15 ms·

New theory on Satoshi Nakamoto

66 points by bpierre 3y ago

TillE 3y ago
This is pretty thin. Some Japanese cryptography researchers happen to have some very common syllables in their surnames. I still like Hal Finney as Nakamoto, just because those bitcoin have never moved, and his being dead is the best explanation for that.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  I like the idea of Paul Le Roux, specifically because his name was redacted in the court docket but the government did the redacting in the PDF wrong But I don’t find this thread to be very thin. Satoshi being a common name is going to always be an issue, but there are not that many cryptographers in the world.
- warner25 3y ago
  I agree on the first point. On the second point, no. I think we have a preponderance of evidence for Len Sassaman. He also explains why those bitcoin haven't moved, as well as many other peculiar things. This appears to be the most authoritative research that lays everything out: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.10257v14.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.10257v14.pdf If anyone actually reads that and comes to a different conclusion, I'd love to hear it and why.
  - jimhi 3y ago
    The fact it was a whitepaper highly suggests a lifelong academic who has spent their careers publishing papers like these men, not a PHD student. Also, some of the word choices in the whitepaper and the initial reference to London banks being bailed out again suggest Satoshi is not a native American english speaker.
    - warner25 3y ago
      Who do you think writes most of the papers in the academic world? And what do you think PhD students spend most of their time doing?
      - infradig 3y ago
        Not PhD students. Anything else.
- yreg 3y ago
  > just because those bitcoin have never moved Satoshi might not have the keys to those earliest wallets. Perhaps they have decided that those coins should never be moved and erased the keys.
  - this_user 3y ago
    There are literally billions in those wallets. Unless "Satoshi" is independently wealthy, a nation state, or dead, you would expect that they would have at least taken out some money. I can't imagine that "Satoshi" would have lost all the keys to all of those wallets.
    - bawolff 3y ago
      But it wasn't billions in the early days. They could have discarded the keys before it was billions.
      - yreg 3y ago
        And Satoshi was able to mine/buy plenty of newer bitcoins back in the early days. The decision to erase the keys from those known wallets and make sure they never make a transaction would boost the value of their remaining coins.
    - pa7ch 3y ago
      They could have just mined very early on and made more then enough to be independently wealthy with that.
    - andy800 3y ago
      There are many, many ways to lose a cryptographic key. There are none to restore one. There's also the idea that Satoshi thought he was doing something altruistic and purposely destroyed the keys so he wouldn't be tempted later on... which, if true, he might be regretting now.
      - mgiampapa 3y ago
- spense 3y ago
  why not adam back? the evidence in favor of adam dwarfs other candidates.
  - spense 3y ago
    honestly, i thought we settled on Adam Back as Satoshi: - adam was extremely active during the early cypherpunk days, when - he invented Hashcash, which bitcoin cites in its whitepaper and used as its PoW - he was the first to take Wei Dai's b-money proposal seriously and discusses combining it with hashcash (the 2 core elements of bitcoin) - he disappeared and reappeared professionally during the exact timeframe of bitcoin development - his writing closely matches satoshi's (british english + style/punctuation) - he had no public involvement with bitcoin until he joined Bitcointalk forums in 2013 and suddenly had intimate details of unknown bugs in bitcoin saying "I thought I'd fixed them". - he started Blockstream with the mission to ensure the survival of bitcoin (funded lighting, paid core devs, etc) - he recently helped nail the coffin on Craig Wright's case in court proving he was not satoshi, during which - he revealed the earliest known email correspondence with satoshi watch the interview were he uncomfortably describes himself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=688J9UZJxKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=688J9UZJxKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcvX0P1b5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcvX0P1b5g
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  Hal Finney left his family broke in his wake, after spending the entirety of his bitcoin wealth on treatment and cryopreservation. I really don't believe Finney would have had access to what would have been tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of bitcoin at the time and left his family in that position.
  - Finneyfamily 3y ago
    This is blatantly false (Hal Finney felt confident in that his family would be OK and they were technological savvy enough to work out access to their inheritance), but also, they became a target so I believe that their privacy should be respected. Edit: sources are (1) a note about the Finney family being targeted in 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/12/finney-swat/ https://www.wired.com/2014/12/finney-swat/ and (2) a message from his wife in 2022 https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ruaaur/a_message_from_hal_finneys_wife/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ruaaur/a_message_f...
    - pcthrowaway 3y ago
      Sorry if I was incorrect, I was going off of what I heard. I heard he spent all his money towards the end of his life. I'm not seeing anything in those links to suggest otherwise. Are you suggesting they were left with a sizeable fortune?
maurimtl 3y ago
Sounds very legit
mgiampapa 3y ago
It's awfully hard for 3 people to keep a secret when that much money could be on the line.
- viraptor 3y ago
  Money on the line in what way? If they started it, they have a stupid amount of money already. They could gain fame, but after so many years... they don't seem interested in that.
- codezero 3y ago
  perhaps they collectively generated the private key in a way that gave none of them access to it.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  Ben Franklin had the saying "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead"
ProjectArcturis 3y ago
I think it's a reasonable explanation for the name, but it almost completely rules out these three people as the author of Bitcoin. Using part of your actual name as part of your pseudonym would be incredibly stupid. Chelsea Manning (nee Brad) was caught almost immediately because she leaked her documents through an account with the username "bmanningfm".
- codezero 3y ago
  I think back to 2009 and think of the state of opsec back then and I think people could very much use ridiculously traceable names for something like Bitcoin.
  - tim333 3y ago
    Though I think bitcoin Satoshi made a reasonable effort to keep anonymous. It was probably cunning to use the name of a real person, the Satoshi Nakamoto who lived a few blocks from Finney as it would confuse any legal efforts to go after the bitcoin creator Satoshi. I mean in court it would be saying I accuse you Joe Bloggs of being Satoshi Nakamoto and Joe Bloggs would be saying no it's the guy in LA who is actually called that.
    - codezero 3y ago
      Good point.
EdwardDiego 3y ago
If they're real, I get the feeling they'd be disgusted at what Bitcoin has become.
bawolff 3y ago
So he googled a bunch of people at an academic cryptography conference and discovered that they wrote papers mentioning public/private keys? Like sheesh... obviously academic cryptographers write papers involving public/private keys. That is basically their job. I bet a lot of them used a computer too, just like satoshi did.
- raincole 3y ago
  I believe the Reddit OP (and most people in that thread) doesn't even know what cryptography is at pop sci level and they just think anything related to "private key" must be about cryptocurrency. Stupidest thing I've read for months, even for Reddit's standard.
hakdbha 3y ago
[dead]
blindriver 3y ago
The fact that none of the original BTC has been transferred is more than enough proof that whoever Satoshi is is dead. There's no other explanation, especially after this generationally significant amount of money it's worth.
- JSDevOps 3y ago
  Either this or in the early days lost hard drive or corrupt hard drive.
bigEnotation 3y ago
I know it always gets shutdown, but I’m comfortable with it being done by the US/CIA[1], especially since Satoshi stopped sending emails once Gavin Andresen met with CIA and « took over » the project. I anticipate it’ll be unclassified at some point, and then really take off, but not before the US exhausts the ability to try and trace malicious transactions they might be focused on. Also the US owning a bunch of the original bitcoins is in line with owning a bunch of the lower IPv4 addresses which haven’t seem much, if any, activity. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/mr780k/satoshi_nakamoto_is_cia/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/mr780k/sato...
WanderPanda 3y ago
The opsec of this guy nakamoto is just on another level.
pointlessone 3y ago
I'm sorry for the dude. The mob has started tweeting at him. I hope doesn't have an app installed or has muted notifications.
kkfx 3y ago
My very own personal and totally unproven theory is that at a certain point in time Big Tech decide they can take over banks. See for instance - https://web.archive.org/web/20240213185758/https://www.cimb.ch/uploads/1/1/5/4/115414161/banking_disrupted_geneva22-1.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20240213185758/https://www.cimb.... - https://milkeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/reports-pdf/T20_TF8_PB3_0.pdf https://milkeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/reports-pdf/... How? Well pushing what seems an alternative to a central bank and banks system, a fully open and still pure finance one. Since no one really trust such actors they choose the FLOSS path publishing a FLOSS project as a mysterious developer who seems to want fight the giants. "Hey, but cryptos are open!", really? Formally yes, while 99% who use them use them via some exchange, witch is de facto a kind of bank not under the national banks laws of course. When a blockchain grow enough essentially no little player can handle it entirely so again it's a big tech natural game, pretend to be open, friendly and innocent "do not be evil", while being of course the contrary. Eventually banks react an reach some kind of agreement so now the trend is crypto but with a CBDC model, who solve some inter-central-banks problems, give a place under the Sun to big tech and keep essentially anything as usual. Otherwise I see no reasons for someone to mask his/shes identity in a FLOSS project that's formally innocent and friendly.
prossercj 3y ago
Original text deleted, here's an archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20240408132600/https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1bxqnpq/new_theory_on_satoshi_nakamoto/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240408132600/https://old.reddi...

66 points by bpierre 3y ago

This is pretty thin. Some Japanese cryptography researchers happen to have some very common syllables in their surnames. I still like Hal Finney as Nakamoto, just because those bitcoin have never moved, and his being dead is the best explanation for that.

yieldcrv 3y ago
I like the idea of Paul Le Roux, specifically because his name was redacted in the court docket but the government did the redacting in the PDF wrong But I don’t find this thread to be very thin. Satoshi being a common name is going to always be an issue, but there are not that many cryptographers in the world.
warner25 3y ago
I agree on the first point. On the second point, no. I think we have a preponderance of evidence for Len Sassaman. He also explains why those bitcoin haven't moved, as well as many other peculiar things. This appears to be the most authoritative research that lays everything out: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.10257v14.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.10257v14.pdf If anyone actually reads that and comes to a different conclusion, I'd love to hear it and why.
- jimhi 3y ago
  The fact it was a whitepaper highly suggests a lifelong academic who has spent their careers publishing papers like these men, not a PHD student. Also, some of the word choices in the whitepaper and the initial reference to London banks being bailed out again suggest Satoshi is not a native American english speaker.
  - warner25 3y ago
    Who do you think writes most of the papers in the academic world? And what do you think PhD students spend most of their time doing?
    - infradig 3y ago
      Not PhD students. Anything else.
yreg 3y ago
> just because those bitcoin have never moved Satoshi might not have the keys to those earliest wallets. Perhaps they have decided that those coins should never be moved and erased the keys.
- this_user 3y ago
  There are literally billions in those wallets. Unless "Satoshi" is independently wealthy, a nation state, or dead, you would expect that they would have at least taken out some money. I can't imagine that "Satoshi" would have lost all the keys to all of those wallets.
  - bawolff 3y ago
    But it wasn't billions in the early days. They could have discarded the keys before it was billions.
    - yreg 3y ago
      And Satoshi was able to mine/buy plenty of newer bitcoins back in the early days. The decision to erase the keys from those known wallets and make sure they never make a transaction would boost the value of their remaining coins.
  - pa7ch 3y ago
    They could have just mined very early on and made more then enough to be independently wealthy with that.
  - andy800 3y ago
    There are many, many ways to lose a cryptographic key. There are none to restore one. There's also the idea that Satoshi thought he was doing something altruistic and purposely destroyed the keys so he wouldn't be tempted later on... which, if true, he might be regretting now.
    - mgiampapa 3y ago
spense 3y ago
why not adam back? the evidence in favor of adam dwarfs other candidates.
- spense 3y ago
  honestly, i thought we settled on Adam Back as Satoshi: - adam was extremely active during the early cypherpunk days, when - he invented Hashcash, which bitcoin cites in its whitepaper and used as its PoW - he was the first to take Wei Dai's b-money proposal seriously and discusses combining it with hashcash (the 2 core elements of bitcoin) - he disappeared and reappeared professionally during the exact timeframe of bitcoin development - his writing closely matches satoshi's (british english + style/punctuation) - he had no public involvement with bitcoin until he joined Bitcointalk forums in 2013 and suddenly had intimate details of unknown bugs in bitcoin saying "I thought I'd fixed them". - he started Blockstream with the mission to ensure the survival of bitcoin (funded lighting, paid core devs, etc) - he recently helped nail the coffin on Craig Wright's case in court proving he was not satoshi, during which - he revealed the earliest known email correspondence with satoshi watch the interview were he uncomfortably describes himself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=688J9UZJxKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=688J9UZJxKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcvX0P1b5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcvX0P1b5g
pcthrowaway 3y ago
Hal Finney left his family broke in his wake, after spending the entirety of his bitcoin wealth on treatment and cryopreservation. I really don't believe Finney would have had access to what would have been tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of bitcoin at the time and left his family in that position.
- Finneyfamily 3y ago
  This is blatantly false (Hal Finney felt confident in that his family would be OK and they were technological savvy enough to work out access to their inheritance), but also, they became a target so I believe that their privacy should be respected. Edit: sources are (1) a note about the Finney family being targeted in 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/12/finney-swat/ https://www.wired.com/2014/12/finney-swat/ and (2) a message from his wife in 2022 https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ruaaur/a_message_from_hal_finneys_wife/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ruaaur/a_message_f...
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    Sorry if I was incorrect, I was going off of what I heard. I heard he spent all his money towards the end of his life. I'm not seeing anything in those links to suggest otherwise. Are you suggesting they were left with a sizeable fortune?

maurimtl 3y ago

Sounds very legit

mgiampapa 3y ago

It's awfully hard for 3 people to keep a secret when that much money could be on the line.

viraptor 3y ago
Money on the line in what way? If they started it, they have a stupid amount of money already. They could gain fame, but after so many years... they don't seem interested in that.
codezero 3y ago
perhaps they collectively generated the private key in a way that gave none of them access to it.
pcthrowaway 3y ago
Ben Franklin had the saying "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead"

ProjectArcturis 3y ago

I think it's a reasonable explanation for the name, but it almost completely rules out these three people as the author of Bitcoin. Using part of your actual name as part of your pseudonym would be incredibly stupid. Chelsea Manning (nee Brad) was caught almost immediately because she leaked her documents through an account with the username "bmanningfm".

codezero 3y ago
I think back to 2009 and think of the state of opsec back then and I think people could very much use ridiculously traceable names for something like Bitcoin.
- tim333 3y ago
  Though I think bitcoin Satoshi made a reasonable effort to keep anonymous. It was probably cunning to use the name of a real person, the Satoshi Nakamoto who lived a few blocks from Finney as it would confuse any legal efforts to go after the bitcoin creator Satoshi. I mean in court it would be saying I accuse you Joe Bloggs of being Satoshi Nakamoto and Joe Bloggs would be saying no it's the guy in LA who is actually called that.
  - codezero 3y ago
    Good point.

EdwardDiego 3y ago

If they're real, I get the feeling they'd be disgusted at what Bitcoin has become.

bawolff 3y ago

So he googled a bunch of people at an academic cryptography conference and discovered that they wrote papers mentioning public/private keys? Like sheesh... obviously academic cryptographers write papers involving public/private keys. That is basically their job. I bet a lot of them used a computer too, just like satoshi did.

raincole 3y ago
I believe the Reddit OP (and most people in that thread) doesn't even know what cryptography is at pop sci level and they just think anything related to "private key" must be about cryptocurrency. Stupidest thing I've read for months, even for Reddit's standard.

hakdbha 3y ago

[dead]

blindriver 3y ago

The fact that none of the original BTC has been transferred is more than enough proof that whoever Satoshi is is dead. There's no other explanation, especially after this generationally significant amount of money it's worth.

JSDevOps 3y ago
Either this or in the early days lost hard drive or corrupt hard drive.

bigEnotation 3y ago

I know it always gets shutdown, but I’m comfortable with it being done by the US/CIA[1], especially since Satoshi stopped sending emails once Gavin Andresen met with CIA and « took over » the project. I anticipate it’ll be unclassified at some point, and then really take off, but not before the US exhausts the ability to try and trace malicious transactions they might be focused on. Also the US owning a bunch of the original bitcoins is in line with owning a bunch of the lower IPv4 addresses which haven’t seem much, if any, activity. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/mr780k/satoshi_nakamoto_is_cia/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/mr780k/sato...

WanderPanda 3y ago

The opsec of this guy nakamoto is just on another level.

pointlessone 3y ago

I'm sorry for the dude. The mob has started tweeting at him. I hope doesn't have an app installed or has muted notifications.

kkfx 3y ago

My very own personal and totally unproven theory is that at a certain point in time Big Tech decide they can take over banks. See for instance - https://web.archive.org/web/20240213185758/https://www.cimb.ch/uploads/1/1/5/4/115414161/banking_disrupted_geneva22-1.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20240213185758/https://www.cimb.... - https://milkeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/reports-pdf/T20_TF8_PB3_0.pdf https://milkeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/reports-pdf/... How? Well pushing what seems an alternative to a central bank and banks system, a fully open and still pure finance one. Since no one really trust such actors they choose the FLOSS path publishing a FLOSS project as a mysterious developer who seems to want fight the giants. "Hey, but cryptos are open!", really? Formally yes, while 99% who use them use them via some exchange, witch is de facto a kind of bank not under the national banks laws of course. When a blockchain grow enough essentially no little player can handle it entirely so again it's a big tech natural game, pretend to be open, friendly and innocent "do not be evil", while being of course the contrary. Eventually banks react an reach some kind of agreement so now the trend is crypto but with a CBDC model, who solve some inter-central-banks problems, give a place under the Sun to big tech and keep essentially anything as usual. Otherwise I see no reasons for someone to mask his/shes identity in a FLOSS project that's formally innocent and friendly.

prossercj 3y ago

Original text deleted, here's an archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20240408132600/https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1bxqnpq/new_theory_on_satoshi_nakamoto/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240408132600/https://old.reddi...