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I Am Not Satoshi
- wrongc0ntinent 13y agoThe paper referenced: http://www.scribd.com/doc/187227818/Bitcoin-Silk-Road-Pirate-Nakamoto http://www.scribd.com/doc/187227818/Bitcoin-Silk-Road-Pirate...
- didgeoridoo 13y agoThat's exactly what Satoshi would say...
- Afforess 13y agoNo, Satoshi would not say anything...
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoThat would be suspicious, especially in light of such weak paper. Possibly paper is bait for Satoshi?
- 6d0debc071 13y agoI'm not sure it's significantly more likely that he'd deny it if it wasn't him than if it was, so I don't know how it could be bait.
- Crito 13y agoI bet if we piled a bunch of rocks up on his chest, he would admit to being Satoshi.
- pyrocat 13y agoHah, I thought it was a reference to this PBF comic at first. http://pbfcomics.com/45/ http://pbfcomics.com/45/
- stfu 13y agoIf his statement is true the "research" by Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir seems more than just accidentally flawed, not to say even highly misleading.
- maaku 13y agoAs have been their previous papers on the subject.
- shubb 13y agoWell, he said that the research was funded by Citi bank's 'philanthropic' foundation. Is he mentioning that to insinuate that a bank is trying to produce de-anonymizing scare research about Bitcoin, which need not be true so long as it shakes consumer confidence? I suspect it's just very easy to get funding for Bitcoin related research right now because it's a hot topic, but that would be a much more fun explanation...
- stfu 13y agoIn theory I would like to assume that especially seasoned academics are more concerned about their reputation than a few thousand Citi bank dollars.
- cm2012 13y agoI wonder if this person is enormously rich now from BTC, considering how early he got in. Not that it's any of our business...
- highace 13y agoRich in bitcoins - yes. Rich in USD? Not yet.
- maaku 13y agoHe had a balance of ~1200 btc on mtgox in March of 2013, during a time when bitcoin was hovering around $50. Had he sold it all then it would have been a cool $60k. Had he kept it until now, it would be approximately $1MM (it's never been below $50 since that time). Whether that counts as "rich" is a matter of perspective, I guess.
- cm2012 13y agoIs that all he had, though?
- dllthomas 13y agoDoesn't matter for a lower bound, of course...
- betterunix 13y agoIt only counts as "rich" if he can use the money. I suspect that in practice, such large amounts of Bitcoin money have limited usefulness. It would be hard to get the actual million dollars his wallet is supposedly worth. There are still exceedingly few businesses that accept Bitcoin payments. At best, he could get augment whatever other income he has by selling small amounts of his Bitcoin money at a time.
- michaelt 13y agoAccording to [1] and [2] I can sell 100 bitcoins for $88,631 or $96,805 at Bitstamp and Mtgox respectively - or 10,000 bitcoins for $7,155,446 and $8,797,257 As I understand it those are offers to buy that are on the market right now, so you could execute the trades instantly. [1] http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/bitstampUSD_depth.html http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/bitstampUSD_depth.html [2] http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html
- carsongross 13y agoToo obvious. Backwards that's "I hso tasto nmai" which is phonetic late R'lyehian for "Up yours Bernanke". C'mon Dustin.
- satoshinakamot0 13y agoCorrect. I like the idea.
- dalek_cannes 13y ago"I Am Not Satoshi" is also an anagram of "I, Homo Satanist".
- trevorcreech 13y agoHere's a scathing breakdown of the paper in question from /r/bitcoin: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1reuwq/vigorous_debate_over_shamirrons_supposedly/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1reuwq/vigorous_deb...
- Procrastes 13y agoAim to astonish.
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- rheide 13y agoI just realized this is quite smart. Point for you.
- Intermernet 13y agoInto Math Oasis ?
- mhartl 13y agoOuted with heresy idea
- mhartl 13y agoThe downvoter of the parent comment probably didn't notice that it's an anagram for "I see what you did there".
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- dllthomas 13y ago"only Mt. Gox knows who controlled those specific coins after I began trading them." And anyone who knows one of the subsequent addresses those coins touched in the blockchain. Of course, it also doesn't really matter who they went to.
- vijayboyapati 13y agoI wonder, is research like journalism where an academic is morally obliged to issue a retraction or correction for conclusions shown, conclusively, to be false?
- leoc 13y agoMore or less. However it's also like journalism in that you shouldn't necessarily hold your breath until it happens.
- eliteraspberrie 13y agoIf it were published in an academic journal, the journal would publish these remarks by Dustin Trammell in the next issue. But this "paper" was published online without peer review, so it's up to Ron and Shamir to do the right thing.
- ars_technician 13y agoMost of the research Shamir does at this point is basically crap like this, which is why it's on a website instead of in a conference or journal.
- judk 13y agoExposing a weakness in the post-journal open access publishing model. Non peer reviewed work getting more attention thannpeer reviewed work. At least on boards like HN, which I guess never respected the academic community as much as bloggers anyway.
- a_bonobo 13y agoPost journal open access publishing _includes_ peer-review; see PLOS ONE, PeerJ etc. Similar problems as OP's have been noticed with non "post-journal open access publishing model". That's generally called "science by press conference" now - the most famous case was the arsenic life paper, which was published in Science, a "traditional" journal, and then later retracted after their press conference before the publication generated a huge buzz (and two later papers contradicted their findings). This isn't a problem that's caused by open access or new publishing models.
- DigitalSea 13y agoI doubt the real identity of Satoshi will ever be revealed. Seriously, if the claims of Satoshi mining the first 20,000 Bitcoins is true (with a value of almost one billion), would he seriously want to be publicly known? I would imagine the FBI amongst other Government organisations and figures would love nothing more than to pick Satoshi's brain (by force if need be) if his or her identity were to ever be truly revealed. We won't ever know who the real Satoshi is. I can make baseless and factless accusations as to who I think Satoshi is as well. I think it's Al Gore, he invented the Internet after all.
- manuelflara 13y agoWhere did you get that 20,000 Bitcoins are worth (even hypothetically) one billion? Even at $1,000 per BTC that's just $20M.
- saalweachter 13y agoI think that's coming from the idea that the "ultimate value" of the BTC money supply should be ~$1 trillion (in order for it to replace real-world currencies in a significant fraction of transactions). 20,0000 Bitcoins is ~1/1000th of 21,000,000 potential Bitcoins.
- unreal37 13y agoThe paper linked speculates that a small group of people mined the first 20,000 blocks of Bitcoin. 20,000 blocks (@50 coins each) is 1,000,000 bitcoins, which @ $1000 is $1 billion.
- manuelflara 13y agoAh, got it. Confused bitcoin with blocks. Thanks.
- theintern 13y agoSome people estimate his net worth to have been not 20,000, but 1.6 million bitcoins. That adds to over a billion dollars. http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/who-is-satoshi-nakamoto-the-creator-of-bitcoin http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/who-is-satoshi-nakamoto-the...
- MrZongle2 13y ago"I am not Spartacus!"
- caycep 13y agoargh you beat me to it
- vbuterin 13y agoThis is not even the first paper by Dorit Ron and Shamir on Bitcoin; they did an analysis of the transaction graph earlier: http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf And that one too was quite poorly done; from the text, it actually seemed like they thought that "the blockchain" is a file stored on blockchain.info. Disappointing from the inventor of Shamir's Secret Sharing and differential cryptanalysis.
- nwh 13y ago> it actually seemed like they thought that "the blockchain" is a file stored on blockchain.info People seem to confuse that a lot. It's a badly named service at the best of times. I wonder how many legal requests the site will get from people believing they run Bitcoin.
- m_ram 13y agoI was about to argue with you about it not being very confusing, but then I read the "About" section on the front page: "This site allows you to navigate the bitcoin blockchain (a database which holds information about all transactions)." That really does make it sound like they are storing the centralized database for bitcoin. Edit: changed "storing a" to "storing the" to clarify my point per gojomo's reply.
- gojomo 13y agoBlockchain.info is storing a centralized database for Bitcoin. Just not the centralized database... because there's not any official one. They're a value-added replica (via indexing & UI), not a constitutional authority. (They have some earned authority, by a record of useful service.)
- ars_technician 13y agoIt's not 'a centralized' database at all. Calling it that only adds to the confusion.
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- caycep 13y agoIsn't this supposed to be "I am Spartacus" or something like that?
- buremba 13y agoI don't really understand why Satoshi wants to be hidden. Is it because of the legal issues or does he want be a hidden super character?
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- eof 13y agoIf you've been paying attention for the last three years, almost everyone thought the US government would crack down on bitcoin with a vengence, satoshi very well may have been genuinely fearful of the ramifications of his software. It is also possible that satoshi is a group of people and not a person. Lastly, the idiosyncratic nature of someone who spends their time on crypto mailing lists and making crypto currency is likely to take privacy seriously for its own sake. A better question might be, why would satoshi want to be found out?
- Aqueous 13y agoIf he is not motivated by anything like ego or credit then - as Charleton Heston would have said in a lame 50s Bible movie - 'He really is the son of God.'
- cLeEOGPw 13y agoMe neither. As it appears he have not premined any significant amount of bitcoins, so it's not like he is going to cash out. So the version, besides that he wants to be "hidden super character" may be that he was not allowed by some organization to reveal who made this breakthrough. It's not even clear if it was a single person. But even if it was by some organization, why hide? Maybe they didn't want bitcoins forever be associated with NSA for example, which would repulse people and led into believing that the organization controls the currency. But it still doesn't make much sense. Since Satoshi seems to be heavily influenced by cypherpunk community, maybe it really is one person who just wanted the bitcoin really work and made everything that's the best for the currency? If so, one day, when bitcoin or it's derivative will be a thing on which the world economy depends, he will be the man of the year. Maybe he will even disclose his identity, since that will not have an effect on bitcoin itself any more.
- gesman 13y agoRon and Shamir were very eager to see what they wanted to see. Some people got stuck in looking for "ghost under the bed" well beyond their childhood years.
- icambron 13y agoFor what it's worth, I'm not Satoshi Nakamoto either.
- flurdy 13y agoI am Satoshi. And also Spartacus
- vog 13y agoI knew it! Thanks for making this clear.
- nationcrafting 13y agoI'm Satoshi and so is my wife.
- louthy 13y agoI broke the dam.
- lifeformed 13y agoIn fact, 99.99999998596% of people are also not Satoshi Nakamoto.
- gjm11 13y agoGeneral consensus seems to be that Ron&Shamir's publications on this topic are extraordinarily weak given how stellar a record Shamir, in particular, has. The conclusion seems obvious: It's a misdirection. Adi Shamir is Satoshi Nakamoto. (Note: No, I do not in fact believe this.)
- wmf 13y agoThis sounds like a fairly typical case of an advisor giving a student free reign. Most professors do not invest the time to understand their students' work as much as you might think.
- feral 13y agoAs your comment is 3rd from the top of page: You could investigate that with a few minutes of googling - the 'student' has been writing CS papers since the mid '80s [0] This reminds me of when someone on HN described both the authors as 'some Israeli CS students' [1] Whatever you think about this particular paper, the authors are experienced researchers. [0] http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~dron/ http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~dron/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5209356
- Crito 13y agoSo what we are saying here is that in the "did a bit of preliminary googling before writing something foolish" department, they did about as well as a HN commenter. Seriously, the slight difference here makes your comparison less than flattering. This seems like some form of "damning with faint praise".
- wmf 13y agoI stand corrected and I apologize to Dr. Ron. I am still not sure how much Shamir is responsible for the flaws in this research given that he's not the first author.
- lkozma 13y ago
- nsxwolf 13y agoI would just like to make it known that I am also not Satoshi.
- Aqueous 13y agoThat's exactly what Satoshi would say.
- computer 13y agoOne of the consequences of a public transaction chain is the great potential for witch hunts. Here's one of the first examples, but it surely won't be the last.
- cLeEOGPw 13y agoThat's a positive thing, because it only grows trust between members of community.
- computer 13y agoI don't think so; witch hunts didn't exactly grow trust between people in the middle ages. Witch hunts grow mob feelings between people against whoever happens to get crushed by their collective paranoia that day.
- bitcoin-truth 13y agoI think the parent poster meant that the witch hunts in the 21st century related to bitcoin only grow trust in the bitcoin community that witchhunts are destined to fail. More people see that having financial privacy is a good thing, and trust in bitcoin grows.
- enraged_camel 13y agoI thought the parent was being sarcastic.
- giergirey 13y agoPedant's note: Contrary to popular belief, witch hunts were rare in the Middle Ages. They took off in popularity during the Renaissance.
- scaphandre 13y agoAnnoying meta-pedant note: You presumably mean that witch hunts mainly occurred in puritanical areas, at a time in which the Renaissance was occurring elsewhere in the world.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoSo, a global quest for the hidden wise one who lives in the middle. This whole affair has a solidly mythic feel about it.
- atmosx 13y agoThe next obvious question would be: are you batman? That said, I believe him. I have a great deal of respect to Shamir but I think he got it a little bit wrong.
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- yeukhon 13y agoIf I really want to find out who satoshi is I would have lie to all and wait until the actual Satoshi to come out and call me a liar. Anyway, life goes on - I do want to find out who Satoshi is really...
- Smegger 13y agoit would be a fairly easy thing to disprove you claim while staying anonymous all he would have to do is call you out and ask you to cryptographically verify yourself since you do not have his privet key he could just cryptographically sign his challenge to you and all could see that you are full of it.
- sigzero 13y agoWill the real Satoshi please stand up?
- hernan604 13y agoSatoshi is a perl programmer
- jafaku 13y agoA perl programmer who uses Windows?
- wrongc0ntinent 13y agoThis is the amazing "Sunday" research paper. It's OK if you stop at the giant red typo, but you may eventually get the point: "The short path we found (which is depicted in Figure 6) suggests (but does not prove) the existence of a surprising link between the two mysterious figures of the Bitcoin community, Satoshi Nakamoto and DPR. It is reasonable to assume that all the accounts described along the top of Figure 6 belong to the same person, but to be on the safe side we refer to him as a “Founder” rather than as Satoshi Nakamoto. We are sure that analyzing this figure will start a very vigorous debate in the Bitcoin community." In other words, "we're covering our asses so we don't have to retract, but we're expert and relevant to this bitcoin thing."
- WhoIsSatoshi 13y agoTips welcome @WhoIsSatoshi
- Aqueous 13y agoI think we should look closer at the cryptography mailing list for evidence of Satoshi's identity. It seems likely that at some point Satoshi posted under his real name about something unrelated to BitCoin, before he decided to switch identities to release BitCoin under a pseudonym. I really doubt that Satoshi would have lurked silently there for many years before suddenly dropping the BitCoin whitepaper on the list without once contributing under his own name, perhaps before he was even thinking about BitCoin. I think someone should do a quantified textual analysis of posts to to derive some sort of written language fingerprint for each author on the Cryptography Mailing List. Has anyone been able to derive a unique fingerprint of written language that accurately predicts the identity of the author? Has an analysis like this been done and come up empty?
- jamesrom 13y ago> a unique fingerprint of written language that accurately predicts the identity of the author These kinds of analysis are usually more "fuzzy" than "unique" and "accurate". And can be easily fooled if you are trying to remain anonymous. Especially in the case that Satoshi isn't a single person.
- darkmighty 13y agoAgreed, but strong evidence could plausibly be found. Also the style of writing/spelling errors can sometimes reveal nationality if you're familiar enough with different languages. I don't think someone would go through that much work, though.
- Tycho 13y agoIf it pointed to a particular individual then people would quickly find corroborating evidence (or not), so the fuzziness doesn't make the analysis useless.
- kanzure 13y agoAt the moment, it would be really helpful if you could submit archives of the original cypherpunk mailing list, the p2p-hackers mailing list, the cryptology mailing list, and the original member list of the p2presearch mailing list (not the current one). A copy of the original pdf would also be really helpful. Not the one that md5 hashes to d56d71ecadf2137be09d8b1d35c6c042 please. Here is some content in return: http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/bitcoin-satoshi/ http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/bitcoin-satoshi/ I am secretly hoping that Satoshi (and many others like him) really were lurking throughout the entire cypherpunk history, because it plays well into the cyberpunk fantasy unrolling in my head.
- pearjuice 13y agoDisinformation is key to success. By actively participating in denying his identity people will become even more skeptical leading to more confusion.
- smsm42 13y agoWhy he calls Satoshi Nakamoto "infamous"? Did he mean "famous" or actually thinks Satoshi Nakamoto is evil?
- simplemath 13y agoin common use, "infamous" has become mostly interchangeable with "famous" or "notorious" and the negative connotations are somewhat dulled.
- jackgavigan 13y agoY'know, with all the snooping they've been doing, I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA/GCHQ knew Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity.
- rusabd 13y ago124.217.253.42 IP: 124.217.253.42 server location: Malaysia ISP: Piradius Net
- NanoWar 13y agoOT: Reminded me of this: http://pbfcomics.com/45/ http://pbfcomics.com/45/
- Tycho 13y agoHere's another thing to consider: the NSA and other intelligence agencies have most likely already figured out who is behind Bitcoin, even if the general public have not. What does that mean?