11 ms·

Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto

172 points by coolswan 13y ago

maayank 13y ago
Note that Adi Shamir is the S in RSA (i.e. he's a co-inventor and it's named partly after him)
- atmosx 13y ago
  That's the only reason I believe there might be some sort of story behind this, although SN figures as way more interesting and complex figure DPR.
dx4100 13y ago
Such utter nonsense. It's a news story about news that might be. Provide conclusive evidence and strong correlations, please.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- darky3041 13y ago
  Adi Shamir? I am pretty sure he published something :)
- andyh2 13y ago
  Article says they "will publish a paper Sunday."
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - Jtsummers 13y ago
      Serious question, then, why the need to provide a negative comment when you didn't even examine the material presented? EDIT: Won't out the author's identity, but parent post explained that he had only skimmed the article. The original post was asking who the computer scientists were and why this wasn't just link bait.
      - nkuttler 13y ago
        I did, but not in detail. I just see too many unsubstantiated negative articles about bitcoin that it gets tiresome sometimes. I'm glad to know I was wrong this time.
        nkuttler 13y ago
        Re edit: No, I never asked who the authors were and frankly it's not relevant. Anyway, it's sunday, and I'm waiting for the publication. It was also pretty obvious from my other replies that I started this thread..
- Aqueous 13y ago
  oh....just RSA
  - nkuttler 13y ago
    Even if I missed that, argument from authority doesn't do much for me.
    - Aqueous 13y ago
      Fair enough.
spenvo 13y ago
This currently isn't "news," as the paper hasn't been published yet, and none of the disclosed findings are too damning or conclusive. That being said, it's important for two reasons: 1.) the paper gets published tomorrow, which will lead to a round of negative press, regardless of the claims' merit. 2.) More significant: it highlights what I see as an existential threat to the Bitcoin experiment: a.) the poor distribution of early wealth and b.) the possibility that a great percentage of all Bitcoins are currently held by bad actors (criminals, anarchists, use your imagination). A few things to consider: 1. A list of richest Bitcoin addresses is not a good representation of the concentration of wealth. A single person can have x wallets, just like this Ulbricht character. 2. Bitcoin wealth is often used to reinvest in mining equipment, which furthers one's wealth to a greater extent. Rinse/repeat. Several of the oldest wallets have been dormant for years, which means that this is not hypothetical -- that wealth has not circulated. edit made to be clear about "bad actors": "Bad actors" meaning: unpredictable and possibly having malicious intent. If Bitcoin becomes a more important part of our daily lives, handling commerce ubiquitously, etc.--a single individual with ~10+% of said Bitcoin has enormous disruptive potential. I'm not referring to what said person could purchase with that wealth, but one's ability to manipulate markets. This has never been a big issue, as far as the growth in value of the currency. However, I think this kind of uncertainty could freak out potential institutional investors. Altcoins like Litecoin, PPC, Namecoin, etc - do not suffer as much from this issue because their exposure was far greater than Bitcoin ca. 2009, and the mining competition was greater on the respective debut-dates by several orders of magnitude.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ronaldx 13y ago
  An uneven distribution of early wealth describes almost every organisation in society (including society itself): as long as later participants perceive they are gaining value for themselves, they will allow this to continue. Part (b) is more interesting - the danger as I see it is that Bitcoin is entering legal-issues territory. For example, a legal crackdown on ownership of Bitcoin identified with illegal activity would likely provide an economic shock to the whole network.
dil8 13y ago
A few transactions went from one wallet to another and this is considered a link... give me a break EDIT I am referring to the article not the yet to be published material
- jfoster 13y ago
  When would transactions not constitute a link?
Aqueous 13y ago
I doubt that the link here amounts to DPR knowing SN personally, or even worse, DPR being SN. Obviously I don't know DPR or SN, but I really doubt that DPR is SN or even communicated with him. The reasons are entirely circumstantial but from what I've read of both of them: - DPR is arrogant. - DPR makes stupid mistakes. - SN is fairly humble. - SN is smarter than DPR. - SN doesn't make mistakes. Is it possible that DPR himself was an early adopter of BitCoins, and mined those early coins himself - giving him the occasion to later transfer them to himself? He might have had to become acquainted with the BitCoin crypto-currrency scheme for some time before he was confident enough in it to use it to protect his own identity, which means he may have been in the first couple of groups of people to download and use the software.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  > Is it possible that DPR himself was an early adopter of BitCoins It is also possible that DPR is more than one person.
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    This is extremely likely. The SilkRoad admins all have access to the old (and the new) DPR forum account. One of them was using it even after Ross was arrested, leading someone to ask why DPR was showing up on the active members list of the SR forum even after be was arrested.
    - bmelton 13y ago
      Could that not have been the feds?
      - sillysaurus2 13y ago
        Libertas said it was SR admins. If it's a lie, I can't think of a good reason for it.
        13y ago
gojomo 13y ago
Perhaps Satoshi needed something from some other Silk Road seller... and this was a desposit-to-escrow?
FreedomDealer 13y ago
Silkroad was also a free mixing service.
- mike_esspe 13y ago
  This seems to be the answer - some early adopter, maybe even Satoshi, used Silk Road as a coin mixer.
pallandt 13y ago
2 possible situations I can think of, based strictly on 'Among their discoveries was a particular transfer to an account controlled by Mr. Ulbricht from another that had been created in January 2009, during the very earliest days of the bitcoin network, which was set up the previous year.': - the bitcoin wallet, although said to be associated with SN, has changed ownership since its creation in 2009 - SN purchased something from DPR, perhaps something DPR himself was selling on SR, either a legitimate buy or for some other purposes; SN was just a regular customer in this case In the meantime, I'm eagerly awaiting their paper. Ron and Shamir have previously co-authored another bitcoin related paper titled 'Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction Graph'. There's a very interested overview of it in this Gist: https://gist.github.com/jgarzik/3901921 https://gist.github.com/jgarzik/3901921 It appears to have some flaws. I don't know how accurate this statistic is, but the last Gist comment mentions that 22% of bitcoins are held in reused addresses.
- dobbsbob 13y ago
  Not all the early mined coins were controlled by Satoshi, Hal Finney and other's on the crypto mailing list have many, many coins. Maybe Hal bought some weed According to Bitcoin developers Satoshi hasn't moved any of the coins they know he is/was in control of. Amateur sleuths trying to unmask Satoshi have gone through every piece of public writing and paper he's done, picked out unique phrases and words and tried to match them up to existing mailing list posts, forum posts and white papers with no success. Satoshi slipped in and out of British slang as well, either on purpose for distraction from his real identity or they were 2 people using the same account. He also referenced the Times when mining the first block as proof he had not premined a bunch of coins to run a ponzi/scam further indicating he may of been from the UK. Either way he certainly is content with avoiding the spotlight while Ulbricht loved the fame that came with being DPR.
mschuster91 13y ago
I don't believe that at all. DPR got busted for posting total newbie questions on Stack Overflow, after all - and SN displayed a deep knowledge of secure coding and cryptography!
- GeneralMayhem 13y ago
  What better cover?
  - gnerd 13y ago
    I'm not sure I follow your logic here. There is nothing inherently illegal about creating BitCoin but there is something very illegal about facilitating drug trafficking. If they were the same person, wouldn't you practise good OPSEC to keep you out of prison? What is the value of keeping your identity as BitCoin creator a secret when you are in prison? If they were one and the same, it seems to me, you would just practise good OPSEC across the board or, if need be, make "mistakes" that reveal you as BitCoin creator (and take the credit) and keep your identity as SilkRoad founder a secret.
  - michaelt 13y ago
    A form of cover that doesn't get you busted by the feds and thrown in jail? Let's say I'm an expert killer who has assassinated dozens of people without being caught. Do I camouflage myself by doing a shitty job and getting sent to jail? Of course not, I keep doing an expert job because I'd rather not be in jail.
dsrguru 13y ago
I'm really eager to see how conclusive the study will be. For now, I'm sold on Satoshi Nakamoto being King, Oksman, and Bry. http://www.fastcompany.com/1785445/bitcoin-crypto-currency-mystery-reopened http://www.fastcompany.com/1785445/bitcoin-crypto-currency-m...
- gwern 13y ago
  Here's a quick litmus test when someone proposes a Satoshi candidate X: "how did $X pay for DigiRock hosting of bitcoin.org in August 2008 when DigiRock accepts only yen and has no English language support?"
  - dsrguru 13y ago
    Presumably the same reason they chose a Japanese name--that at least one of them speaks Japanese. I'm not really sure where you're going with this, but if you read the analysis in the article I linked to, as well as King's response to the author's email, I think you'll agree that they're a likely candidate.
    - clarkm 13y ago
      It's very unlikely that it's Neal King. He doesn't fit the profile at all, and his patent doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin.
      - dsrguru 13y ago
        How do you have access to his profile? Could you be mistaking him for the Neal King of Sofia University or the Neal King who was a marijuana grower who recently disappeared?
  - jfoster 13y ago
    I think that's a misleading litmus test. Only yen could be worked around through a prepaid card, stolen card number, gratis account, and probably other methods I'm not aware of. Lack of English support doesn't necessarily make the person Japanese. Westerners can learn Japanese or use translation tools.
rajacombinator 13y ago
Sounds like the early groundwork for a false flag campaign and subsequent crackdown...
gwern 13y ago
It could be Finney buying drugs for his unfortunate condition: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rbd8q/study_suggests_link_between_dread_pirate_roberts/cdlhjlj?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rbd8q/study_sugges...
mrb 13y ago
I have already suspected the original DPR (who supposedly handed Silk Road to Ross Ulbrich) was Satoshi Nakamoto: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=bJqRUuX_DuiW2gX36IHgDg&url=https://plus.google.com/100577178258662783679/posts/76UcUX4Py2c&cd=1&ved=0CCgQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNFnAoIXXVhXhepg5CKRvYI6KvfgVQ https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=bJqRUuX_...
stmartin 13y ago
No no no no no no no no no no no... NO!
shmerl 13y ago
Looks like too many "can't prove" there.
RexRollman 13y ago
As hard as it is to remain anonymous, how did Satoshi Nakamoto do it? No misstatements that betrayed his identity? No IP addresses that point to him or his location?
- natch 13y ago
  He's anonymous to us, but probably not to the government. They can do stylometric analysis of his writing and zero in on him.
kolev 13y ago
The biggest joke I've heard recently. Those guys want to manipulate the market and buy cheap Bitcoins, I bet.
atularora 13y ago
Here is the paper - https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/839348-silk-road-paper.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/839348-silk-road-pap... via http://www.pcworld.com/article/2066780/did-satoshi-nakamoto-transfer-1000-bitcoins-to-the-silk-road.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2066780/did-satoshi-nakamoto-...

172 points by coolswan 13y ago

maayank 13y ago

Note that Adi Shamir is the S in RSA (i.e. he's a co-inventor and it's named partly after him)

atmosx 13y ago
That's the only reason I believe there might be some sort of story behind this, although SN figures as way more interesting and complex figure DPR.

dx4100 13y ago

Such utter nonsense. It's a news story about news that might be. Provide conclusive evidence and strong correlations, please.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

darky3041 13y ago
Adi Shamir? I am pretty sure he published something :)
andyh2 13y ago
Article says they "will publish a paper Sunday."
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    Serious question, then, why the need to provide a negative comment when you didn't even examine the material presented? EDIT: Won't out the author's identity, but parent post explained that he had only skimmed the article. The original post was asking who the computer scientists were and why this wasn't just link bait.
    - nkuttler 13y ago
      I did, but not in detail. I just see too many unsubstantiated negative articles about bitcoin that it gets tiresome sometimes. I'm glad to know I was wrong this time.
      - nkuttler 13y ago
        Re edit: No, I never asked who the authors were and frankly it's not relevant. Anyway, it's sunday, and I'm waiting for the publication. It was also pretty obvious from my other replies that I started this thread..
Aqueous 13y ago
oh....just RSA
- nkuttler 13y ago
  Even if I missed that, argument from authority doesn't do much for me.
  - Aqueous 13y ago
    Fair enough.

spenvo 13y ago

This currently isn't "news," as the paper hasn't been published yet, and none of the disclosed findings are too damning or conclusive. That being said, it's important for two reasons: 1.) the paper gets published tomorrow, which will lead to a round of negative press, regardless of the claims' merit. 2.) More significant: it highlights what I see as an existential threat to the Bitcoin experiment: a.) the poor distribution of early wealth and b.) the possibility that a great percentage of all Bitcoins are currently held by bad actors (criminals, anarchists, use your imagination). A few things to consider: 1. A list of richest Bitcoin addresses is not a good representation of the concentration of wealth. A single person can have x wallets, just like this Ulbricht character. 2. Bitcoin wealth is often used to reinvest in mining equipment, which furthers one's wealth to a greater extent. Rinse/repeat. Several of the oldest wallets have been dormant for years, which means that this is not hypothetical -- that wealth has not circulated. edit made to be clear about "bad actors": "Bad actors" meaning: unpredictable and possibly having malicious intent. If Bitcoin becomes a more important part of our daily lives, handling commerce ubiquitously, etc.--a single individual with ~10+% of said Bitcoin has enormous disruptive potential. I'm not referring to what said person could purchase with that wealth, but one's ability to manipulate markets. This has never been a big issue, as far as the growth in value of the currency. However, I think this kind of uncertainty could freak out potential institutional investors. Altcoins like Litecoin, PPC, Namecoin, etc - do not suffer as much from this issue because their exposure was far greater than Bitcoin ca. 2009, and the mining competition was greater on the respective debut-dates by several orders of magnitude.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ronaldx 13y ago
An uneven distribution of early wealth describes almost every organisation in society (including society itself): as long as later participants perceive they are gaining value for themselves, they will allow this to continue. Part (b) is more interesting - the danger as I see it is that Bitcoin is entering legal-issues territory. For example, a legal crackdown on ownership of Bitcoin identified with illegal activity would likely provide an economic shock to the whole network.

dil8 13y ago

A few transactions went from one wallet to another and this is considered a link... give me a break EDIT I am referring to the article not the yet to be published material

jfoster 13y ago
When would transactions not constitute a link?

Aqueous 13y ago

I doubt that the link here amounts to DPR knowing SN personally, or even worse, DPR being SN. Obviously I don't know DPR or SN, but I really doubt that DPR is SN or even communicated with him. The reasons are entirely circumstantial but from what I've read of both of them: - DPR is arrogant. - DPR makes stupid mistakes. - SN is fairly humble. - SN is smarter than DPR. - SN doesn't make mistakes. Is it possible that DPR himself was an early adopter of BitCoins, and mined those early coins himself - giving him the occasion to later transfer them to himself? He might have had to become acquainted with the BitCoin crypto-currrency scheme for some time before he was confident enough in it to use it to protect his own identity, which means he may have been in the first couple of groups of people to download and use the software.

Zigurd 13y ago
> Is it possible that DPR himself was an early adopter of BitCoins It is also possible that DPR is more than one person.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  This is extremely likely. The SilkRoad admins all have access to the old (and the new) DPR forum account. One of them was using it even after Ross was arrested, leading someone to ask why DPR was showing up on the active members list of the SR forum even after be was arrested.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Could that not have been the feds?
    - sillysaurus2 13y ago
      Libertas said it was SR admins. If it's a lie, I can't think of a good reason for it.
      - 13y ago

gojomo 13y ago

Perhaps Satoshi needed something from some other Silk Road seller... and this was a desposit-to-escrow?

FreedomDealer 13y ago

Silkroad was also a free mixing service.

mike_esspe 13y ago
This seems to be the answer - some early adopter, maybe even Satoshi, used Silk Road as a coin mixer.

pallandt 13y ago

2 possible situations I can think of, based strictly on 'Among their discoveries was a particular transfer to an account controlled by Mr. Ulbricht from another that had been created in January 2009, during the very earliest days of the bitcoin network, which was set up the previous year.': - the bitcoin wallet, although said to be associated with SN, has changed ownership since its creation in 2009 - SN purchased something from DPR, perhaps something DPR himself was selling on SR, either a legitimate buy or for some other purposes; SN was just a regular customer in this case In the meantime, I'm eagerly awaiting their paper. Ron and Shamir have previously co-authored another bitcoin related paper titled 'Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction Graph'. There's a very interested overview of it in this Gist: https://gist.github.com/jgarzik/3901921 https://gist.github.com/jgarzik/3901921 It appears to have some flaws. I don't know how accurate this statistic is, but the last Gist comment mentions that 22% of bitcoins are held in reused addresses.

dobbsbob 13y ago
Not all the early mined coins were controlled by Satoshi, Hal Finney and other's on the crypto mailing list have many, many coins. Maybe Hal bought some weed According to Bitcoin developers Satoshi hasn't moved any of the coins they know he is/was in control of. Amateur sleuths trying to unmask Satoshi have gone through every piece of public writing and paper he's done, picked out unique phrases and words and tried to match them up to existing mailing list posts, forum posts and white papers with no success. Satoshi slipped in and out of British slang as well, either on purpose for distraction from his real identity or they were 2 people using the same account. He also referenced the Times when mining the first block as proof he had not premined a bunch of coins to run a ponzi/scam further indicating he may of been from the UK. Either way he certainly is content with avoiding the spotlight while Ulbricht loved the fame that came with being DPR.

mschuster91 13y ago

I don't believe that at all. DPR got busted for posting total newbie questions on Stack Overflow, after all - and SN displayed a deep knowledge of secure coding and cryptography!

GeneralMayhem 13y ago
What better cover?
- gnerd 13y ago
  I'm not sure I follow your logic here. There is nothing inherently illegal about creating BitCoin but there is something very illegal about facilitating drug trafficking. If they were the same person, wouldn't you practise good OPSEC to keep you out of prison? What is the value of keeping your identity as BitCoin creator a secret when you are in prison? If they were one and the same, it seems to me, you would just practise good OPSEC across the board or, if need be, make "mistakes" that reveal you as BitCoin creator (and take the credit) and keep your identity as SilkRoad founder a secret.
- michaelt 13y ago
  A form of cover that doesn't get you busted by the feds and thrown in jail? Let's say I'm an expert killer who has assassinated dozens of people without being caught. Do I camouflage myself by doing a shitty job and getting sent to jail? Of course not, I keep doing an expert job because I'd rather not be in jail.

dsrguru 13y ago

I'm really eager to see how conclusive the study will be. For now, I'm sold on Satoshi Nakamoto being King, Oksman, and Bry. http://www.fastcompany.com/1785445/bitcoin-crypto-currency-mystery-reopened http://www.fastcompany.com/1785445/bitcoin-crypto-currency-m...

gwern 13y ago
Here's a quick litmus test when someone proposes a Satoshi candidate X: "how did $X pay for DigiRock hosting of bitcoin.org in August 2008 when DigiRock accepts only yen and has no English language support?"
- dsrguru 13y ago
  Presumably the same reason they chose a Japanese name--that at least one of them speaks Japanese. I'm not really sure where you're going with this, but if you read the analysis in the article I linked to, as well as King's response to the author's email, I think you'll agree that they're a likely candidate.
  - clarkm 13y ago
    It's very unlikely that it's Neal King. He doesn't fit the profile at all, and his patent doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin.
    - dsrguru 13y ago
      How do you have access to his profile? Could you be mistaking him for the Neal King of Sofia University or the Neal King who was a marijuana grower who recently disappeared?
- jfoster 13y ago
  I think that's a misleading litmus test. Only yen could be worked around through a prepaid card, stolen card number, gratis account, and probably other methods I'm not aware of. Lack of English support doesn't necessarily make the person Japanese. Westerners can learn Japanese or use translation tools.

rajacombinator 13y ago

Sounds like the early groundwork for a false flag campaign and subsequent crackdown...

gwern 13y ago

It could be Finney buying drugs for his unfortunate condition: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rbd8q/study_suggests_link_between_dread_pirate_roberts/cdlhjlj?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rbd8q/study_sugges...

mrb 13y ago

I have already suspected the original DPR (who supposedly handed Silk Road to Ross Ulbrich) was Satoshi Nakamoto: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=bJqRUuX_DuiW2gX36IHgDg&url=https://plus.google.com/100577178258662783679/posts/76UcUX4Py2c&cd=1&ved=0CCgQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNFnAoIXXVhXhepg5CKRvYI6KvfgVQ https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=bJqRUuX_...

stmartin 13y ago

No no no no no no no no no no no... NO!

shmerl 13y ago

Looks like too many "can't prove" there.

RexRollman 13y ago

As hard as it is to remain anonymous, how did Satoshi Nakamoto do it? No misstatements that betrayed his identity? No IP addresses that point to him or his location?

natch 13y ago
He's anonymous to us, but probably not to the government. They can do stylometric analysis of his writing and zero in on him.

kolev 13y ago

The biggest joke I've heard recently. Those guys want to manipulate the market and buy cheap Bitcoins, I bet.

atularora 13y ago

Here is the paper - https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/839348-silk-road-paper.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/839348-silk-road-pap... via http://www.pcworld.com/article/2066780/did-satoshi-nakamoto-transfer-1000-bitcoins-to-the-silk-road.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2066780/did-satoshi-nakamoto-...