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Simple question for anyone who’s familiar with this world of journalism: how does the author and the NYTimes cope with the fact that making such claims paint a
by gyomu 6mo ago
Simple question for anyone who’s familiar with this world of journalism: how does the author and the NYTimes cope with the fact that making such claims paint a huge target on the person they claim to have “unmasked”?
Satoshi’s wallets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and there have been kidnappings/torture/murders for much less than that.
Do they just not care about the ethical implications?
And really, for what? What is gained by “unmasking” Satoshi other than satisfying one’s curiosity? There is no argument to be made there for the greater public good or anything like that.
- eleveriven 6mo agoYes, this seems like one of those cases where "the public is curious" and "the public has a right to know" are being blurred together
- idontwantthis 6mo agoI was just wondering the same thing.
- thehappypm 6mo agoExposing the wealthy is pretty standard journalism
- anamax 6mo agoAnd if this guy isn't Satoshi? And if he comes to harm as a result of someone believing the NYT?
- righthand 6mo agoThen the person who harmed him will be prosecuted. And life will go on. The NY Times isn’t calling for violence.
- Topfi 6mo agoHarm from exposure can take a lot of shapes and sizes that go beyond the physical and the potential prosecution that someone may be held accountable I find weak.
- chii 6mo ago> Then the person who harmed him will be prosecuted ... NY Times isn’t calling for violence. And the negligent driver also didn't mean to cause injury, yet we have laws on negligent driving. If the NY Times would have known that harm could come to someone by having information published, they should consult and/or take measures to prevent that harm (or at least, take measures to minimize it).
- righthand 6mo agoThe negligent driver was driving the vehicle though. The NY Times writer isn’t holding Back hostage and holding a knife to his throat nor indicating anyone should do that. Your metaphor is nonsense.
- yreg 6mo agoAnd yet they would be responsible.
- righthand 6mo agoHow? Knowing who Satoshi is, is a great thing. Don’t create a diety out of the pseudonym.
- hliyan 6mo agoConsider the following hypothetical: you have a safe in your home with a substantial sum of money in it, and you consider its presence, the location and contents private knowledge. However, someone uses publicly available information to infer the rough location and contents of your safe and makes it public. You are robbed shortly after. What percentage of responsibility lies with that person?
- 6mo ago
- fauchletenerum 6mo ago[flagged]
- Mond_ 6mo agoI don't think that's what that word means.
- mikkupikku 6mo agoCome now, don't be absurd. The NYTimes has hard hitting evidence to back up their accusation, like "He shifted in his seat when asked about this."
- mike_hearn 6mo agoIt's pretty standard left wing activism. Rags like the NYT pretending there's no difference, doesn't mean there is no difference.
- khalic 6mo agoHN now has a massive boner for billionaires, everybody imagining they’ll become one someday. It’s pretty sad
- jmyeet 6mo agoI think the wallets go well beyond "hundreds of millions". Aren't there like a million Bitcoin in dormant wallets associated with Satoshi? Personally, I'd assumed that whoever the person or persons were, they're dead because nobody can resist the pull of tens of billions of dollars regardless of their ideological position on cryptocurrencies. But that's just a guess. There's absolutely a public interest in this. Sorry. This is a trillion dollar market now. Was this a state actor? If so, why? what was the plan here exactly? I see absolutely no reason to respect anonymity here. You don't get to sit on $50 billion and have people respect your desire to remain hidden.
- johnnienaked 6mo agoCouldn't agree more. If you don't want to be famous in today's day and age, don't do infamous shit.
- adventured 6mo agoAn estimated 22,000 addresses, 1.1 million Bitcoin. Present value $78 billion. That would make him the 23rd richest person in the world. Bill Gates by comparison is 'only' worth $102 billion these days. If you priced Gates backwards in gold, his $102 billion is about $13 billion two decades ago. He hasn't kept ahead of the destruction of the dollar very well.
- jmyeet 6mo ago1.1m Bitcoin is currently $77B not $7B. Gold is a weird one. It’s has a hell of a run over the last decade. I’m not sure it looked so rosy in 2015. I kinda feel like betting on gold is betting on the end of civilization. I don’t really want to be right.
- saddist0 6mo agoLmao, it's $70B+ brother. Zeros aren't for everyone. :")
- 6mo ago
- zamadatix 6mo agoAt least Adam Back is already publicly known to be worth at least tens of millions anywyas. Many of those dozens/hundreds of other guesses are not so lucky. If the private key still exists, the BTC would be worth more like 10s of billions though. I choose to believe the key is long gone from this world though, whoever originally had it.
- hart_russell 6mo agoLong gone until quantum computers crack all the legacy wallets
- klipt 6mo agoAt which point the bitcoin in legacy wallets is clearly worthless
- hart_russell 6mo agoIt would be insane for the Bitcoin protocol to make Bitcoin in non QR wallets worthless.
- socialcommenter 6mo agoI was curious about this point when discussion came up on HN just recently. I don't see how you could "assign" each non-QR address a new quantum resistant address unless they "claim" it themselves somehow. What can possibly happen to an uneducated mom-and-pop bitcoin holder who never takes up their claim? Someone else who cracks their private key would be in an identical position to them w.r.t authenticating themselves and doing such a claim first - thus it becomes a race
- pjc50 6mo agoThe parent claim is that once quantum cracking becomes real, there would be no more bitcoin in non-QR wallet (because the quants would steal it all).
- deleted 6mo ago
- DeathArrow 6mo ago>Satoshi’s wallets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and there have been kidnappings/torture/murders for much less than that. So if Forbes publishes a list of the richest people in the world, it makes them targets?
- anshumankmr 6mo agodo you need the forbes list of billionaires to know who is bezos, gates or musk?
- input_sh 6mo agoThere's 3428 on that list, I don't think it's feasible for any random person to know about more than 5% of them.
- helloplanets 6mo agoSadly it does. Most of those people have to spend a lot of money on security. But usually it's not the Forbes list that specifically outs them as being wealthy. You can't really build a billion dollar company under the radar. This is just a strange situation where someone has made billions without their identity being known, without being a criminal.
- aaa_aaa 6mo agoWhen you are not actually rich, it matters.
- SXX 6mo agoThis. Imagine being targeted by actual government agencies of russia, north korea and iran who wouldn't mind to take some of your bitcoins.
- chii 6mo agoNo, because those people are already public figures. They own companies that are publicly known (i don't mean publicly traded), and thus by proxy, are public face of those companies. Or they appear(ed) in public to make something of being in public (such as lobbying, or civic activities, or philanthropy etc). This makes any article about them not a doxx - they already revealed themselves publicly. You cannot segregate public affairs of the person with private affairs.
- bluecalm 6mo agoI was thinking along the same lines. Isn't it just doxxing? Going deep into someone's online history and making hypothesis about who they are in real life, then publishing their name and what they do?
- chii 6mo agoIndeed, unless they're already a public person (such as celebrity or public figure of note).
- ghaff 6mo agoMini-celebrities are probably far more likely to attract attention than a lot of “rich people.”
- prmoustache 6mo agoLet's keep in mind that doxxing is not a universal concept nor are its mechanisms universally perceived as negative/frowned upon outside of specific online areas. I don't know of any law against it except for specific populations like law enforcement and even those usually have exceptions for journalism.
- worthless-trash 6mo agoI believe it widely understood to be what most people call "a douche move".
- prmoustache 6mo agoWidely only in limited — mostly english speaking — online communities. Otherwise most people hate it if it is likely to harm someone considered as an innocent individual but less if that figure is already kind of public — people love to know where and all the details on how famous people live — or to people they view more negatively. For instance nobody complains when the real owner, origin and location of say, a shady company, is made known to the general public. So the real truth is "it depends". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- johnfn 6mo agoThe NYTimes infamously doxxed Slate Star Codex[1], despite him basically begging them not to because it would upend his psychiatry practice, back in 2020 for no reason other than because they could. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23610416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23610416
- creatonez 6mo ago[flagged]
- testdelacc1 6mo agoCould you share a link to where he promotes race science?
- whatshisface 6mo agoThis one is more direct than most, but comments about the subject are not uncommon on the older blog. I think reading this material is why the journalist turned against him but never stated why. "Psychiatrist has dozens of charts on their secret personal blog comparing the achievements of different sub-ethnicities in Israel" is a headline you might try to hide out of politeness to the uninvolved. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/29/four-nobel-truths/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/29/four-nobel-truths/ (How can anyone who has read slatestarcodex not know?)
- arowthway 6mo agoWhat's wrong with comparing the achievements of different sub-ethnicities in Israel? What's wrong with talking about any real phenomena? Is the assumption that he must have a hidden bad-faith agenda?
- account42 6mo agoIt's against the current ruling dogma to question that human beings are interchangeable cogs that are all ready to be placed into the machine wherever needed.
- adastra22 6mo agoHundreds of billions, not millions.
- taberiand 6mo agoAt least until they actually tried selling them
- kbelder 6mo agoThey could be valuable in the sense that the owner can destroy bitcoin at will. Just having that leverage could be useful.
- deepsun 6mo agoNaah, the moment the first million of those is sold -- the price crashes. In other words, imagine some investor had those billions, and could buy the key. Should they? A thing is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it.
- eru 6mo agoThey might crash the price if they sold the whole stake in one go, sure. But I predict that modest selling would increase the bitcoin price. Just imagine the hype from the Second Coming of Satoshi. Bitcoin would be front page news in mainstream newspapers for that week.
- verisimi 6mo agoI would assume that they don't care about the unmasking, because the whole thing is a just a misleading show, intended to misdirect you from the reality. I don't know the reality, but perhaps if the USG was behind the creation of BTC, that would explain it.
- arthurofbabylon 6mo agoThis is a journalistic publication with a foundational value of transparency. If you study the history of institutions that favor transparency, they rarely ever need to further justify efforts of transparency beyond that underlying value. Transparency needs no further analysis of second order effects. “What is gained…?” is simply not a question asked, for the same reason that advocates for privacy rarely if ever circumstantially ask the same question.
- Reimersholme 6mo ago[dead]
- psychoslave 6mo agoIt’s all about balance. No one defending privacy is claiming situation like a pedophile keeping a slave children in their basement should be undetectable because privacy should be an absolute barrier that let people whatever atrocities they want within private doors. On the other hand, those who seriously care about privacy won’t believe it’s fine to have some laws supposedly enacted to protect the children but actually just implement general presumption of guilt and everyone being spied permanently.
- virtualritz 6mo ago> Transparency needs no further analysis of second order effects. By that logic we don't need judges. Just read what the resp. law says and 'apply' it. Bizarre.
- pjc50 6mo ago> Transparency needs no further analysis of second order effects. Everything needs analysis of second order effects. Otherwise you wreck lives without even realizing that's what you're doing. It's the negligence of a drunk driver. On the other hand, this also applies to Bitcoin. Satoshi, if he is real and alive and in control of his wallet, is a billionaire. Billionaires need to be kept under careful watch unless they, too, wreck lives without realizing.
- Froztnova 6mo agoMy mind goes to the science fiction novel Footfall by Larry Nivel and Jerry Pournell, in which Earth is attacked by aliens and, at one point, a journalist figures out about a secret project to carry out a counter-offensive and is going to run a story on it, obviously against the wishes of those involved with the project. Another character drowns the journalist in a toilet.
- iwontberude 6mo agoWell given they have hunreds of millions of dollars to protect themselves with, it seems like it would be a good time to start using it.
- SXX 6mo agoImagine mafia knocking on your door and putting a gun to your head because some journalist figured out you are secret billionare. Not cool?
- ghaff 6mo agoHow is it different from all the non-secret billionaires to say nothing of all the people with 100s of millions?
- entropyneur 6mo agoSatoshi is a paper billionaire - he can't use a small fraction of his "wealth" to hire proper security. Simultaneously his "assets" are much more attractive to criminals. Imagine holding a regular billionaire hostage and demanding they give you a billion dollars. They'd probably have to sell 1B worth of stock, then convert it to cash (or crypto), etc. all of that requiring multiple interactions with different people and institutions.
- socialcommenter 6mo agoHeisting multiple billions worth of crypto would have the same issues, just to a smaller degree. If that much illicit money is on the line, `mJurisdiction` which normally looks the other way might be tempted to investigate and confiscate it for their own benefit. They also can't easily sell that amount quickly without repercussions (and without another institution like an exchange). You're right, but only to a limited degree.
- frogulis 6mo agoEven if you put a gun to Bill Gates' head, signing over all his wealth to you would still require a lengthy process, not just handing over some keys.
- vaginaphobic 6mo ago[dead]
- SXX 6mo agoIt's not even hundreds of millions. It's tens of billions of dollars if we suppose someone actually have access to these wallets. Bitcoins across old unused wallets worth $30B to $80B depend of how you count it.
- amjnsx 6mo agoI always assumed these wallets were never meant to be withdrawn. In the case of satoshi’s - it’s public proof that the Bitcoin network is still secure.
- thaumasiotes 6mo ago> Bitcoins across old unused wallets worth $30B to $80B depend of how you count it. It's worth considerably less if you make any attempt to count it accurately. The market capitalization reflects the fact that old unused wallets are unused. If they stopped being unused, market capitalization would drop.
- user34283 6mo agoIn some sense they are even completely worthless - just tokens in a wealth redistribution scheme not connected to notable real value production. If the system does crash, nothing of value would be lost. And we would be rid of ransomware.
- doctorwho42 6mo agoWell not nothing, we have already loss an incalculable amount of money, resources, energy and time to generating Bitcoin and any other coin.
- gbibas 6mo agoExactly right. Unfortunately, this is likely a reporter who is just looking for something that will get attention. I remember a time when reporters wrote things based on importance, not chasing clickbait like everyone on social media. Whoever Satoshi is/was, they wanted privacy. Let them have it and move on.
- bobanrocky 6mo agoYou do realize the author is the one that exposed the Theranos fraud ?
- contubernio 6mo agoThe NYTimes is basically a mouthpiece for US government interests. The US government has an interest in outing cryptocurrency actors of all kinds.
- raincole 6mo agoAnd the "evidence" they presented includes things like, body language. > I presented my evidence piece by piece. In his soft British lilt, Mr. Back insisted he wasn’t Satoshi and chalked it all up to a series of coincidences. But at times, his body language told a different story. His face reddened and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat when confronted with things that were harder to explain away. Yes, they unironically wrote this. Everyone knows that if you already believe someone is lying, you'll see all the signs that he's lying. It's confirmation bias 101, and this is unashamedly published on a so-called credible journalism outlet. I think if something bad happens to Mr. Back (I hope not), the NYTimes is at least morally responsible.
- csa 6mo ago> this is unashamedly published on a so-called credible journalism outlet There may be credible journalists at some major print newspapers, but I don’t think there are many people who actually believe that any major US-based journalism outlet defaults to credible any more.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- neuah 6mo agoLike most efforts to unmaks satoshi, the whole piece is a long exercise in confirmation bias. He pours over posts to find specific shared writing tics, then feeds those specific tics into an LLM to 'eliminate' other suspects? All because more unbiased approaches carried out by the academic were inconclusive.
- nothinkjustai 6mo agoJournalists largely have no morals or ethics these days. Literal scum of the earth, anything to make a name for themselves or to push their ideological agendas.
- alyxya 6mo agoI think of journalism like any other job where there's an expectation to produce results, where the main objective here is to write an article that lots of people read. It's a topic that catches a lot of people's attention, so in a sense they've succeeded by getting a lot of people to read and talk about it.
- psychoslave 6mo agoIt’s like saying chirurgeon job is like any other job, and the most people operated in a minimum amount of time is all that matter to optimize. But even in the most cynical Machiavelli™ hospital, reputation and actual operational results have to be taken into account if the institution want to continue to be frequented.
- shevy-java 6mo agoWhy should journalism engage in the implied pro-active censorship here? With that reasoning you could censor everything, including the Epstein files. You only need to find some "critical reason", usually being safety concern or "but but but the children". So I disagree with that rationale. How far would you want censorship to go? Having said that, I am not particularly interested in the "who is mystery man" debate situation. > There is no argument to be made there for the greater public good That's an opinion. While I personally don't care, others may, so your statement here is also just an opinion. Trump also said the Epstein files are not relevant - I and many others think differently. I wonder how deep the Epstein kompromat situation is, it would be an ideal blackmail situation. Any democracy can be factually undermined that way.
- eps 6mo ago> Why should journalism engage in the implied pro-active censorship here? Because in this particular case it endangers subject's life.
- khalic 6mo agoLol you guys are really in a cult aren’t you? You’re implying that journalists should never out people that are too wealthy? Do you not see the massive red flag here?
- rationalist 6mo agoI'm not reading your suggested implication at all in the other person's comment.
- khalic 6mo agoIt’s the logical conclusion to his statement, why should Satoshi be treated differently, given more privacy rights, only because he’s a billionaire? Or do you think that making an exception for him is the logical choice here?
- teeray 6mo ago> What is gained by “unmasking” Satoshi other than satisfying one’s curiosity? Those sweet, sweet clicks, and the eyeballs they bring along with them, of course
- thinkharderdev 6mo agoI mean, yeah? We can wag our fingers about what people find interesting but it is what it is. Bitcoin is an important technology in the world, and people are interested in who the inventor is. You may think it doesn't matter, but clearly a lot of people disagree.
- butlike 6mo agoIt's one of those topics that's evergreen for a perennial article. If there's a slow month of ad revenue, just write up a "Who is Satoshi" article, end it with "we may never know" and collect the paycheck. Honestly, I expected better from the NYT.
- edf13 6mo ago> And really, for what? Readership, clicks and views
- ozgung 6mo ago> There is no argument to be made there for the greater public good or anything like that. Here is an argument for the greater public good. Transparency. Bitcoin acts as an alternative global monetary system. It’s not centralized but whales can control the game. Acquisition of bitcoins are asymmetrical, meaning first adopters gained an enormous wealth and became whales virtually for free. So we can say it’s a rigged game. It becomes important to know who are all those people that can control a global monetary system. If Satoshi is an individual it may not matter. But what if it’s an organization, like CIA or o group of bankers. What if it was Epstein or Elon Musk, unlikely but viable candidates but the implications are huge. Also we assume Bitcoin is for good and maker of a good thing can be anonymous. What if it is a harmful thing, like a Ponzi scheme to grab people’s money. Then Satoshi becomes a criminal rather than a hero, and public must know the name.
- gzread 6mo agoNYT just doesn't care about the consequences of what they publish. A few years ago they put out a piece about how a big group of people were constantly raping another big group of people, that had significant geopolitical implications, it turned out to be entirely made up and they never apologised.
- pjc50 6mo agoI can't work out whether this is supposed to be talking about trans panic, the 80s satanic panic, the Epstein files, Rotherham, or something else.
- Angostura 6mo agoYou mean, why is it worth noting that someone who frequently speaks at conferences about Bitcoin, has businesses that utilise Bitcoin and is influential in the Bitcoin community is - the inventor of Bitcoin?
- sva_ 6mo ago> hundreds of millions More in the range of 100 billion
- PunchTornado 6mo agoHe is a billionaire who should pay taxes.
- eru 6mo agoDepends on jurisdiction.
- anonu 6mo ago[dead]
- chiefalchemist 6mo agoBy definition, if they’re not concerned about the ethics, they are not journalists and their occupation is not journalism. Nor does your employer’s reputation[1] allow them to claim such titles simple because they sign your pay cheque. You can’t inherit the title like that. Journalist/journalism is like leader/leadership… too often used inappropriately, too often used to mislead, too often used inappropriately. Words such as reporter, hack, or NYT agent are more appropriate and more accurate. Put another way, if your pet barks, would you still call it a cat? Of course not! If these people and entities aren’t fulfilling the baseline of the definition why do we continue to call them something they are not? Journalist is a verb. It’s the decisions made and the actions taken. We’d be doing the collective a favor if we stopped giving credit where credit is NOT due. [1] editorial: Most of us would agree that the NYT has lost its way. That it’s getting by on the fumes of integrity long gone.
- eru 6mo agoOnly True Scotsmen can be journalists?
- chiefalchemist 6mo agoNo. But people without ethics, transparency, etc can not be. Again, for all intents and purposes it’s a verb. It’s the actions you take. This thread is filled with references to actions that DQ the person from being a journalist. Continuing to get them the title / reward only encourages bad behavior.
- eru 6mo agoMorally, that's a valid position to take. Pragmatically, I'd call every human who writes for a newspaper like the NYT a 'journalist'. (Of course, we could extend the same game and deny the moniker of 'newspaper' for a rag like that. But at some point, we are drifting too far from the mainstream accepted definition of words.)
- chiefalchemist 6mo ago
- khalic 6mo agoAre you implying there is an inherent right for public figures to hide their wealth, “for security reasons”? WTF?
- KeplerBoy 6mo agoMost people think that, otherwise tax filings would be public (like they are in some places iirc).
- khalic 6mo agoMost people… never a good sign when you have to bring out these two words
- KeplerBoy 6mo agoWell, that's how democracies work.
- khalic 6mo agoOh really, there was a vote?
- eru 6mo agoYou might want to look up how representative democracy works?
- khalic 6mo agoSo if something is legal = it’s what most people think. Holy fallacy
- eru 6mo agoHuh? What makes you think so? I was replying purely to 'Oh really, there was a vote?' Most places have votes every few years. And the elected representatives can generally make and amend or keep laws. The candidates can also generally make any promises they wish to make, and if the general public wants some specific laws changed, it's often a good idea for candidates to make that a part of their platform. And if people generally don't want a law changed, candidates tend to ignore them. Basic representative democracy stuff.
- wnc3141 6mo agoI think what makes this a little murkier is that this Beck guy appears to be already a well known figure in crypto circles. (I don't really follow the space). It feels more like uncovering the secret director of a film to be an established film producer. For the last point, I agree there's a sort of "who cares" aspect to the piece. There is no artistic intent to interpret. The product speaks for itself making BTC the default crypto coin instead of any of the other millions of coins. The wealth from the founder, from what I can tell, has not been instrumentalized in any significant way.
- thinkharderdev 6mo ago> I agree there's a sort of "who cares" aspect to the piece Sure, rationally I agree, but clearly a lot of people do care. It may not matter in any substantive way who Satoshi is but people still care. > There is no artistic intent to interpret Is that the case? Obviously there is no artistic intent as bitcoin is not art, but it's not clear to me why the intent of an artist is important but the intent of a technologist is not.
- basisword 6mo ago>> And really, for what? What is gained by “unmasking” Satoshi other than satisfying one’s curiosity? There is no argument to be made there for the greater public good or anything like that. Sure there is. A whole system of unregulated finance has been setup and it's very useful for criminality. How is not in the public interest to know who set it up and for what purpose? If it turned out Satoshi was actually a nation state and this was done for some nefarious purpose you think that's not in the public interest?
- thinkharderdev 6mo agoThis one is challenging I think because the article itself is so thin. The evidence seems really shaky. That said, clearly a lot of people really do seem to care who Satoshi is, so it doesn't seem like its out of the question for a newspaper to print an article claiming to answer that question. > Do they just not care about the ethical implications? Did Satoshi not care about the ethical implications of creating bitcoin? Mr Back may not be Satoshi, but he's also made a career driving the adoption of bitcoin and bitcoin itself has enabled many, many terrible crimes. It seems like special pleading to argue that Mr Back is not responsible for any of the consequence of bitcoin in the world, and also that the NY Times is morally responsible if someone harms Mr Back because they think he is Satoshi. Either we have an ethical responsibility to consider the consequences of our actions or we don't.
- antiframe 6mo ago> Did Satoshi not care about the ethical implications of creating bitcoin? Mr Back may not be Satoshi, but he's also made a career driving the adoption of bitcoin and bitcoin itself has enabled many, many terrible crimes. Nobody seems to be angry at the inventor of coins and bills, though.
- robofanatic 6mo agoinvention of bitcoin is significant enough that world needs to know who really did it. Why is the person hiding is the real question.
- jacquesm 6mo agoNever get between a journalist and their scoop.
- LastTrain 6mo agoSo you are suggesting the super rich get some extra layer of kid glove treatment, simply because they have more money?
- JohnMakin 6mo agoEasy - they don't care. Major institutional publications have lacked journalistic integrity for a very long time now. I can't really think of any exceptions there anymore.
- snowwrestler 6mo agoIf I say that I think you are Satoshi, what are the ethical implications of that? Should I not speak or write opinions that you find annoying or inconvenient? How does that scale to everyone? This is why the first item in the U.S. Bill of Rights is freedom of speech and of the press. Who knows what objections anyone will have to any given statement, and forcing everyone to accommodate everyone leads to a claustrophobic dystopia.
- Hippocrates 6mo agoThe fact that this guy is trying to IPO a crypto company right now is a fantastic reason to present whatever evidence there is that he may be Satoshi.
- Ferret7446 6mo agoThe difference is that you aren't beholden to a level of professional ethics (although the "respected publications" all have seemingly given that up as well so maybe this is a moot point). There's a difference between what you're legally allowed to say and what is ethical/professional to say, as well as what you might end up being sued for in civil court.
- prettyblocks 6mo agoAdam Back is already a high profile target. Unmasking him as Satoshi doesn't really change that for the guy that founded that company that leads bitcoin core development.
- Yizahi 6mo agoWhile in general you are right, there is a reason why developed countries are usually publicizing information about government officials and private entrepreneurs. This creates sense of accountability and allows for proper oversight by the journalists and law. And among those are plenty of rich or very rich people and no one is kidnapping or shooting them in the streets despite knowing exactly where they live or work. Arguably a person who can at whim with a single click destabilize half the world economy (simply by moving a single sat from the creator wallet to another, among other things) necessitates such oversight too and can't claim to be a private insignificant individual who is abused by transparency. PS: even though I'm a lowly QA on a relatively small salary, as an entrepreneur my private info like contact, full address, tax returns and other is completely and legally public for anyone in the world to see on my government portal. And it is a good thing.