. Then each generation would be able to mine the same amount of bitcoin, instead of each next generation getting 32x less than the current one. Such a steady supply would also make Bitcoin much less the vehicle for speculation that it has turned into. Of course, then the supply wouldn't have a finite cap, it would be limited by time only. Still, that would already make it very different from fiat, with the yearly supply inflation rate going down steadily toward 0 (known as being dis-inflationary). Eventually, the supply rate would more or less balance the inevitable coin loss rate [1]. [1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-supply-1169a188d153 https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...

toenail 3y ago
> A truly altruistic system would not confer such a huge advantage on early miners Bitcoin never claimed to be and is not altruistic. And the same can be said about almost all investments, you need information early, you need to judge the information correctly, and you need to move in. Same with bitcoin.
- aniforprez 3y ago
  GP said nothing about bitcoin claiming to be anything. They're directly quoting the article
  - toenail 3y ago
    Your point being?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

thisisnotapipe 3y ago

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yieldcrv 3y ago
I've always been really turned off by this religious fawning over random crypto personalities, including Hoskinson despite their contributions, the primary similarity is that fans get married to the first personality they get exposed to and elevate that person. just like religion. there is nothing objective about that, there is nothing important about Charles Hoskinson's "surprise Ask Me Anything" Adam Back has always been floated as a creator for like a decade

chx 3y ago

Remind me why we dropped Paul Le Roux as Satoshi. I thought it fit rather well: he had the motivation, the knowledge and the disappearance of Satoshi also fit.

automatic6131 3y ago
Well, if any of Satoshi's wallets move after Paul Le Roux is released in 2045 or so, we'll have a smoking gun ;)
- mirzap 3y ago
  He was arrested in 2012 and sentenced in 2020. If time spent in jail counts, he'll get out much earlier than 2045.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    Time spent in pre-trial detention almost always counts in the USA.
rurban 3y ago
We didn't drop him, we just will not know for a some more decades
sireat 3y ago
I asked this question about a year ago. Paul Le Roux had the motivation, the knowledge, the multitude of projects, the ability/drive to take on different persona. Plus Le Roux coded crypto projects in C++ on Windows unlike most of his peers. The timelines also fit with Le Roux going into custody when Satoshi dissappeared. Also with 100Ms in USD sitting in laundry baskets around his apartment, Le Roux would not have needed to worry about BTC until it was too late. I had someone reply that Satoshi and Le Roux coding styles were too different: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33127079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33127079
- kjkjadksj 3y ago

api 3y ago

The tabs vs spaces thing is pretty conclusive. Really.

fzzzy 3y ago
The fact that you say that means that it is a perfect tool for someone with knowledge of operational security and a desire to cover their tracks.

RyanAdamas 3y ago

>Sure, but Occam’s Razor applies. Why go to such lengths to sow disinformation in a private communication? It would have been far simpler for Hal to have just responded at a different time rather than leaving this proverbial needle in the haystack that would have never been revealed had Hearn not published the emails. Occam's Razor, as the author enjoyed using, would suggest that someone knowingly creating a rival to a hegemonic currency system would need plausible deniability as to who they are and what they are doing. Having a partner in crime would not be inconceivable and they wouldn't need to be Satoshi. "Hal used tabs while Satoshi used spaces (this is a massive never-ending debate between developers) Hal preferred his debug statements not to be indented while Satoshi’s maintained indentation with surrounding code Hal made comments with block style multi-line markers while Satoshi preferred to create many single-line comments with double slashes Hal used snake_case for his function names while Satoshi used camelCase There are probably far more differences that are more subtle, but these jumped out from just a few minutes of eyeballing the codebases." These are irrelevant. Someone of Hal's intelligence and skill who was a decades long cypherpunk would understand the importance of obfuscating ones own styles. Lastly, I find it interesting that the Silicon Valley elite did the ice bucket challenge 2 weeks before Hal died.

Beijinger 3y ago
"Lastly, I find it interesting that the Silicon Valley elite did the ice bucket challenge 2 weeks before Hal died." Sorry, I don't get this. Please elaborate.
- RyanAdamas 3y ago
  Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg did their Ice Bucket Challenges on August 14th 2014 and Hal died August 28th 2014 of ALS.
  - dboreham 3y ago
    Not parent but I still don't understand.

jeremiahguy 3y ago

[flagged]

orra 3y ago

The thing I don't understand: if Satoshi is still alive, surely they'd have spent some of that money. They're filthy rich, so why not enjoy it? I get that you can't cash out 5% of any market in one go, without tanking prices. But you can do it gradually.

lisper 3y ago
If Satoshi cashed out even a single satoshi the market would crash because now the odds of him cashing out the rest will have just risen dramatically.
- orra 3y ago
  Plausible, but I would have thought if it's gradual, there would be a recovery. But maybe Satoshi has substantial other Bitcoin, not associated with the pseudonym, so they don't want to take any chances?
  - dewey 3y ago
    Wouldn't every known early address be monitored quite heavily? The amount wouldn't matter as much as the fact that _something_ moved and being proof that someone still has access to the keys.
- drawkbox 3y ago
  Eventually with quantum computing or other advancements, someone will break the encryption and potentially swipe the part of Satoshi's coin. Bitcoin, and other crypto in general even more with higher concentration of early owners, will always be precarious because of this concentration. Whoever has control of the early issued coins, holds a leverage that is dangerous and has extortion properties. Satoshi owns 5% of bitcoin. Other crypto coins are more concentrated and more problematic. This isn't like a large institutional investor in a public stock, this is a large percentage of all currency. The rug pull was set from the beginning.
  - CyberDildonics 3y ago

mkl 3y ago

> Bitcoin is better off with Satoshi's identity remaining unknown. A human can be criticized and politically attacked. A myth will withstand the test of time. There's another reason. Because there's no entity controlling bitcoin, the SEC doesn't consider it a security, unlike all other cryptocurrencies. > “Everything other than bitcoin,” Gensler told me, “you can find a website, you can find a group of entrepreneurs, they might set up their legal entities in a tax haven offshore, they might have a foundation, they might lawyer it up to try to arbitrage and make it hard jurisdictionally or so forth.” In other words, there are people behind these cryptocurrencies using a variety of complex and legally opaque mechanisms, but at the most basic level, they are trying to promote their tokens and entice investors. (Bitcoin, because of its unique history and creation story, is fundamentally different from other crypto projects in this respect.) > “They might drop their tokens overseas at first and contend or pretend that it’s going to take six months before they come back to the U.S.,” he continued. “But at the core,” he argued, “these tokens are securities because there’s a group in the middle and the public is anticipating profits based on that group.” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/gary-gensler-on-meeting-with-sbf-and-his-crypto-crackdown.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/gary-gensler-on-meet... (https://archive.ph/EzNmO https://archive.ph/EzNmO)

Timja 3y ago

I think there is some systematic reason why people like Satoshi, Buckethead, Banksy, etc are not uncovered. In each case, I doubt that it really is hard to figure out who they are. Maybe it is the way the press and social media work. You get as many clicks for a wild theory as you get for a properly researched opinion. As for Satoshi Nakamoto: The most obvious candidate seems to be Adam Back. His invention of proof of work, his biography, character, writing style and role as the CEO of the company behind the main wallet software all point to him. Also, his current communication "Bitcoin looks like something that was discovered rather than invented". That's something a creator typically says about a particularly great piece of work they did. Are there any arguments why he might not be the inventor of Bitcoin?

Hamuko 3y ago
Is there another Buckethead that I'm not aware of, because the one that I'm thinking of has a pretty well-established identity.
- Timja 3y ago
  Oh, interesting. So he only keeps his face secret, not his identity? I remember reading an interview with Ozzy Osbourne who said he refused to work with Buckethead because it spooked him that BH always kept a mask on, even when they talked in private.
  - Hamuko 3y ago
    You can also find some pictures of his face on Google if you just search his name. I'd say Buckethead is closer to Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo than he is to Banksy.
  - FFP999 3y ago
    [dead]
  - mhh__ 3y ago
    He did an interview a while ago

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drawkbox 3y ago

The identity probably isn't one person but there are people that stand out. Nick Szabo has been potentially mentioned as Satoshi for sometime [1] due to him working on decentralized currencies since 1998 with Bit Gold [2]. Elon Musk mentioned Nick Szabo on Lex Fridman's podcast as Szabo was also doing Bit Gold prior and is heavy into crypto and currencies. [3] > "Obviously I don't know who created bitcoin ... it seems as though Nick Szabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas," said Musk, adding, "he claims not to be Nakamoto ... but he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind it than anyone else." > Szabo is best known as the inventor of one of bitcoin’s predecessors, Bit Gold, and digital smart contracts—which eventually evolved to become a key part of the ethereum blockchain. Szabo has previously denied he's Satoshi Nakamoto, telling financial author Dominic Frisby in 2014, "I'm afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I'm used to it." Szabo's full name is Nicholas Szabo [4]. Just seems quite a bit like Satoshi Nakamoto. It feels like there is something there potentially. He uses his initials for his Pseudonyms (N.S) Nakamoto Satoshi = Bitcoin Nicholas Saberhagen = Monero Bit Gold was maybe to test out interest, then when the real one was made it would be more anonymous. If you think about it, bitcoin being anonymous is a feature as it makes it seem less centralized eventhough Satoshi owns a large chunk of it. Today companies or individuals will control a large chunk of other coins/platforms and it feels more centralized or even autocratic. At any time those big fish could wreak havoc. Satoshi seems more hands off. Another potential reason is the money it would generate and the recognition would attract too much attention. The successful decentralized currency like bitcoin might have been foreseen as a threat to the creator after it takes off and gains in value. From the wiki on Nick Szabo, he is more 'reclusive' and not wanting to be known. On his blog he mentioned his intent on creating a live version of the currency as Bit Gold was more of a prototype/demo and was never launched. Even the name Bit Gold and bitcoin are very similar as is the name Nicholas Szabo (N.S.) and Satoshi Nakamoto (S.N.) in a few ways. Satoshi Nakamoto always seems like a purposeful shroud of a name, looking for someone by that name is probably not going to find them: > Nathaniel Popper wrote in The New York Times that "the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo." In 2008, prior to the release of bitcoin, Szabo wrote a comment on his blog about the intent of creating a live version of his hypothetical currency. [1] Hal Finney was the first to receive 10 bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto [5][6]. Hal Finney was the next employee after Phil Zimmermann at PGP. So he knew the potential for being pursued by governments for software creations. Hal, who died in 2014 unfortunately, probably knew Satoshi and would have known he was shrouding/anonymous for good reasons as seen in the PGP history just before that and around the same time bit gold was being created. The very likely people to be Satoshi Nakamoto are Nick Szabo and Hal Finney due to the early interactions and transactions, and potentially Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, but that seems unlikely they would use their real name [7]. Maybe it was all three or someone else entirely, these guys are just around the early days and some of the first transactions. Either that or someone or some group saw the need for decentralized currency from their efforts and then front ran them and made it seem more like them to help shroud themselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_speculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_sp... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Bit_gold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Bit_gold [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/12/28/elon-musk-reveals-bitcoin-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-theory-admits-he-doesnt-get-ethereum-and-issues-dogecoin-mars-prediction-amid-crypto-price-crash/?sh=629b6a185d0e https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/12/28/elon-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_speculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_sp... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist)#Bitcoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Possible_identities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Possible_iden...

iamgopal 3y ago

Is it possible ( novice with respect to blockchain here ) , to crack the wallet , with all the computing power of the bitcoin mining ?

tromp 3y ago
The computing power behind bitcoin mining is just computing gazillions of SHA256 hashes. Which is useless for recovering Satoshi's private key, as that requires solving the Discrete Logarithm Problem for Elliptic Curves. But even the amount of energy used in all Bitcoin mining falls short of the energy needed to solve a single instance of DLP using the best-known methods, by a factor greater than a billion billion.
drexlspivey 3y ago
No, otherwise miners would be cracking wallets instead of mining bitcoins
- lagniappe 3y ago
  They are. This is the foundation of the BTC collider project [0]. By the way, wallets do get cracked this way, but less through technical supremacy and more about brute force. [0] - https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/about https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/about
  - drexlspivey 3y ago
    Afaik they haven't found anything except some puzzle coins being hidden behind increasing difficulty wallets. Only way they can crack a wallet is if the softwate generated the wallet uses some poor sources of entropy or has a vulnerability.
    - ryan-c 3y ago
      Yeah, regardless of whether you think bitcoin mining is a waste of electricity, those guys are definitely wasting electricity. The puzzle coins have faster-than-brute-force attacks available as an option.

csomar 3y ago

I really wonder how nobody has looked into this deep enough: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/89532/how-did-nakamoto-untraceably-pay-for-registering-bitcoin-org https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/89532/how-did-na... Or maybe law enforcement already did, and Satoshi is either quite more secretive, them, or dead.

Stagnant 3y ago
Assuming Satoshi paid for the domain via cash there might not be much to look into.

imglorp 3y ago

Have state actors playing a longer honeypot sort of game been ruled out? Because btc is only pseudoanonymous, letting you observe and maybe link transaction sources and recipients, it gives SOME insight into the global movements of funds which were previously totally opaque and untraceable, such as cash, gold, and offshore instruments where there might be NONE. So for a small investment of a few cryptographic experts' time, a state actor has new insights into political opponents, tax dodges, arms and contraband sales. The amount of insights scales with crypto's adoption and is always greater than the opaque instruments.

almost_usual 3y ago
Bitcoin is more damaging to surveillance than helpful. Cash is being phased every year. The $10,000 limit in the USA was established in 1970, I guarantee it won’t be adjusted for inflation.
- jonahbenton 3y ago
  Nah. The blockchain is forever and there are all these breadcrumb producing onramps.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Its probably a lot easier to do a better job of covering your tracks with cash than with bitcoin.
    - almost_usual 3y ago
      Absolutely but the point I’m making is that I don’t see cash existing in the near future.
      - kjkjadksj 3y ago
        The cash economy is huge though. Probably not as visible as if you are more wealthy perhaps and frequent more upscale businesses, but at least in socal there are many many businesses that work on a cash only basis for a variety of reasons.

serhack_ 3y ago

An analysis about the first version of source code of Bitcoin https://serhack.me/articles/story-behind-alternative-genesis-block-bitcoin/ https://serhack.me/articles/story-behind-alternative-genesis...

apantel 3y ago

Train an LLM on all of Satoshi’s known correspondences, then have it grade the correspondences of each suspected Satoshi candidate to determine who actually writes like him.

h2odragon 3y ago
similar things have been done; but we're far beyond the point where evidence will change minds on this question.
ProllyInfamous 3y ago
So... NOT Craig Wright, then. Got it.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
Thats if the brilliant ephemeral ghost like Satoshi was dumb enough to write and code in a publicly identifiable style though.

anthomtb 3y ago

> Hal preferred his debug statements not to be indented while Satoshi’s maintained indentation with surrounding code Silly takeaway from a serious article but...after seeing the code snippets in TFA, this is something I will begin doing. It looks like it makes it much easier to differentiate debug code from "the real thing".

acco102 3y ago

Good document: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361456322_Satoshi_Nakamoto_and_the_Origins_of_Bitcoin_--_Narratio_in_Nomine_Datis_et_Numeris https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361456322_Satoshi_N... Maybe Paul Le Roux is Satoshi.

Sylvester00 3y ago

[flagged]

almost_usual 3y ago

Bitcoin is one of those technologies that I have been skeptical of for over a decade but within the past year it’s finally starting to click for me. I don’t own any yet but I don’t think it’s ever going away.

noman-land 3y ago
What changed?
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  Maybe it’s price resilience after zero interest rates went away was just too impressive
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Price resilience? It’s lost 50% of its value in the last 2 years. Its as volatile as $AMC or $GME and is talked about in the same circles. Its a meme investment like many others.
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      commodities trading (in most markets) never involved permabull expectations like stocks. instead they are cyclical or “seasonal”, and bitcoin has performed the exact same way in many other cycles over the last decade, before “meme stocks” were a thing. bitcoin spot declined from all time highs. but to point out your stocks, $AMC and $GME and many other pandemic era stocks have declined way more than 50% from all time highs. there were questions of whether bitcoin would be of interest or attract capital outside of a zero interest rate environment, and its surpassed all expectations on that front.
- almost_usual 3y ago
  It’s been resilient to boom and bust cycles, it’s stable and safe for those who live in third world countries with hyperinflation, it’s extremely hard to eliminate or control since it’s decentralized.

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yieldcrv 3y ago

> The actual identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is irrelevant to the security, evolution, and future operation of the Bitcoin network. I was surprised how hard that was for people to understand, last decade. We should just have a compilation of ignorant things that important people said about Bitcoin 10 years ago. Even nocoiners are alot more enlightened in their conversations now. Enlightened as in the goal post moved, but at least it moved.

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