14 ms·

Honest 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? Ba

Honest 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 ago
The 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 ago
  Realistically the threshold will be something like $100.
- le-mark 3y ago
  Would 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 ago
    Yes 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 ago
Governments are going to argue that the creation of BitCoin and lack of KYC to use it is a major contributor to money laundering.
ekabod 3y ago
Maybe one country jurisdiction thinks he may owe taxes, so they may investigate.
- falserum 3y ago
  s/thinks/decides/
dogman144 3y ago
The space has moved past this risk for a lot of reasons, to start. And it’s hard to understand I think in light of modern (relative to pre-2018/19) widespread mainstream adoption. But, a long term protection for BTC when it was smaller and tbh anyone’s guess how it would turn out (still is IMO), was: who are you going to haul into senate hearings, court, cryptography export control violations, whatever over BTC? This happened ample times in the recent past before BTC with digital money attempts and cryptography projects. It’s happening now with mixers on btc and ethereum. It was a real risk to BTC in its own way. With BTC then and now, there was no real leader though. There were important core devs and industry leads, but no one held true sway like, say, Vitalik did with eth early days. So it wasn’t so much a firm “did something wrong” risk for BTC’s founder, but more of a concern that the US govt had taken very heavyhanded measures against many similar projects to BTC. As there was no one to target in BTC’s case, this protection played a large role in its early push into staying power. Also going to color this with CIA had the lead dev at the time visit them to discuss it in 2011. So there was certainly some real sustained attention to it from the start.
- fenalphthalein 3y ago
  Sounds like this person was really smart to begin with. High-level societal awareness caused them to choose the private route, and focus on releasing something for the greater good. I wouldn't be surprised if this person never even took a single bitcoin for themselves, other than the ones used for code testing purposes. That would create another avenue for people to come after them if it became public that they hoarded some of the Bitcoin for themselves.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    This. Maybe, Satoshi saw where it was going, knew it had wings, didn’t want to be the elephant’s plaything in some senate hearing, and bowed out. Sometimes people make things because it’s the right thing to do. Other times people make things because they are experimenting and seeing what sticks. This was a case of both. The right idea, at the right time, without hubris, and without someone to blame or throw in court if the experiment fails.
IncreasePosts 3y ago
It only takes one person at an ISP to steal and leak the data. I mean, an IRS employee leaked the president's tax returns and is currently in federal prison for it. I imagine the stakes are much lower for just stealing some IP address assignment data from an ISP archive(if such an archive exists).
- reactordev 3y ago
  It only takes one VPN to hide it.
  - ziddoap 3y ago
    VPN's shift the trust, they don't eliminate the need for it. Feel free to read the above as: >It only takes one person at a VPN provider to steal and leak the data.
    - mksybr 3y ago
      Perhaps he only communicated as satoshi over Tor.
      - Affric 3y ago
        Perhaps they practiced near perfect opsec. VPN, their own IP, stealing access, TOR, hacking the routers and APs and cleaning up…
    - reactordev 3y ago
      You’ve never played Uplink I see. One doesn’t just hop to one VPN and call it a day…
  - thrwwycbr 3y ago
    It only takes one Kape Technologies to unhide all of it.
- paulpauper 3y ago
  probably used TOR
mortallywounded 3y ago
I don't think it's a legal issue. People want to know who it was and credit where it's due. Satoshi didn't do anything wrong but distributed consensus was finally solved (or so it seems) and that's a big deal.
- reactordev 3y ago
  Idolization of Satoshi is strong. For that reason alone, if I were him/her, I would disappear. The work is self-evident and the idea a dime a dozen. The execution of it and the fact that it was accepted is what we should be idolizing. Which is exactly what happened. BTC became a thing and was no longer an idea. I reject anyone claiming to be Satoshi because Satoshi would never claim to be Satoshi. ;)
  - mortallywounded 3y ago
    That's why I hope the truth comes out. If say, Satoshi is Len, then Satoshi is no longer a god. He's a regular dude, that suffered like many people and tragically took his own life. There's a lot to unwrap there.
    - reactordev 3y ago
      Maybe, we are better off NOT knowing. Having closure could mean the end of BTC. It could mean the end of a lot of things. It could also be beginnings, no doubt. However, like Schrödinger’s cat, it’s best if it’s kept in a state of quantum entanglement.
      - falserum 3y ago
        Quantum superposition
hansvm 3y ago
> as ISPs wouldn't just dish out private info like that without a warrant ISPs regularly sell private data to the highest bidder. Similarly with payroll providers and whatnot (a non-trivial fraction of my paystubs -- not just salary, but withholding, exempt tax status, ... -- are available to anyone with a few dollars; historically, it _seems_ like the only buyers have been employers trying to see if their salary offers aligned with my expectations).
- fckgw 3y ago
  They'll sell anonymized data in aggregate but no, you can't just go to an ISP and buy the user behind an IP without a court order.
  - hansvm 3y ago
    They sell "anonymized" data, not just "aggregated". The only missing link is tying that back to a real person (i.e., they haven't solved differential privacy; they've just given the illusion that they're not selling personal data). Tying it back to a real person is easy though because the non-anonymized fields (age, gender, salary, zip-code, ...) are uniquely identifying for most individuals and are available for sale tied back to a real human from other sources which you can fuzzily join the ISP data into. It's similar to how bitcoin transactions (before mixers and whatnot) were de-anonymized. You have the secret information (an identity), the public information (transaction history), and you're able to fuzzily join that public information to other public sources containing the secret information to also have secret information tied with the original "anonymous" source.
    - ziddoap 3y ago
      Just to re-emphasize, because I think it's really poorly understood: most "anonymized" data is a few additional data points away from being re-identified. Data re-identification was already happening in 2006 (just one example below). And now there's exponentially more data available to use for this purpose. >We apply our de-anonymization methodology to the Netflix Prize dataset, which contains anonymous movie ratings of 500,000 subscribers of Netflix, the world’s largest online movie rental service. We demonstrate that an adversary who knows only a little bit about an individual subscriber can easily identify this subscriber’s record in the dataset. Using the Internet Movie Database as the source of background knowledge, we successfully identified the Netflix records of known users, uncovering their apparent political preferences and other potentially sensitive information. [1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak08netflix.pdf https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak08netflix.pdf
deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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usrusr 3y ago
Dark sarcasm take: there's a large volume of early bitcoin that may or may not be lost forever. The risk of addresses that have gone dark a long time ago lighting up again must have a big influence of any bitcoin evaluation that is at least in part based on reason. Fossilized coins could hugely change the supply/demand dynamic. The documented death of a person believed to be Satoshi would significantly shift that risk assessment. Nobody would know wether the person took meaningful keys to their grave or not, but the risk equation would contain one scenario less than before in the category of old coin flood.
- gopher_space 3y ago
  You think it’s a killswitch?
thefatboy 3y ago
Why do you think they want his identity because he did something WRONG?
aillia 3y ago
I hear your point and it's a valid one. Consider the recent case of Tornado Cash and the Open Source Is Not A Crime movement. Two individuals were arrested for developing open-source code on GitHub. Just last week, GoFundMe shut down the Tornado Cash legal defense crowdfunding. This suggests that the state is more interested in protecting itself from individuals rather than defending their rights. This could potentially set a precedent where inventors or developers of decentralized technologies could be targeted, even if they've done nothing inherently wrong. If interested you can learn more here: https://wewantjusticedao.org/ https://wewantjusticedao.org/
- thisgoesnowhere 3y ago
  Well either that or what they were doing is just obviously illegal and they should be at fault for it.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Tornado Cash was what, money laundering and circumvention of sanctions? Pretty illegal.
- cududa 3y ago
  Oh this is bullshit and you know it. Another example of "we didn't call it a security so it's not a security" They weren't arrested for the code. They were arrested for actively participating and profiting off money laundering with North Korea being a customer. Zero-knowledge proofs are different from public ledgers. That's where the issue comes in to play. The Treasury Department has already given guidance that cryptocurrency mixers fall under Know Your Customer laws and the Bank Secrecy Act, and are required to know who exactly is using their services and how. It's not "Criminalizing Open Source". You live in a society with laws. Obfuscating classic financial products with tech jargon worked for the first half of the decade. Y'all are just mad it doesn't work anymore and claim "You just don't understand the technology. You haven't issued guidance on specifics of crypto currency. You can't use hundred year old laws" Yes, you can use 100 year old laws. At the end of the day, the financial shenanigans of most crypto, exchanges, and tokens are fundamentally the same things that have already been regulated. You just have new words.
treffer 3y ago
These court orders might also happen if someone _claims_ that crimes have happened. The legal system has to come to that conclusion, which requires an investigation. Yeah it must be an important claim. That's of course completely unacceptable and illegal. But it is one way such warrants could happen.
tim333 3y ago
I think people who follow / read up on the thing have a pretty good idea who it is but as you say he didn't really do anything wrong. Reasons for anonymity include not having criminals try to extort you and maybe some government having a go over money laundering or people suing for this of that so I think people with a good idea stay quiet to respect Satoshi's desires. I've got a theory he may come out and donate to a charitable foundation when he's old and near the end.
tsimionescu 3y ago
> ISPs wouldn't just dish out private info like that without a warrant. ISPs routinely sell such information for money en masse. Police departments are a major buyer, but also ad agencies and others. Plus, bribing a low level employee for access to such records, or directly infiltrating the ISP to get access yourself, is child's play to any determined group. It is extraordinarily naive, especially in a post-Snowden world, to think that any and all information available to a private company is not also available to, at least, spy agencies of the parent state.
falserum 3y ago
> 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? This feels like wrong framework/approach. Fundamentaly question here: “is it worth it for somebody?” Economists path to an answer: If for somebody[3], profit[1] of identifying satoshi outweighs the cost[2], it will be done. [1] profit in very abstract sense. E.g. elimination of (perceived?) threat, aquisition of credible threat to other enemies, political points, money, making an example for others, showing off skills. [2] “cost” is also used in very abstract sense. E.g. Favor from a known(or compromised) judge, man hours dedicated by FBI/MI6, money, negative press budget after “bending” some rules, risk of getting caught by supriors/underlinglins/press/constituents. [3] “somebody” - to no surprise - can be anybody/anything. E.g. A corporation, a government, maybe single branch or department, maybe sole individual able to use his government position for personal gain, an employee of ISP, a blockchain historian, most likely Satoshi’s ex. Important to note: both individuals and governments do break the law when they think it is necessary. I find at least two credible incentives to find satoshi: - bitcoin can be used to lounder money, circumvent financial sanctions, so governments want to stop that and make example of it. - Satoshi, has 1 000 000 bitcoins. That’s a lot of money. a) banal roberies are done for far less. b) CIA or similar might want to know who wields this much resource, friend or foe (especially if its value would grow even more) How Satoshi can be uncovered I have no idea, but the story of Silkroad owner shows, that minor slipups can be revealed after number of years.
sparkie 3y ago
See: Liberty Dollar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_currency)#Legal_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_curren...
creer 3y ago
It's idle curiosity and research. Much effort in literature and history is to try to figure out who actually wrote X or who was Y. No accusations.
someonehere 3y ago
My understanding is conspiracy people want to know if it was an alphabet agency that developed bitcoin to push a new world order of cashless currency. Or a new way to move money around anonymously and make it easier for governments and their agencies to stay anonymous.

keiferski 3y ago

The 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 ago
Realistically the threshold will be something like $100.
le-mark 3y ago
Would 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 ago
  Yes 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 ago

Governments are going to argue that the creation of BitCoin and lack of KYC to use it is a major contributor to money laundering.

ekabod 3y ago

Maybe one country jurisdiction thinks he may owe taxes, so they may investigate.

falserum 3y ago
s/thinks/decides/

dogman144 3y ago

The space has moved past this risk for a lot of reasons, to start. And it’s hard to understand I think in light of modern (relative to pre-2018/19) widespread mainstream adoption. But, a long term protection for BTC when it was smaller and tbh anyone’s guess how it would turn out (still is IMO), was: who are you going to haul into senate hearings, court, cryptography export control violations, whatever over BTC? This happened ample times in the recent past before BTC with digital money attempts and cryptography projects. It’s happening now with mixers on btc and ethereum. It was a real risk to BTC in its own way. With BTC then and now, there was no real leader though. There were important core devs and industry leads, but no one held true sway like, say, Vitalik did with eth early days. So it wasn’t so much a firm “did something wrong” risk for BTC’s founder, but more of a concern that the US govt had taken very heavyhanded measures against many similar projects to BTC. As there was no one to target in BTC’s case, this protection played a large role in its early push into staying power. Also going to color this with CIA had the lead dev at the time visit them to discuss it in 2011. So there was certainly some real sustained attention to it from the start.

fenalphthalein 3y ago
Sounds like this person was really smart to begin with. High-level societal awareness caused them to choose the private route, and focus on releasing something for the greater good. I wouldn't be surprised if this person never even took a single bitcoin for themselves, other than the ones used for code testing purposes. That would create another avenue for people to come after them if it became public that they hoarded some of the Bitcoin for themselves.
- reactordev 3y ago
  This. Maybe, Satoshi saw where it was going, knew it had wings, didn’t want to be the elephant’s plaything in some senate hearing, and bowed out. Sometimes people make things because it’s the right thing to do. Other times people make things because they are experimenting and seeing what sticks. This was a case of both. The right idea, at the right time, without hubris, and without someone to blame or throw in court if the experiment fails.

IncreasePosts 3y ago

It only takes one person at an ISP to steal and leak the data. I mean, an IRS employee leaked the president's tax returns and is currently in federal prison for it. I imagine the stakes are much lower for just stealing some IP address assignment data from an ISP archive(if such an archive exists).

reactordev 3y ago
It only takes one VPN to hide it.
- ziddoap 3y ago
  VPN's shift the trust, they don't eliminate the need for it. Feel free to read the above as: >It only takes one person at a VPN provider to steal and leak the data.
  - mksybr 3y ago
    Perhaps he only communicated as satoshi over Tor.
    - Affric 3y ago
      Perhaps they practiced near perfect opsec. VPN, their own IP, stealing access, TOR, hacking the routers and APs and cleaning up…
  - reactordev 3y ago
    You’ve never played Uplink I see. One doesn’t just hop to one VPN and call it a day…
- thrwwycbr 3y ago
  It only takes one Kape Technologies to unhide all of it.
paulpauper 3y ago
probably used TOR

mortallywounded 3y ago

I don't think it's a legal issue. People want to know who it was and credit where it's due. Satoshi didn't do anything wrong but distributed consensus was finally solved (or so it seems) and that's a big deal.

reactordev 3y ago
Idolization of Satoshi is strong. For that reason alone, if I were him/her, I would disappear. The work is self-evident and the idea a dime a dozen. The execution of it and the fact that it was accepted is what we should be idolizing. Which is exactly what happened. BTC became a thing and was no longer an idea. I reject anyone claiming to be Satoshi because Satoshi would never claim to be Satoshi. ;)
- mortallywounded 3y ago
  That's why I hope the truth comes out. If say, Satoshi is Len, then Satoshi is no longer a god. He's a regular dude, that suffered like many people and tragically took his own life. There's a lot to unwrap there.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    Maybe, we are better off NOT knowing. Having closure could mean the end of BTC. It could mean the end of a lot of things. It could also be beginnings, no doubt. However, like Schrödinger’s cat, it’s best if it’s kept in a state of quantum entanglement.
    - falserum 3y ago
      Quantum superposition

hansvm 3y ago

> as ISPs wouldn't just dish out private info like that without a warrant ISPs regularly sell private data to the highest bidder. Similarly with payroll providers and whatnot (a non-trivial fraction of my paystubs -- not just salary, but withholding, exempt tax status, ... -- are available to anyone with a few dollars; historically, it _seems_ like the only buyers have been employers trying to see if their salary offers aligned with my expectations).

fckgw 3y ago
They'll sell anonymized data in aggregate but no, you can't just go to an ISP and buy the user behind an IP without a court order.
- hansvm 3y ago
  They sell "anonymized" data, not just "aggregated". The only missing link is tying that back to a real person (i.e., they haven't solved differential privacy; they've just given the illusion that they're not selling personal data). Tying it back to a real person is easy though because the non-anonymized fields (age, gender, salary, zip-code, ...) are uniquely identifying for most individuals and are available for sale tied back to a real human from other sources which you can fuzzily join the ISP data into. It's similar to how bitcoin transactions (before mixers and whatnot) were de-anonymized. You have the secret information (an identity), the public information (transaction history), and you're able to fuzzily join that public information to other public sources containing the secret information to also have secret information tied with the original "anonymous" source.
  - ziddoap 3y ago
    Just to re-emphasize, because I think it's really poorly understood: most "anonymized" data is a few additional data points away from being re-identified. Data re-identification was already happening in 2006 (just one example below). And now there's exponentially more data available to use for this purpose. >We apply our de-anonymization methodology to the Netflix Prize dataset, which contains anonymous movie ratings of 500,000 subscribers of Netflix, the world’s largest online movie rental service. We demonstrate that an adversary who knows only a little bit about an individual subscriber can easily identify this subscriber’s record in the dataset. Using the Internet Movie Database as the source of background knowledge, we successfully identified the Netflix records of known users, uncovering their apparent political preferences and other potentially sensitive information. [1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak08netflix.pdf https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak08netflix.pdf

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

usrusr 3y ago

Dark sarcasm take: there's a large volume of early bitcoin that may or may not be lost forever. The risk of addresses that have gone dark a long time ago lighting up again must have a big influence of any bitcoin evaluation that is at least in part based on reason. Fossilized coins could hugely change the supply/demand dynamic. The documented death of a person believed to be Satoshi would significantly shift that risk assessment. Nobody would know wether the person took meaningful keys to their grave or not, but the risk equation would contain one scenario less than before in the category of old coin flood.

gopher_space 3y ago
You think it’s a killswitch?

thefatboy 3y ago

Why do you think they want his identity because he did something WRONG?

aillia 3y ago

I hear your point and it's a valid one. Consider the recent case of Tornado Cash and the Open Source Is Not A Crime movement. Two individuals were arrested for developing open-source code on GitHub. Just last week, GoFundMe shut down the Tornado Cash legal defense crowdfunding. This suggests that the state is more interested in protecting itself from individuals rather than defending their rights. This could potentially set a precedent where inventors or developers of decentralized technologies could be targeted, even if they've done nothing inherently wrong. If interested you can learn more here: https://wewantjusticedao.org/ https://wewantjusticedao.org/

thisgoesnowhere 3y ago
Well either that or what they were doing is just obviously illegal and they should be at fault for it.
hef19898 3y ago
Tornado Cash was what, money laundering and circumvention of sanctions? Pretty illegal.
cududa 3y ago
Oh this is bullshit and you know it. Another example of "we didn't call it a security so it's not a security" They weren't arrested for the code. They were arrested for actively participating and profiting off money laundering with North Korea being a customer. Zero-knowledge proofs are different from public ledgers. That's where the issue comes in to play. The Treasury Department has already given guidance that cryptocurrency mixers fall under Know Your Customer laws and the Bank Secrecy Act, and are required to know who exactly is using their services and how. It's not "Criminalizing Open Source". You live in a society with laws. Obfuscating classic financial products with tech jargon worked for the first half of the decade. Y'all are just mad it doesn't work anymore and claim "You just don't understand the technology. You haven't issued guidance on specifics of crypto currency. You can't use hundred year old laws" Yes, you can use 100 year old laws. At the end of the day, the financial shenanigans of most crypto, exchanges, and tokens are fundamentally the same things that have already been regulated. You just have new words.

treffer 3y ago

These court orders might also happen if someone _claims_ that crimes have happened. The legal system has to come to that conclusion, which requires an investigation. Yeah it must be an important claim. That's of course completely unacceptable and illegal. But it is one way such warrants could happen.

tim333 3y ago

I think people who follow / read up on the thing have a pretty good idea who it is but as you say he didn't really do anything wrong. Reasons for anonymity include not having criminals try to extort you and maybe some government having a go over money laundering or people suing for this of that so I think people with a good idea stay quiet to respect Satoshi's desires. I've got a theory he may come out and donate to a charitable foundation when he's old and near the end.

tsimionescu 3y ago

> ISPs wouldn't just dish out private info like that without a warrant. ISPs routinely sell such information for money en masse. Police departments are a major buyer, but also ad agencies and others. Plus, bribing a low level employee for access to such records, or directly infiltrating the ISP to get access yourself, is child's play to any determined group. It is extraordinarily naive, especially in a post-Snowden world, to think that any and all information available to a private company is not also available to, at least, spy agencies of the parent state.

falserum 3y ago

> 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? This feels like wrong framework/approach. Fundamentaly question here: “is it worth it for somebody?” Economists path to an answer: If for somebody[3], profit[1] of identifying satoshi outweighs the cost[2], it will be done. [1] profit in very abstract sense. E.g. elimination of (perceived?) threat, aquisition of credible threat to other enemies, political points, money, making an example for others, showing off skills. [2] “cost” is also used in very abstract sense. E.g. Favor from a known(or compromised) judge, man hours dedicated by FBI/MI6, money, negative press budget after “bending” some rules, risk of getting caught by supriors/underlinglins/press/constituents. [3] “somebody” - to no surprise - can be anybody/anything. E.g. A corporation, a government, maybe single branch or department, maybe sole individual able to use his government position for personal gain, an employee of ISP, a blockchain historian, most likely Satoshi’s ex. Important to note: both individuals and governments do break the law when they think it is necessary. I find at least two credible incentives to find satoshi: - bitcoin can be used to lounder money, circumvent financial sanctions, so governments want to stop that and make example of it. - Satoshi, has 1 000 000 bitcoins. That’s a lot of money. a) banal roberies are done for far less. b) CIA or similar might want to know who wields this much resource, friend or foe (especially if its value would grow even more) How Satoshi can be uncovered I have no idea, but the story of Silkroad owner shows, that minor slipups can be revealed after number of years.

sparkie 3y ago

See: Liberty Dollar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_currency)#Legal_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_curren...

creer 3y ago

It's idle curiosity and research. Much effort in literature and history is to try to figure out who actually wrote X or who was Y. No accusations.

someonehere 3y ago

My understanding is conspiracy people want to know if it was an alphabet agency that developed bitcoin to push a new world order of cashless currency. Or a new way to move money around anonymously and make it easier for governments and their agencies to stay anonymous.