4 ms·

Ted Nelson reveals who is creator of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto

16 points by GBiT 13y ago

claudius 13y ago
While somewhat plausible (and I have to admit I thought of the mathematician myself the first time Nelson presented his supposed properties), there is one reason to doubt this: Building both Bitcoin and the vast framework to prove the ABC conjecture within a few years time would be too much for a single person, wouldn’t it?
- Casseres 13y ago
  Maybe for the average person who could even understand his writings (I can't). However after reading his short bio on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki#Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki#Life It sounds like this is an extraordinary man. And as Ted Nelson indicated, he graduated from Princeton as a salutatorian in only 3 years.
  - claudius 13y ago
    Certainly an extraordinary man, yes. But contrary to e.g. Einstein’s annus mirabilis, inter-universal geometry is not a few fancy new ideas in existing fields, which would generally allow to have many such ideas in a short time (albeit unlikely), but a completely new, and apparently enormous, field. It’s also not really related to cryptography in any particular way (as far as I can see), so there’s no synthesis between the development of the one and the other.
- zorlem 13y ago
  A recent article about Mochizuki's proof https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5685166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5685166 that was a great read for the uninitiated like me.
rdl 13y ago
Who?
- Casseres 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki In the Youtube video, Ted Nelson says that his homepage is in English. I would argue that it is actually in Japanese, but with an English translation: Japanese: http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/ http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/ English: http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/top-english.html http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/top-english.html
  - rdl 13y ago
    Unlike Wei Dai, this guy does not seem to be a developer with a lot of code out there which looks basically like the Bitcoin code. (I am in a Bitcoin conference session right now so I can't watch the video to tear into it more specifically)
taternuts 13y ago
Definitely compelling, and as about engaging as an older gentleman rambling at a camera in a field can get
bachback 13y ago
ATTENTION GRABBING. Cypherpunks != mathematicians. I find it very hard to believe that a mathematician who writes 500 page papers invents Bitcoin on the side. Mathematicians of this style live in their own world.
- rdl 13y ago
  There are some indicators that Satoshi wasn't actually an applied crypto guy for a long period, since he overlooked a few basic things but got some more serious things correct. Might actually be more of a database/distributed systems guy who also knew crypto and finance from more recent interests. I was talking with Adam Back about serious candidates this weekend; maybe 25 known people who could have been Satoshi and are known in the space, but absolutely plausible it could have been and individual or small team who were immersed in it for a few months or years too.

16 points by GBiT 13y ago

While somewhat plausible (and I have to admit I thought of the mathematician myself the first time Nelson presented his supposed properties), there is one reason to doubt this: Building both Bitcoin and the vast framework to prove the ABC conjecture within a few years time would be too much for a single person, wouldn’t it?

Casseres 13y ago
Maybe for the average person who could even understand his writings (I can't). However after reading his short bio on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki#Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki#Life It sounds like this is an extraordinary man. And as Ted Nelson indicated, he graduated from Princeton as a salutatorian in only 3 years.
- claudius 13y ago
  Certainly an extraordinary man, yes. But contrary to e.g. Einstein’s annus mirabilis, inter-universal geometry is not a few fancy new ideas in existing fields, which would generally allow to have many such ideas in a short time (albeit unlikely), but a completely new, and apparently enormous, field. It’s also not really related to cryptography in any particular way (as far as I can see), so there’s no synthesis between the development of the one and the other.
zorlem 13y ago
A recent article about Mochizuki's proof https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5685166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5685166 that was a great read for the uninitiated like me.

rdl 13y ago

Who?

Casseres 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki In the Youtube video, Ted Nelson says that his homepage is in English. I would argue that it is actually in Japanese, but with an English translation: Japanese: http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/ http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/ English: http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/top-english.html http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/top-english.html
- rdl 13y ago
  Unlike Wei Dai, this guy does not seem to be a developer with a lot of code out there which looks basically like the Bitcoin code. (I am in a Bitcoin conference session right now so I can't watch the video to tear into it more specifically)

taternuts 13y ago

Definitely compelling, and as about engaging as an older gentleman rambling at a camera in a field can get

bachback 13y ago

ATTENTION GRABBING. Cypherpunks != mathematicians. I find it very hard to believe that a mathematician who writes 500 page papers invents Bitcoin on the side. Mathematicians of this style live in their own world.

rdl 13y ago
There are some indicators that Satoshi wasn't actually an applied crypto guy for a long period, since he overlooked a few basic things but got some more serious things correct. Might actually be more of a database/distributed systems guy who also knew crypto and finance from more recent interests. I was talking with Adam Back about serious candidates this weekend; maybe 25 known people who could have been Satoshi and are known in the space, but absolutely plausible it could have been and individual or small team who were immersed in it for a few months or years too.