20 ms·
Satoshi – Sirius emails 2009-2011
- baerrie 3y agoNext step, feed this text into into some nlp/llm and search the web for a match to find who Satoshi is
- xtiansimon 3y agoAlexander Hamilton
- codetrotter 3y agoLen Sassaman https://evanhatch.medium.com/len-sassaman-and-satoshi-e483c85c2b10 https://evanhatch.medium.com/len-sassaman-and-satoshi-e483c8...
- optimalsolver 3y agoWas Len known to type in British English and use British terms?
- captaincrunch 3y agoAs a Canadian who was raised on British English, I seamlessly switch between British and American English when interacting with clients from the US, England, and Canada. This flexibility in language is quite natural to me. Furthermore, for someone who meticulously conceals their identity, adapting in such a manner would likely be effortless and unremarkable. Cheerio, Later, Take care eh?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Symbiote 3y agoIn one of the messages Satoshi writes "gotten", which would be unusual for a Brit. There's also a lot of -ize. My money is on a Canadian, or a non-native-English European living in Britain.
- stevekemp 3y ago"gotten" would be less unusual for a Scottish person, although it is usually used in the context of "ill-gotten [gains]" it does crop up now and again outwith that.
- CryptoBanker 3y agoAgreed, “been” would be more typical for a Brit
- cachvico 3y agoCuriously, in #217 Satoshi used "gotten", which doesn't exist in British English - it's a word that is normally only used by Americans.
- dboreham 3y agoIt does exist (in that British people are aware of the US usage and "ill gotten gains") but sounds like a clueless person talking, or a child, so unless deeply exposes to American English nobody would use it themselves. I'm beginning to, but only after 30 years in the colonies.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoHm. Listen some more! We use it in the US Midwest routinely. Had gotten dehydrated. Have gotten bit by that issue. We've gotten the flu around here pretty frequently this winter. Then there's misbegotten, begetting, begotten.
- master-lincoln 3y agomixing British and American English is also common for European non-native English speakers
- Log_out_ 3y agoYou shall know by the assembled slang what series they watch
- radicalbyte 3y agoI'm British and I use the word. "They've gotten good". Coders in particular have to learn American and a lot of us just use American on the internet unless we're talking in an English (or UK - English, Welsh, Scottish, North Irish) corner of the interwebs.
- seabass-labrax 3y agoOr even Cornish! I was pleasantly surprised to find Cornish written across the side of the buses whilst visiting Plymouth. It's not much more than a linguistic and cultural curiosity, unfortunately, with even the excitement of the Cornish Revival being wholly insufficient to reach a critical mass of contemporary speakers. However, if there's just a faint possibility we'll be able to preserve the tradition I'm all for it.
- jjeaff 3y agoyes, the article referenced above referenced several tweet's from Len using Britishisms like "bloody". He was an American, living in Europe. Satoshi also referenced Euros (rather than pounds).
- Boogie_Man 3y agoThe article in the comment you responded to contains the following information: "Since COSIC was based in Leuven, Len was living in Belgium during Bitcoin’s development. This is salient given that a number of facts suggest that Satoshi was based in Europe... Satoshi’s writing exhibits spelling and word choices idiosyncratic of British English such as “bloody difficult”, “flat”, “maths”, grey”, as well as the dd/mm/yyyy date format. However, Satoshi also refers to Euros rather than pounds. These clues leave us with a paradox: they suggest Satoshi was European, yet someone with the requisite skillset and exposure to Bitcoin’s primary influences would likely have been American. Much of the Cypherpunk community coalesced conferences and meetups, part of why a disproportionate number hailed from America and especially SF. The jobs where one could have gained cutting-edge professional infosec and crypto experience were similarly concentrated in the US. Strangely enough, Len used the very same British English as Satoshi even though he was American."
- GEBBL 3y agoIrish?
- someplaceguy 3y ago> Len Sassaman It's not him, no double spaces in his writings.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vintermann 3y agoThere's already far more text written by him (as well as code), and there have been run comparisons of it against all the seriously proposed candidates.
- cryptonector 3y agoA good writer can probably change his/her demeanor and style in writing when changing personas. I'm sure it's hard work, but I'm also sure that practice makes it possible -- at least for some gifted people. It's also possible that Satoshi isn't a single human being, but an organization that can dedicate a lot of effort to this sort of thing.
- bboygravity 3y agoThis guy got famous for doing just that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa I think he even broke up with his girlfriend through letters in which he pretended to be someone else (if I remember correctly).
- vintermann 3y agoAnything is possible, but not everything is equally possible. I consider it most likely that bitcoin was developed by the 3-4 people who still worked on digital cash schemes after Chaum's scheme failed in 1998. Of those, Nick Szabo (with British spellcheck) is the strongest candidate for being the one who held the Satoshi keys.
- f321x_ 3y agoReally interesting
- neom 3y agoFor those curious about the court case it's referencing, here is the context: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/02/07/craig-wrights-high-stakes-legal-battle-over-bitcoins-origin-and-copyright/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/02/07/craig... (https://archive.is/7YyMl https://archive.is/7YyMl)
- semiquaver 3y agoIf you prefer an (outdated but entertaining) podcast: https://www.alabseries.com/episodes/episode-3-faketoshi-the-perfect-client https://www.alabseries.com/episodes/episode-3-faketoshi-the-...
- imperialdrive 3y agoI found several interesting exchanges, such as around/after email #212.
- sema4hacker 3y agoAre all of the digital fingerprints created by Satoshi (emails and posted code) completely untraceable, with no archives of domains, IP addresses, access logs, etc., still in existence that might identify where he was logging in from?
- dogman144 3y agoLast I read the domain registration for Bitcoin.org (I think) is the main exposure point. But, what you raised is why I don’t buy they haven’t been ID’d. Digital fingerprints across multiple forums, and platforms, the logs to find a way in are there somewhere. I figure it is Len Sassaman.
- layer8 3y agoMeredith Patterson might know, then.
- bottlepalm 3y agoLen was a Linux guy, Satoshi was not. There's even an email here that says just that, "technically much more linux capable than me." https://mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/#email-241 https://mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/#email-241
- Geee 3y agoAlso, see https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/77358901774917632 https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/77358901774917632 where Len doesn't seem to be a fan of Bitcoin. Not sure what he means by that though.
- mortallywounded 3y agoSatoshi stepped away from Bitcoin in 2010 and handed over the project to the maintainers. Len started posting about Bitcoin in 2010 (post Satoshi handing the project over). It seems to me, if Len was Satoshi, he grew distant from the project. Maybe it wasn't the cypherpunk utopia he envisioned. Maybe the wikileaks and silkroad issues weren't what he wanted to enable. Perhaps he wanted to distance himself further from the project.
- tambourine_man 3y agoThere is a great book and/or movie just waiting to be made about Satoshi. Such a great story.
- cachvico 3y agoBroaden "Satoshi" to the creation story of Bitcoin, and there already are; Banking on Bitcoin is a good one.
- dogman144 3y agoBanking on Bitcoin is such a useful explainer of the space and its implications. Not a lot of that content around anymore.
- noman-land 3y agoNo one has a good ending!
- thinkmassive 3y agoDigital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency by Finn Brunton
- wslh 3y agoThe top Satoshi archeologist is Sergio Lerner: https://bitslog.com/ https://bitslog.com/ Official security auditor of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- jesperwe 3y agoMaybe HE is Satoshi!
- idiotsecant 3y agoBig brain move, be the leading authority on not identifying yourself.
- chrononaut 3y agoMade me think of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen > In the letter, he gave the names of three KGB agents secretly working for the FBI: Boris Yuzhin, Valery Martynov, and Sergei Motorin ... Hanssen was recalled yet again to Washington, D.C., in 1987. He was tasked with studying all known and rumored penetrations of the FBI to find the man who had betrayed Martynov and Motorin; this meant, in effect, that he was charged with searching for himself.
- noman-land 3y agoSatoshi double spaces after periods.
- chrisoconnell 3y agoThe real analysis is here.
- dboreham 3y agoMust be American then.
- raid2000 3y agoOr just above the age of 35 or so?
- BlackjackCF 3y agoI thought the double spacing was a typewriter thing. Is it uniquely American?
- seanhunter 3y agoIt is not. I learned to do it because old-school unix vi would identify your sentences better for sentence-based moves if you had 2 spaces after the period. I'm actually trying to unlearn it now because you don't need it for any kind of vim/neovim and I read on some ultrapedantic typesetting website that it's wrong for some reason I don't quite remember now. In any case it's definitely not specifically American (neither am I) and all the other "forensics" that people are trying based on vocab etc are somewhat of a stretch also. eg non-Americans use "gotten" non British people use "British" English (eg people from Ireland or from former British colonies for the most part) non-Americans use "ize" sometimes for spellings (I could never be bothered to learn the few exceptions needed to spell "ize/ise" words correctly in the British style and worked enough for American companies who wanted US spelling as a house style for my personal spelling to be even remotely consistent and certainly not indicative of where I am from.
- alicelebi 3y agoBlast from the past.
- raid2000 3y ago> The VPS has 320MB RAM, 50MB of which is currently free. There's also 500MB swap space. Every MB counts!
- layer8 3y ago> It's kind of fun to read about the state of "VPS hosting" from those days. Lots of downtime. Unexpected reboots. Absolutely not my experience from those days, VPSs were rock-solid for me.
- raid2000 3y agoMaybe they were trying to save money. There's another quote where Satoshi suggests being frugal: > It might be a long time before we get another donation like that, we should save a lot of it.
- wolrah 3y ago> Absolutely not my experience from those days, VPSs were rock-solid for me. Likewise, my personal toy VPS actually dates back to 2009 and the only unplanned downtime it's ever had were when Linode was one of the targets of one of those big DDoS waves a few years back. Even then it was online and working fine internally, just limited in its ability to reach the outside world. The VPS itself has been rock solid and in 15 years the only times it's not been at least trying to serve whatever I have on it have been when I've rebooted it for updates.
- swozey 3y agoI found those specs really curious as I worked in webhosting (even rax which is in the thread) and we didn't have anything near that low for a vps, but reading further I guess they're using some random fly-by-night webhost that doesn't even have a cPanel or Plesk license or anything for the user to self-service, they base all of their pricing on linode and you have to call/ticket in to manage your site. I don't know the background of satoshi, etc (of course) but that's a $10 vps and they're complaining about running out of memory, etc in the thread.. Why so cheap? Dedicated xeon servers back then were 80-250 and vps filled every other price range. And if they just need to compile a python widget on linux with a desktop WM... we had the technology to do that locally in 2009..
- fenalphthalein 3y agoHonest inquiry here - What I don't understand is how people think the identification of Satoshi is "bound to happen". What did the person do wrong, exactly? Based on how I understand it, if the person did nothing wrong by inventing Bitcoin, no investigation will occur and no judge will sign off on a search warrant to get the ID data. No private investigator will be able to obtain the data either, as ISPs wouldn't just dish out private info like that without a warrant. Did the inventor of Bitcoin do something wrong to allow for a judge to violate their privacy in a court case? That's the only way I see the info getting out, but is there a crime to allow that situation to arise? What other (legal or illegal) path is there to identify a person who posted something online?
- keiferski 3y agoThe USG seems pretty intent on implementing KYC across the entirety of the financial system, so it wouldn't really surprise me if they aimed to identify wallets holding large (say, $100 million USD or more) amounts of Bitcoin.
- dannyw 3y agoRealistically the threshold will be something like $100.
- le-mark 3y agoWould this not be self reported by wallet owners? Because if each transaction uses a unique wallet address, funds are very difficult to connect to an owner. Until they’re connected to a sale to fiat at least?
- keiferski 3y agoYes but my point is more that if the resources of a nation state are at play, they will probably be able to figure out who Satoshi is/was.
- phone8675309 3y agoGovernments are going to argue that the creation of BitCoin and lack of KYC to use it is a major contributor to money laundering.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mortallywounded 3y agoIf you want a detailed look at all of the Satoshi evidence (circumstantial and others), check out this paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.10257v14.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.10257v14.pdf If you want the TLDR; the meat is the "Candidates" section about Len Sassaman and the original Bitcoin paper's references (in particular, how Len was the only person with the right skill set, in the right place, at the right time to even get a copy of the referenced work).... among a mountain of other circumstantial evidence.
- warner25 3y agoOh, I'm excited to read this! Once or twice a year I take a trip down the rabbit hole on Satoshi, and my personal conclusion after the last couple of trips has been Len Sassaman. The one thing that bugs me is that the original bitcoin paper, while amazing, doesn't seem like it was written by a PhD candidate. It cites just eight related works, and the W. Dai citation was famously added only after someone else suggested it, because Satoshi reportedly didn't know about it. A typical paper by a PhD candidate will cite dozens of related works, and Len Sassman would certainly have knowledge of dozens of related works off the top of his head.
- mortallywounded 3y ago^ I think you'll enjoy the paper's deep dive. It goes into the references deeply!
- warner25 3y agoYeah, I like this bit: "The bibliography of the whitepaper discloses a stunning paucity of knowledge about historic precursors... at the time of writing the Bitcoin whitepaper; this may either indicate a lack of interest in compliance with good academic practices, a disrespect or personal aversion against certain pioneers, or a sheer unfamiliarity with the state of the art..." Edited to add: I didn't realize until now that Sassaman only finished his master's degree in 2008. Based on some of the work that I see from master's students (albeit none as brilliant and passionate as Sassaman) with thin lists of references, this makes Sassaman a more likely candidate in my mind.
- intotheabyss 3y agoSmall blockers in shambles
- 2024throwaway 3y agoAnyone have a TLDR summary of what is interesting in this very long page?
- m3kw9 3y agoJust chitchat during the development of bitcoin. You can understand a lot about how bitcoin design choices came to be from Satoshi own reasonings. The white paper doesn’t spell these out in detail
- 2024throwaway 3y agoI guess specifically I'm curious how this would be relevant/useful in the court case mentioned.
- ludamn 3y agoSorry if it's a bit unrelated to the article, but does anyone have any recommended material for getting someone with 0 knowledge to know more about blockchains? My goal is to learn both how the tech works and what key issues are people trying to solve with crypto/blockchains
- chrsw 3y agoI just assumed "Satoshi Nakamoto" was an alias for a small group of people all working on the same code base/idea.
- TheBlight 3y agoThat seems unlikely. The original code base was fairly small and very much reads like one person was responsible for writing it. Also, the more people who know a secret the less likely it is to be kept.
- chrsw 3y agoThis is true, but having multiple people involved makes it every difficult to pinpoint one true source. Plus, when I say multiple people I mean 2-3 or 3-4. Not like a big operation. And if these small number are so paranoid about privacy and identity that they invented Bitcoin, I would expect them to be able to keep a secret. I just find it hard to believe there isn't a single soul walking on this planet right now that has any idea who Satoshi Nakamoto is/was.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- elwell 3y agoSatoshi seems to have delved in the dark art technique of print output debugging: https://github.com/Maguines/Bitcoin-v0.1/blob/2c7a4c9bbb793c5029fc9363d504944b62f1ec4d/bitcoin0.1/src/db.cpp#L452-L456 https://github.com/Maguines/Bitcoin-v0.1/blob/2c7a4c9bbb793c...
- coffeebeqn 3y agoAlright put me on the suspect list
- ak_111 3y agoSatoshi having the foresight and discipline to take careful measures that would enable him to keep his identity secret, and succeeding to do so up to this point is almost more impressive achievement of his technical skills than bitcoin. Even back in 2009, it was difficult (impossible?) to operate online without leaving tons of digital footprint, and we can guess that for sure state-backed actors tried to identify him and probably failed. Unless of course he was a state-backed actor(s).
- medo-bear 3y ago> Unless of course he was a state-backed actor(s) I'd be even more impressed if some state had the foresight to come up with Satoshi
- ak_111 3y agoWell, one of the theories I fancy is that we know that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto worked on a classified defence project, now it is almost impossible that he was the creator of btc, however there is a chance that a group of security service hackers who interacted with him while he worked there were inspired by this eccentric persona and thus decided to adopt his name as a joke when they were thinking of made-up moniker.
- NoobSaibot135 3y agoHal lived literally a few blocks from Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto for 10 years. Hal was also the first person who Satoshi contacted, the first person who mined, and died (ALS) a little after Satoshi’s final public correspondence. I read somewhere that Hal was running a marathon at roughly the same time Satoshi was active, but damn, Hal must have been involved.
- acjohnson55 3y agoWhy do you assume state-backed actors failed to identify him? I would guess he is probably known with a high degree of certainty to at least one nation's intelligence but that publicizing that knowledge and the documentation of it is not in anyone's interest.
- bilater 3y agoIt's super obvious from his writing his first language is English. Most likely Hal Finney.
- xvedejas 3y agoI used to think so too, but the case for Len Sassaman is similarly strong.
- ak_111 3y agoWhat is the strongest evidence AGAINST Sassaman?
- overkill28 3y agoHis wife doesn't think it was him (https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/1364325186372304904?t=yYnVYmFUcTrs63UBEG3uCw&s=19 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/1364325186372304904?t=yY...) and the original Bitcoin code/executable was Windows based whereas Sassaman was known to Mac/Linux
- mortallywounded 3y agoThose are weak pieces of evidence. Meredith appears to be telling the truth. She didn't say Len wasn't Satoshi, she simply said to the best of her knowledge he wasn't. That doesn't mean he wasn't working on it covertly. One of Len's best friends (Bram Cohen) knew Len was posting pseudonymously on the cypherpunk mailing list but never knew what handle he was using. Also, when Bram was about to release BitTorrent Len tried to convince him to do it anonymously. It's not hard to believe that Len would have done it secretly; even from his wife. Furthermore, Meredith can't be 100% trusted. When Satoshi handed the project over to the maintainers and stopped posting to the cypherpunk mailing list in late 2010, Meredith tweeted, "Bitcoin isn't ready for prime time yet, according to its creator. Interested people can help finish it, though!"[1] Satoshi never said those words publicly or privately-- so it's a curious thing to say. As for the computer... It's likely Len used university computer(s) for the development as the commit times and communication line up with an academic schedule. It's likely the university had Windows computers. Plus; it's one way to isolate the environment and reduce the chance of information leakage (could have even been a Windows VM). [1]: https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/12163582133276672?t=dk8C1YbMm4QmAC4CaLvgdw https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/12163582133276672?t=dk8C...
- ak_111 3y agoGenuine question, if you are satoshi and not insanely media shy, what would be a real concern for not divulging your identity in 2024? You are rich enough to manage any security, tax or legal hits that you need to manage. Furthermore due to BTC being completely mainstreamed, the credit you will get for inventing btc would be epic. The least of it would be noble prize in economics. You will literally be a living cult leader like no other in history. Think of all those BTC fanatics finally meeting their leader. See the way Elon fanatics follow Musk and multiply that by 100.
- CryptoBanker 3y agoI would imagine security is one argument. There are plenty of people and groups out there who have lost large amounts of BTC and who would like to believe that satoshi has the power to restore them or otherwise manipulate the currency.
- ak_111 3y agoI don't think he will need to worry more about security than say Bill Gates or Elon Musk. Annoying, but certainly doable with the money he has. But I can imagine that can factor in for lots of people who are risk averse and don't like the burden of having 24/7 tight security around them.
- nabakin 3y agoNot wanting the lifestyle that would certainly come with it like harassment, being recognized constantly in public, drawn into lawsuits, controversy, the market hanging on his every word, swatting, etc.
- mortallywounded 3y agoI believe Satoshi was a cypherpunk and a remailer dev. Cypherpunks had a history of doing things anonymously on the mailing list and even trying to out one another (a sort of game). Furthermore, as a remailer dev Satoshi was all too familiar with what happened with the penent remailer[1]. He knew such services will become a legal target by the powers that be. This is why Satoshi even said we "kicked the hornets nest" when Wikileaks/Silkroad began accepting Bitcoin. He knew the powers would be coming. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penet_remailer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penet_remailer
- tdudhhu 3y agoIt is almost strange to read that they are handling the project as something very big and important. At that time it was absolutely not obvious that it would become big and mainstream.
- yieldcrv 3y agoThere was a lot of resentment towards bailouts at the time and making an alternative system Many people would have been passionate about their quests towards a solution. Many people still make redundant things without knowing the hurdles involved and are just as passionate. I have a client thinking they are going to “bank the unbanked” with a mobile app not using crypto at all, in 2024 One reason why Satoshi would have been extremely passionate is because they had solved one of the unsolved problems of computer science up until 2008 which was the Double Spend Problem, and 2009 was his first production implementation of it called Bitcoin so you have a person that was seeing everything that the field of computer science had touched over the last half century, and knowing a solution for a unsolved aspect that prevented it from touching other industries and seeing how expansive that would be
- nly 3y agoThe Double Spend Problem was not unsolved in 2008. The likes of Wei Dai, David Chaum, and Stephan Brands had working anonymous "digital cash" cryptosystems solving the double spending problem within a federated banking model in the late 80s and early 90s https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm#References https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/mone...
- yieldcrv 3y agoyes and bitcoin builds on top of that, I believe the white paper may cite that effort, it cites W Dai’s b-money paper from 1998 The bitcoin white paper specifies that this is a solution without a trusted intermediary the first line of the abstract entails not using a financial institution I agree that ‘unsolved’ was inaccurate, I try to also say bitcoin 2008 is one implementation and essentially all distributed ledgers are following this branch of solution additional solutions remain evasive
- bitcoin_anon 3y ago> To think about what a really huge transaction load would look like, I look at the existing credit card network. I found some more estimates about how many transactions are online purchases. It's about 15 million tx per day for the entire e-commerce load of the Internet worldwide. At 1KB per transaction, that would be 15GB of bandwidth for each block generating node per day, or about two DVD movies worth. Seems do-able even with today's technology. So Satoshi would have increased the block size by now.
- whiterknight 3y agoBased. Small blockers forced themselves into bad positions to keep control.
- swah 3y ago"I've been at full-time work lately, and will be until the end of June, so I haven't had that much time to work with Bitcoin or my exchange service. I have a working beta of my service though, and a few weeks ago made my first transaction: sold 10,000 btc for 20 euros via EU bank transfer. Maybe I can make it public soon."
- 293984j29384 3y agoI'm sure it's a dead end but you'd think this would be an interesting avenue of investigation. Wouldn't think transaction be pretty obvious in the blockchain? Did the owner of those 10,000 btc ever spend them? If so, it'd be interesting to see if any of the wallets in the spend chain are something public, like someone asking for donations or something.
- Stagnant 3y agoThat message was from Martti Malmi to Satoshi.
- encoderer 3y agoI love this mystery and I’m so grateful for it. Growing up we had DB Cooper and Deepthroat - interesting and compelling stories but those guys are famous only for being anonymous. They didn’t really do anything special. But satoshi…
- bsparker 3y agoand banksy!
- superjan 3y agoThat’s no secret anymore, is it?
- codethief 3y agoThat's news to me! What did I miss?
- jasonwatkinspdx 3y agoHis identity has been known for quite some time. His first name is Robin, and he used the alias Robin Banks for a while, which eventually became Banksy. But also Banksy is something of a collective effort, with people like 3D from Massive Attack apparently occasionally collaborating.
- mike_d 3y ago"Banksy" is now a group of artists, but the original is believed to be Robin Gunningham. He is named as a co-defendant in a lawsuit against Pest Control (the company that sells and validates Banksy art).
- codethief 3y agoThanks!
- joering2 3y ago
- welder 3y agoI'm pretty sure Satoshi is German. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6562461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6562461
- ak_111 3y agoSo Satoshi used: Japanese pseudonym. German email domain. British English and a US Timezone. His ability to generate entropy in his identity is significantly underrated.
- dang 3y agoRecent and related: Bitcoin Inventor Satoshi Nakamoto Emails Revealed in Court - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39474691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39474691 - Feb 2024 (2 comments)
- greyface- 3y agoSatoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com> wrote: > There are donors I can tap if we come up with something that needs > funding, but they want to be anonymous, which makes it hard to actually > do anything with it. I wonder who these donors were.
- freeAgent 3y agoLe Roux is my guess, and Satoshi was referring to himself.
- 1970-01-01 3y agoIs there a website listing people that Satoshi definitely could not be? That it seems would be more useful to our evergreen "Who is Satoshi" discussions.
- aqfamnzc 3y agoHow would we really rule anyone out?
- esquivalience 3y agoin the case of Craig Wright - Bring a multimillion dollar court case to prove it.
- bcrosby95 3y agoAdd me to the list of "definitely not Satoshi". Just a few billion more to go.
- qingcharles 3y agoNice try, Satoshi.
- schappim 3y agoInteresting Satoshi's spelling of the word "favour" instead of "favor" in "I've been putting it off in favour". The use of "favour" instead of "favor" is a clear marker of British English or other Commonwealth varieties such as Australian or Canadian English. This spelling is not used in US English.
- nabakin 3y agoAlso uses "optimising" which is British.
- jascination 3y agoAustralian too, fwiw. One general way to distinguish UK from Aussie online is we (Aus) use metric for everything, (kg, KMs, cms) and UK don't (stone (?), miles, feet) At a glance the emails felt very Australian to me before I checked these comments, but I didn't do a thorough read.
- nabakin 3y agoAny idea if it's used in Canadian English?
- globular-toast 3y agoI thought use of British English was already a known thing. As is double spacing after a full stop.
- trts 3y agohave never seen anyone point out this incredibly obvious (or obviating?) point
- unbelonger 3y agoAutocorrect has been a thing since the early 90s. In many European countries it is common that the default English wordlist is British spelling.
- barcode_feeder 3y agoThe usage of British English as an identifying factor seems ridiculous to me. Faking such a thing is extraordinarily low-hanging fruit even for a bumbler. Letting slip some regional red herring is quite literally the easiest misdirection I can think of)
- tobyp- 3y agoHe's also fairly inconsistent. He occasionally uses -ize endings, e.g. "realize". He also uses some language that is more prevalent in North American English, e.g. "sucks", "gotten", "chump change" and others. Someone attempting to use British English to obscure their identity would know to use words like "maths" and "flat", as he did; not as many people however are aware that British English doesn't (typically) feature the word "gotten", which he used on multiple occasions. To me, this lends to the theory the BrE was a misdirection. (As an aside, he's inconsistent in some other things, like "e-mail" versus "email", "TOR" versus "Tor", and "double click" versus "doubleclick".)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- abriosi 3y agoSatoshi regularly took two spaces after a period. He uses vocabulary tied to British There is a famous British cryptographer called Adam Back, who is also the inventor of the proof of work method laid out on the paper “hashcash”. He also leaves two spaces after a period (or used too) I don’t think it really matters who created it. If you read the political story of bitcoin things look a lot clearer. “The Blocksize War: The Battle Over Who Controls Bitcoin's Protocol Rules” is a good entry point
- adrianmonk 3y ago> Satoshi regularly took two spaces after a period. So did I, for a long time, because I was taught that way in typing class. And so were millions of other people. It's how it was usually done on typewriters. It supposedly made the text easier to read. It has fallen out of fashion now. I eventually switched to one space once I realized things were going that direction. I'm not sure if I had switched by 2009. So I think this just tells you that Satoshi is probably old enough to have been taught the old rule.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoI will say, I did enjoy reading abriosi's assumption, though. As I get older I get more aware of the things I just "took for granted" that everyone knows (because nearly everyone in my generation does know it) are really just generation-specific. Like when I learned most kids can't read cursive anymore. Or that, for a long time, my use of "emoji noses", :-), really dated me (and I still think it looks better with a nose than without!) So I admit I had a similar chuckle with the idea that putting two spaces after a period was a unique characteristic! Even well into the PC era, 2 spaces was the norm before proportional fonts became widespread. And I still had a heck of a time moving to a single space because it just looked so weird to me.
- asciii 3y agoI think you're spot on. Plus, the use of "colour" (with u) and reference to something as "rather Neanderthal"
- freeAgent 3y ago
- bogota 3y agoI love reading this stuff. 2010 is when i found out about bitcoin and wanting to learn about it was what took me from someone who played around on linux to someone who could write software and then ended up finishing a CS degree after. Reading this reminds me of what I originally loved so much about the tech scene at the time. I haven’t been able to find that spark for a long time now unfortunately. Maybe im just looking in the wrong place but i feel it is hard to find another community like the early bitcoin one.
- udev4096 3y agoTotally agree on this. It was the true hacker spirit back then
- metachris 3y agoThe Ethereum community still is.
- jules-jules 3y agoI'd see the innovatio is there but you have to search carefully amid the graft.
- mrinfinite 3y agoSatoshi Nakamoto means "Central Intelligence" but the people here are probably VERY FAMILIAR with CIA trends.
- chrismmay 3y agoBitcoin has no leader.
- hakdbha 3y ago[dead]
- Biganon 3y ago> The vast majority of gold sits unused in vaults, owned by governments that could care less about its prettiness No!! Not you, Satoshi! (emphasis mine)
- tobyp- 3y agoDespite the British English elsewhere, "could care less" is a particularly American error. I think that's noteworthy.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]