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Just finished watching the doc on HBO. The key piece of evidence seems to be this comment from Peter Todd: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2181.msg2873

Just finished watching the doc on HBO. The key piece of evidence seems to be this comment from Peter Todd: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2181.msg28739#msg287 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2181.msg28739#msg287... It stands out to the producers because: 1) Peter makes it just after joining the form, so he is unlikely to have detailed knowledge of bitcoin. 2) He seems to be finishing Satoshi's thought, as though he returned to an earlier post forgetting which account he was signed into. 3) The post happens just before Satoshi disappears and Peter leaves for a few years. The doc also features many scenes with Peter and Adam Back where their eyes kind of shift around and they laugh awkwardly when asked about certain things. Since the doc it seems that Peter has taken to twitter to say he was mislead about the purpose of the interviews. I've always kind of thought that Satoshi was probably one person who built it all in isolation, and I never played much attention to theories that Satoshi was actually multiple people. After watching the doc it does seem like Adam and Peter know a good deal more than they are letting on, even if it wasn't them specifically, it seems likely that they have some idea who it was.

petertodd 2y ago
> Peter makes it just after joining the form, so he is unlikely to have detailed knowledge of bitcoin. The fact that the inputs, outputs, and fee of a transaction must add up isn't exactly "detailed knowledge" :) I don't think it took me all that long to figure that out when I first tried understanding how Bitcoin worked. And frankly, the core of Bitcoin really isn't all that complex! You can have a very good understanding of all the parts after just a few days carefully studying it. Which is exactly what I did: I sat down with the Bitcoin Core codebase and figured out what all the code did. Especially at the time, it really wasn't that big of a codebase. > After watching the doc it does seem like Adam and Peter know a good deal more than they are letting on, even if it wasn't them specifically, it seems likely that they have some idea who it was. I can't speak for Adam. But I have no idea who Satoshi is. If anything, I think it could be literally hundreds or even thousands of potential people. Bitcoin is something so simple that you didn't need to be a super-genius to come up with it. You just needed to understand some relatively high-level, basic, cryptography and have a brilliant flash of inspiration. Satoshi was a very competent C++ programmer (it's a myth that his code was bad). But there's lots and lots of very competent C++ programmers out there.
- jawiggins 2y ago
  Cool to get a reply from you directly, thanks! It seems unlikely to me that it could be thousands of people, given the correspondence had with various people it seems likely to me that a few people have information that could lead in the correct direction. But I guess we'll never know.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - xOSBERTx 2y ago
    I think you misunderstood the context of 'thousands' - - "If anything, I think it could be literally hundreds or even thousands of potential people." - - meaning that, literally, thousands of DIFFERENT people, could be considered, as a potential possibility, of being a possible candidate, of being, Satoshi. Simply put :-P Not that 'thousands' of people are Satoshi, like you misunderstood. - anywho -
    - petertodd 2y ago
      Exactly. The world is a big place. It's likely that in 2008 thousands of people had the right skillset to create Bitcoin, any one of which might have done it. As long as Satoshi wants to stay hidden, we're not going to find them.
      - vizzah 2y ago
        Gov/CIA most definitely knows who Satoshi is. Even if he always used TOR/anonymous IPs, when accessing his @gmx.com account, with the number of sign-in's he had, it must be an absolute certainty, that he want through rogue exit nodes or some other de-anonymization methods we are not aware of, but deployed by gov. agencies.
        paulpauper 2y ago
        An IP was leaked in 2009 though tied to Satoshi in Los Angles

petertodd 2y ago

> Peter makes it just after joining the form, so he is unlikely to have detailed knowledge of bitcoin. The fact that the inputs, outputs, and fee of a transaction must add up isn't exactly "detailed knowledge" :) I don't think it took me all that long to figure that out when I first tried understanding how Bitcoin worked. And frankly, the core of Bitcoin really isn't all that complex! You can have a very good understanding of all the parts after just a few days carefully studying it. Which is exactly what I did: I sat down with the Bitcoin Core codebase and figured out what all the code did. Especially at the time, it really wasn't that big of a codebase. > After watching the doc it does seem like Adam and Peter know a good deal more than they are letting on, even if it wasn't them specifically, it seems likely that they have some idea who it was. I can't speak for Adam. But I have no idea who Satoshi is. If anything, I think it could be literally hundreds or even thousands of potential people. Bitcoin is something so simple that you didn't need to be a super-genius to come up with it. You just needed to understand some relatively high-level, basic, cryptography and have a brilliant flash of inspiration. Satoshi was a very competent C++ programmer (it's a myth that his code was bad). But there's lots and lots of very competent C++ programmers out there.

jawiggins 2y ago
Cool to get a reply from you directly, thanks! It seems unlikely to me that it could be thousands of people, given the correspondence had with various people it seems likely to me that a few people have information that could lead in the correct direction. But I guess we'll never know.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- xOSBERTx 2y ago
  I think you misunderstood the context of 'thousands' - - "If anything, I think it could be literally hundreds or even thousands of potential people." - - meaning that, literally, thousands of DIFFERENT people, could be considered, as a potential possibility, of being a possible candidate, of being, Satoshi. Simply put :-P Not that 'thousands' of people are Satoshi, like you misunderstood. - anywho -
  - petertodd 2y ago
    Exactly. The world is a big place. It's likely that in 2008 thousands of people had the right skillset to create Bitcoin, any one of which might have done it. As long as Satoshi wants to stay hidden, we're not going to find them.
    - vizzah 2y ago
      Gov/CIA most definitely knows who Satoshi is. Even if he always used TOR/anonymous IPs, when accessing his @gmx.com account, with the number of sign-in's he had, it must be an absolute certainty, that he want through rogue exit nodes or some other de-anonymization methods we are not aware of, but deployed by gov. agencies.
      - paulpauper 2y ago
        An IP was leaked in 2009 though tied to Satoshi in Los Angles