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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, j

by 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?

by TillE 3y ago

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?