5 ms·
>I read up to here, but I wasn't convinced that this is the revelation that the author claims The rest of the arguments is as weak: 1) both released open-sour
by kgeist 6mo ago
>I read up to here, but I wasn't convinced that this is the revelation that the author claims
The rest of the arguments is as weak:
1) both released open-source software
2) both don't like spam
3) both like using pseudonyms online
4) both love freedom
5) both are anti-copyright
etc.
Basically, the author found that Adam Back used the same words on X as Satoshi did in some emails (including such rare words as "dang," "backup," and "abandonware") and then decided to find every possible "link" they could to build the case, even if most of the links are along the lines of "Both are humans! Coincidence? I think not."
- tovej 6mo agoI think this misses the point. The point is that interests and writing style matches, which means there's a higher chance they are the same person. The more similarities you find, the closer the match. It's in no way proof, of course. But it does provide good reason to look closer
- rcxdude 6mo agoOnly if those similarities are indicating more than 'generic internet hacker' for both of them. You only need 23 bits to identify a person but those are 23 uncorrelated bits, and all the 'similarities' presented here are extremely strongly correlated with themselves.
- extraduder_ire 6mo agoWhere are you getting 23 from? That's only 8-ish million values max.
- FarmerPotato 6mo agoYeah, but as Wordle fans know, some clues yield more bits than others. The search space is not balanced. The search space of hackers is a small subtree of all humans. So it's like a smaller tree of groups in Wordle that contains the letter "H". However, in reality there is no binary "hacker" bit, so maybe we're back to the brute force 33-bit space. And then, you don't know Satoshi's unique signature, and it's worse if Satoshi is a group. Come to think of it, do all hacker news posters even share a hacker bit? I still rely on information-theoretic proofs at work, they just don't involve messy humans.
- defrost 6mo agoSimilarities in style and word were common enough in small circles such as the cyphyrpunks that spawned those discussions. Then there's not altogether unlikely chance that Satoshi is a nodding homage to Nicolas Bourbaki, each contributor holding part of a multiparty voting key.
- alwa 6mo agoThe interests and writing style differentiate Mr. (Dr.?) Back from the general public, sure. But from what I’m reading, they don’t do a great job of distinguishing between 90s hackers. “Get this, his PhD thesis dealt with a computer language called C++, just like Bitcoin papers used” seems both confused and impossibly lazy to me. > “Scrap patents and copyright,” Mr. Back wrote in September 1997. > Satoshi did a similar thing. He released the Bitcoin software under M.I.T.’s open-source license Really? Like saying “get this, his college-aged musical interests included the Urban American musical style known as ‘Hip Hop’; therefore Tupac didn’t really die and this is him.” Heavy on insinuation, light on seriousness. Strong “…you’re not from around here, are you?” vibes. What does this kind of journalism hope to accomplish, anyway? Beyond bothering middle-aged nerds for gossip? And providing a frame for the author’s cute little sleuth jape? “Good reason to look closer” assumes there’s good reason to pick through ancient rubble in the first place.
- freejazz 6mo agoDid you read most of the article or what?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- alwa 6mo agoAll 12,000 words. Kept expecting it to take a turn toward something beyond pre-judgment and insinuation. Instead it unfolded as a cautionary tale, of the power of a premature conclusion to close an investigator’s mind to reasonable alternative possibilities. About escalating commitment to an early hunch, even as it leads you down an investigative dead end. For example it sure seems like his mountain of circumstantial evidence fits better with the theory that “Satoshi” could be a pen name for a small group of people—maybe even the small group whose history he traces and whose styles he has trouble teasing apart—rather than one “suspect” (as he calls it). But we don’t even really weigh that possibility seriously. So, like—why are we coming at this one guy by name and spooky hacker photo in the New York Times, with the suggestion that he has $110 billion under his mattress? All these speculations and arguments have been done over and over—what does this reporting add that’s worth 12,000 words? The colorful journey down a dead end, fine—but leave it at “My Quest,” don’t do the weasel subhed “the trail of clues […] led to Adam Back” to insinuate that it proved what it set out to prove. Or even added anything significant to the well-trodden record.
- DeliciousSeaCow 6mo agoIt's weird they spent so much time on the written word similarities, when the biggest reveal here is that Back disappears off the email lists (on a topic he is VERY interested in and has historically corresponded on) when Nakamoto appears, and then comes back when Nakamoto disappears.
- refulgentis 6mo ago[flagged]
- dboreham 6mo agoIt's been extremely widely known that whoever created Bitcoin had a strong interest in Hashcash, and perhaps created that or worked on it, for years and years. If that's the only smoking gun, why didn't we identify Satoshi long ago?
- refulgentis 6mo agoYou're right, "interested in Hashcash" describes dozens of people, and has been a known Satoshi filter for years. The new claim is more specific: between 1997-1999, Back proposed combining Hashcash with b-money, adding inflation adjustment via increasing computational difficulty, and using hash trees for public timestamping. That's most of Bitcoin's architecture in one package, a decade early. The number of people who proposed that particular combination of ideas is much smaller than the number who were merely interested in Hashcash.
- backscratches 6mo agoIn every parallel universe where a different person invents bitcoin, every single one is familiar with becks ideas from a decade earlier.
- bobbiechen 6mo agoThis article is a great example of "strong + weak = weak". I only made it to the interesting stuff because of Carreyou's name, otherwise I would have stopped. The email timing and lack of email metadata were also strong, in my opinion. But all of this nonsense like "Wow, these guys both talk about PGP??" distracts from it.
- vidarh 6mo agoAll of those similarities can be explained by Satoshi having read what Back wrote.
- WalterBright 6mo agoI use "dang" as a nod to Gary Larson.
- emmelaich 6mo agoYep, As fans of Larson's The Far Side, probably every American and Americo-phile computer geek and cypherpunk used 'dang' Same goes for the rest of your list.
- adastra22 6mo agoTIL I am Satoshi.