12 ms·
Satoshi 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
by ak_111 3y ago
Satoshi 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.
- bugglebeetle 3y agoI would assume that his entire identity is a little more than a cutout for a U.S. state intelligence agency.
- voidfunc 3y agoThis. I assume Satoshi is nation state actor. Most likely the US.
- neoncontrails 3y agoWhat makes you think the US would be motivated to hamstring its own Federal Reserve, or threaten the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency?
- lolinder 3y agoWhat makes you think that Bitcoin poses any threat to the dollar or the Federal Reserve?
- TimeBearingDown 3y agoIt’s no threat at all for the foreseeable future. Make no mistake though, over the next decades, the core idea is an existential threat. If a currency like Monero with further developed scaling and privacy features is able to gain a foothold in developing nations, and enough off-ramps are set up via decentralized exchanges like Bisq and through direct acceptance for goods and services, then it is difficult to see the spread stopping between nations with reasonably free Internet, especially as factions within each government will likely have some direct interest. The US dollar will be least threatened, the longest.
- lottin 3y agoPrivacy features in a currency are a double-edged sword. It means that the money is very difficult or impossible to recover in the event of theft, fraud, or even user errors. It isn't a risk most people want to be exposed to.
- krick 3y ago> probably failed That's silly. The fact that you don't know who somebody is says nothing about what some "state-backed actor" knows. If anything, I'm fairly confident that some people in NSA/CIA know who he is for a decade at least, and "probably" have it written in some documents that will long outlive you. Of course, this is as proofless statement as you saying that they "probably failed" to figure it out, but what you are saying basically amounts to "it is so unlikely for this to happen, so it's such a miracle it probably happened!" A more reasonable thing to say would be "it is so unlikely for this to happen, so it probably didn't happen".
- biorach 3y ago> That's silly. That's unnecessary and a bit childish and devalues the rest of your reply
- verve_rat 3y agoI think you are over reacting.
- xdavidliu 3y agoI would argue that saying "childish" is just as unnecessary as saying "silly"
- DetroitThrow 3y ago>That's...childish That's unnecessary and a bit silly and devalues the rest of your reply
- deepsun 3y agoThere are limits on secrets lifetime that's highly dependent on number of people in it. Someone even tried to calculate a formula In democratic societies it's very hard to keep a thing secret that involved 10+ people for 20+ years.
- roenxi 3y agoIf that calculation was completely wrong, how would anyone know? We never get a perfect snapshot of the world to compare with. What that stat really says is any conspiracy involving 10+ people, if the details manages to stay secret for 20 years, will likely never come to light.
- asmr 3y agoIf you dig a lot you will find a footprint. There is evidence that there was a small core team and that satoshi may not be a single person, if it is, he is most likely to be Wei Dai. The other likely alternative is of course the hypothetical state-backed actor.
- dist-epoch 3y agoWei Dei is one of my suspects too, mostly because of Crypto++, but not only. Why do you suspect is Wei Dei, was there any reveals regarding this in the lasts few years?
- idontwantthis 3y agoWhat is the rationale behind a state creating BTC?
- wil421 3y agoFund or obfuscate funding for programs they want but the public or political appetite doesn’t want to know about it.
- krapp 3y agoThat's already what black budgets are for. And funding drug cartels.
- lazide 3y agoAnd Tor? Similar possibilities.
- reaperman 3y agoMoving money in/out of places which are hostile to USA. Paying assets in hostile locales.
- krapp 3y agoI'm pretty sure the US can already do both, and that neither of those would be easier with a US backed cryptocoin. Literal American cash dollars (which tend to work everywhere, even anti-American regimes) under the table would be more secure. But then assets in other countries are probably just paid through shell companies in those countries with local currency or something.
- dist-epoch 3y agoState backed actors in the West don't go on a hunt without orders. Who would be so interested to order his identity discovered? And for what purpose? They found Bin Laden who didn't allow anyone of his associates to come within 50 km of him with an electronic device. We will only find out what FBI/CIA is capable of when the Justice Department orders the identity of Satoshi to be discovered.
- k12sosse 3y agoWe got him, look at the map! See the 50' no-radio circle in the middle of that city? He's there. Sometimes a lack of signal is a signal itself.
- dist-epoch 3y agoRead again, of his associates. He lived in a village, among other houses and people with phones.
- paulpauper 3y agohe's a human. only 7 billion of them
- wordpad25 3y agoUghh, it's somewhat important to national security who's behind a multi-trillion dollar shadow market larger than most national economies
- timeon 3y agoIs he? He cannot move those amounts.
- mrinfinite 3y agoYou all know Satoshi Nakamoto translates exactly to Central Intelligence... Sell all your things and invest in bitcoin. its annonymous, tho (social security number required to buy a piece of bitcoin)...
- nostrademons 3y agoHe's probably dead. My two top picks for who Satoshi might be are Len Sassaman (died 2011) and Hal Finney (died 2014) There's little point in unmasking somebody who's already dead - their ability to influence future events is gone. So even if state intelligence surveys knew who it was, there'd be no benefit to unmasking it.
- api 3y agoThis would also neatly explain why the Satoshi coins have not moved.
- nostrademons 3y agoOr why Hal Finney was cryopreserved. :-)
- api 3y agoIn the future someone steals his frozen head to scan it and try to recover the Satoshi wallet keys...
- joering2 3y agoin the real real far future you don't need his head, but maybe a single hair or a bone? Assuming every DNA cell keeps all memories or perhaps like a chicken running with a cutoff head maybe if his hands to be reconstructed, given enough time over a keyboard he would finally "twich" a password? Just thinking out loud...
- TimeBearingDown 3y agoWhat. I don’t see any reason to believe this is remotely feasible, ever?
- themoonisachees 3y agoYou have played too much assassin's creed. DNA determinism has not been realistic ever.
- lettergram 3y agoUnless of course, the NSA or other government agency created bitcoin.
- dgfitz 3y agoBitcoin didn’t succeed, define “succeed” however you want, but because of how it was marketed. Bitcoin is the OG shitcoin. If there is one thing we can all agree on: NSA isn’t good at marketing. This whole thread is evidence of that.
- nodesocket 3y agoI can’t believe we haven't figured it out yet. - What about the email at gmx.com? Can an insider get into it? - Access logs with browser agents and ips? - White paper writing style and code analysis and heuristics.
- qingcharles 3y agoDidn't he also register bitcoin.org?
- nodesocket 3y agoNot sure, whois showing: Registered On: 2008-08-18 Expires On: 2029-08-18 Updated On: 2023-10-31
- mvdtnz 3y ago[flagged]
- hwbunny 3y agoWell, Craig Wright tries very hard to unmask the creator(s), by pretending to be Satoshi.
- gloosx 3y agoI won't agree... I think it was much easier in 2009 to operate online completely anonymous. The video surveillance was not prevalent – just pick some crowded places with free wifi randomly, don't use a cell phone, wear some sunglasses and a surgical mask, use a clean generic browser agent, use a usb-stick linux distro which will not be able to save anything on the hard drive and have some hacked proxies in another parts of the world ready to entangle your traffic routes - state actors back then would be scratching their heads forever trying to solve such a case.
- munksbeer 3y agoHow do you pay for domain names?
- gloosx 3y agowith skimmed cards bought in disguise for cash from a local hotel receptionist, of course... satoshi understood well that the centralised state-backed global payment systems are the strongest rivals to the true independence of a human being, so invention of bitcoin was an obvious move
- BrendaWilliams 3y ago[dead]