6 ms·

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

by 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.
      - bmelton 13y ago
        Fair enough. I wasn't familiar with the situation, that just would have been the conclusion I jumped to, and wondered why it wasn't yours. Thanks for the info.
- gnaritas 13y ago
  The name certainly implies so.
- wdvh 13y ago
  It seems likely there were at least 2 DPRs. Ulbricht hints at this in his interview: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-interview-with-a-digital-drug-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-inte...
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    The link to Ulbricht's identity as DPR seems to go back to the beginning of the site. It seems more plausible he did that interview and made up the multiple DPR story to: A: Advertise his willingness to sell out. B: Perhaps toss a bit of confusion onto anyone following him.
    - Bootvis 13y ago
      C: In the Princess Bride the Dread Pirate Roberts chooses a successor which will use the same name.
sillysaurus2 13y ago
SN makes mistakes. Most notably the bad build that required global cooperation from the miners to roll back.
- TwoFactor 13y ago
  That was due to an improper update the community made to the code, not the code that SN wrote himself.
SwellJoe 13y ago
I agree with you that there's no way DPR is Satoshi. DPR seemed to be learning to code when launching Silk Road. While Bitcoin had bugs (lots of them) to start with, it is not amateur level computer science. It's not even reasonable to assume that a dude who needed help getting curl to talk to a proxy would be competent enough to work with very advanced crypto concepts, and even invent a few things of their own (using standard crypto algorithms, but still, Bitcoin was not tested waters...). So, yes, SN is smarter than DPR, and vastly more capable as a software engineer. And, Satoshi wouldn't need Silk Road to be fantastically rich in Bitcoins. As far as we know, he's got a vast swath of the first mined Bitcoins, even if he gave away most of it. (Which is possibly how Satoshi's identity will be revealed...if suddenly there's a new trillionaire in the world in five years...well, might be Satoshi.)
- irremediable 13y ago
  > And, Satoshi wouldn't need Silk Road to be fantastically rich in Bitcoins. As far as we know, he's got a vast swath of the first mined Bitcoins, even if he gave away most of it. (Which is possibly how Satoshi's identity will be revealed...if suddenly there's a new trillionaire in the world in five years...well, might be Satoshi.) Out of interest, aren't Satoshi's coins all held in a small number of wallets, so people will immediately see if anyone tries to use them? Presumably, this would provoke a crash in bitcoin prices.
  - michaelt 13y ago
    From what I've heard, Satoshi's coins are spread around a lot of 50 btc wallets, and they're not so much known to be Satoshi's as suspected to be hers because there seems to have only been one person mining the blockchain at the start [1]. As other people started running the clients, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell Satoshi from any other miner. So though Satoshi may never have spent the bitcoins mined when she was the only miner, she could still have mined and spent many coins once there were a few hundred other miners. [1] http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/ http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fo...
feral 13y ago
> - SN is fairly humble. You are talking about some one or group who took great care (including in all their dealings with other early bitcoin users) to maintain their anonymity - which is really hard to do, in the face of the sort of scrutiny that SN has had. Its at least plausible that, along with the name, other aspects of the SN persona were explicitly constructed. There's all this myth around who SN is. A lot of people seem to believe SN is a benevolent crypto researcher working in their bedroom, for the benefit of humanity, with no profit motive in sight. I mean, sure, I hope that's the case too, but we should remember that we don't actually know very much at all.
- Aqueous 13y ago
  It is possible that aspects of the SN persona were highly constructed but what is a simpler explanation - that everything about SN was fake or just his identity? It would have taken an enormous cognitive effort to be able to consistently demonstrate the same personality traits in post after post unless it came naturally. It seems like he was more concerned about technical discussion than hiding information about himself beyond his identity. But of course you are right - until we know who SN is, we can only speculate.
  - feral 13y ago
    When I hear an argument about a simpler explanation, I tend to assume there's an appeal to Occam's razor; but I'm not sure that's useful here: What's the chances that they took so much care to obscure their identity in every other way, but decided to use their genuine personality? Doesn't that seem improbable, too? I accept the argument about it being hard to maintain two personas - but what is enormous cognitive effort for you and me might be basic operational security for someone else. Bitcoin is very interesting, but I'd like if there was more caution about SN, given it has has potentially endowed them with vast resources.
- kristopolous 13y ago
  I consider SN to be an entity with one or more people behind it.
- 13y ago
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memracom 13y ago
Not just possible but likely. Then DPR created Silk Road to earn more BTC in a more traditional way than mining, and then DPR passed the business to one Ross Ulbricht. Or there may even have been more than one DPR before Ulbricht.

by Aqueous 13y ago

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.
    - bmelton 13y ago
      Fair enough. I wasn't familiar with the situation, that just would have been the conclusion I jumped to, and wondered why it wasn't yours. Thanks for the info.
gnaritas 13y ago
The name certainly implies so.
wdvh 13y ago
It seems likely there were at least 2 DPRs. Ulbricht hints at this in his interview: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-interview-with-a-digital-drug-lord-the-silk-roads-dread-pirate-roberts-qa/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/an-inte...
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  The link to Ulbricht's identity as DPR seems to go back to the beginning of the site. It seems more plausible he did that interview and made up the multiple DPR story to: A: Advertise his willingness to sell out. B: Perhaps toss a bit of confusion onto anyone following him.
  - Bootvis 13y ago
    C: In the Princess Bride the Dread Pirate Roberts chooses a successor which will use the same name.

sillysaurus2 13y ago

SN makes mistakes. Most notably the bad build that required global cooperation from the miners to roll back.

TwoFactor 13y ago
That was due to an improper update the community made to the code, not the code that SN wrote himself.

SwellJoe 13y ago

I agree with you that there's no way DPR is Satoshi. DPR seemed to be learning to code when launching Silk Road. While Bitcoin had bugs (lots of them) to start with, it is not amateur level computer science. It's not even reasonable to assume that a dude who needed help getting curl to talk to a proxy would be competent enough to work with very advanced crypto concepts, and even invent a few things of their own (using standard crypto algorithms, but still, Bitcoin was not tested waters...). So, yes, SN is smarter than DPR, and vastly more capable as a software engineer. And, Satoshi wouldn't need Silk Road to be fantastically rich in Bitcoins. As far as we know, he's got a vast swath of the first mined Bitcoins, even if he gave away most of it. (Which is possibly how Satoshi's identity will be revealed...if suddenly there's a new trillionaire in the world in five years...well, might be Satoshi.)

irremediable 13y ago
> And, Satoshi wouldn't need Silk Road to be fantastically rich in Bitcoins. As far as we know, he's got a vast swath of the first mined Bitcoins, even if he gave away most of it. (Which is possibly how Satoshi's identity will be revealed...if suddenly there's a new trillionaire in the world in five years...well, might be Satoshi.) Out of interest, aren't Satoshi's coins all held in a small number of wallets, so people will immediately see if anyone tries to use them? Presumably, this would provoke a crash in bitcoin prices.
- michaelt 13y ago
  From what I've heard, Satoshi's coins are spread around a lot of 50 btc wallets, and they're not so much known to be Satoshi's as suspected to be hers because there seems to have only been one person mining the blockchain at the start [1]. As other people started running the clients, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell Satoshi from any other miner. So though Satoshi may never have spent the bitcoins mined when she was the only miner, she could still have mined and spent many coins once there were a few hundred other miners. [1] http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/ http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fo...

feral 13y ago

> - SN is fairly humble. You are talking about some one or group who took great care (including in all their dealings with other early bitcoin users) to maintain their anonymity - which is really hard to do, in the face of the sort of scrutiny that SN has had. Its at least plausible that, along with the name, other aspects of the SN persona were explicitly constructed. There's all this myth around who SN is. A lot of people seem to believe SN is a benevolent crypto researcher working in their bedroom, for the benefit of humanity, with no profit motive in sight. I mean, sure, I hope that's the case too, but we should remember that we don't actually know very much at all.

Aqueous 13y ago
It is possible that aspects of the SN persona were highly constructed but what is a simpler explanation - that everything about SN was fake or just his identity? It would have taken an enormous cognitive effort to be able to consistently demonstrate the same personality traits in post after post unless it came naturally. It seems like he was more concerned about technical discussion than hiding information about himself beyond his identity. But of course you are right - until we know who SN is, we can only speculate.
- feral 13y ago
  When I hear an argument about a simpler explanation, I tend to assume there's an appeal to Occam's razor; but I'm not sure that's useful here: What's the chances that they took so much care to obscure their identity in every other way, but decided to use their genuine personality? Doesn't that seem improbable, too? I accept the argument about it being hard to maintain two personas - but what is enormous cognitive effort for you and me might be basic operational security for someone else. Bitcoin is very interesting, but I'd like if there was more caution about SN, given it has has potentially endowed them with vast resources.
kristopolous 13y ago
I consider SN to be an entity with one or more people behind it.
13y ago

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memracom 13y ago

Not just possible but likely. Then DPR created Silk Road to earn more BTC in a more traditional way than mining, and then DPR passed the business to one Ross Ulbricht. Or there may even have been more than one DPR before Ulbricht.