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Anyone who is looking at mathematicians, cryptographers, or security experts is almost certainly looking in the wrong place. Everything about Bitcoin suggests
by betterunix 13y ago
Anyone who is looking at mathematicians, cryptographers, or security experts is almost certainly looking in the wrong place. Everything about Bitcoin suggests the work of a cryptography amateur/enthusiast, not an expert. Perhaps a talented amateur, maybe a very smart amateur, but you are not going to find the creator of Bitcoin in a research lab (at least not circa 2008; maybe the reason he vanished off the face of the Earth was the beginning of a grad school career, which ate into his time).
Really though, it makes no difference who the creator of Bitcoin is, nor why he created it. All the matters is whether it lives up to its promises. It is secure against attacks? Do the economics make sense? Those are the questions that should be answered.
- apawloski 13y agoYou're begging the question pretty hard here. Why are they looking in the wrong place?
- betterunix 13y agoI already gave the answer: Bitcoin has all the hallmarks of amateur cryptography, not the work of an expert, researcher, or professional.
- mhartl 13y agoWhat are some of the hallmarks you see?
- betterunix 13y agoNo security definition, no threat model, a security analysis that only covers one specific attack strategy the author himself came up with, the "51% attack" being considered acceptable (despite being a polynomial time attack), no reference to the decades of related work in secure multiparty computation or digital cash, the blurred boundary between the protocol design and its implementation, etc. I discussed this in great detail a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5735993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5735993
- mhartl 13y agoGreat, thanks for the reply. I'll take a look at your other comment as well.