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The attempts to pin Satoshi on to one person strikes me as odd. In other threads on HN, everyone agrees the work was well done, like a peer-reviewed academic pa

The attempts to pin Satoshi on to one person strikes me as odd. In other threads on HN, everyone agrees the work was well done, like a peer-reviewed academic paper of sorts, but then nobody seems to entertain the idea that it might be, say, 2-3 people with Nick or someone else just being one of the team. Are there solid reasons for discounting a team of researchers, post-docs, or something similar?

betterunix 13y ago
"Are there solid reasons for discounting a team of researchers, post-docs, or something similar?" Yes, if you read the Bitcoin whitepaper that Satoshi originally sent out, and then compare it to the work done by teams of researchers and postdocs. Here are some things to think about: 1. Bitcoin can be attacked in polynomial time. This is a sharp and very extreme break from the typical expectations we have about cryptosystems, yet Satoshi did not devote any time to this in the Bitcoin paper. 2. The security analysis presented in the Bitcoin paper assumes a specific attack strategy, without ruling out others or even mentioning the possibility that another attack strategy could exist. 3. The security goal of Bitcoin was never clearly stated in the Bitcoin paper, and there is no clear threat model. 4. Almost none of the related work was mentioned, not even to distinguish Bitcoin from that work. Digital cash has been extensively studied by cryptographers, but that mountain of work was not mentioned at all. Bitcoin is a multiparty computation system meant to operate on a massive scale, yet at no point did Satoshi mention the even larger body of work that has been published on secure multiparty computation. Satoshi did not even mention the various ways that distributed systems can be attacked, which are presented in the unmentioned related work. These are not signs that experienced researchers are behind Bitcoin. From where I sit, these all point to Bitcoin having been the work of a cryptography enthusiast, probably a high school or college student with some extra time on his hands.
- fkssaa 13y ago
  > these all point to Bitcoin having been the work of a cryptography enthusiast, probably a high school or college student with some extra time on his hands. If true, that's just embarrassing for the cryptography community. Having worked on the problem for years and then be shown up by an amateur who creates a system that hasn't been cracked despite a $multi-billion incentive to do so.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    You make it sound like cryptographers were stumped by the problem of digital cash. In fact, the cryptography research community had basically solved that problem; the only difference between Bitcoin and the academic constructions is that Bitcoin does not have any central bank. There were almost no cryptographers trying to find a way to remove the central bank from digital cash systems when Satoshi came along. Nobody should be surprised by that, as there is still no rigorous definition of digital cash that does not invoke a central bank or authority of some kind. Had Satoshi presented such a definition, he would have unquestionably "shown up" cryptography researchers. At best, all you can say is that Satoshi demonstrated that cryptographers were solving the wrong problem with digital cash. That, however, was not news in 2008. Cryptographers had thought that credit card payments were too insecure to make sense on the Internet; the failure of DigiCash and related efforts in the 90s proved otherwise.
- clarkm 13y ago
  I've studied the origins of bitcoin extensively, and I agree with almost everything you've said. One nitpick: I don't think it was necessarily the work of a high school or college student, but rather someone older who had been following the cypherpunk movement since the early 90s.
jonny_eh 13y ago
The end of the article mentions this. The whitepaper is only one piece of bitcoin, there's also the software and peer-review. The article just makes a persuasive argument that Nick was the primary author of the whitepaper.
ScottWhigham 13y ago
Just take into account the value + size of the BTC portfolio. It's over 1m bitcoins now. If this was a conglomerate of some size and the value of the portfolio grew from $1m US to $1b US in such a short time, wouldn't there be a lot of pressure to sell and take a large amount of cash for each shareholder? I'd think there would be a LOT of talk about that and that, yes, it would be likely to see each person taking $10m US out at the very least. So, anecdotally, I see the fact/appearance that this hasn't happened as evidence that Satoshi's bitcoins are owned by one person. One person who owned so many BTC could sell enough to raise $10m without anyone really thinking much about it. But if a group of twelve, for example, owned that many bitcoins and each wanted to pull out $10m in cash, that size of a transaction goes noticed. Wasn't it just last week that someone did a $147m BTC transfer? It made headlines everywhere.

betterunix 13y ago

"Are there solid reasons for discounting a team of researchers, post-docs, or something similar?" Yes, if you read the Bitcoin whitepaper that Satoshi originally sent out, and then compare it to the work done by teams of researchers and postdocs. Here are some things to think about: 1. Bitcoin can be attacked in polynomial time. This is a sharp and very extreme break from the typical expectations we have about cryptosystems, yet Satoshi did not devote any time to this in the Bitcoin paper. 2. The security analysis presented in the Bitcoin paper assumes a specific attack strategy, without ruling out others or even mentioning the possibility that another attack strategy could exist. 3. The security goal of Bitcoin was never clearly stated in the Bitcoin paper, and there is no clear threat model. 4. Almost none of the related work was mentioned, not even to distinguish Bitcoin from that work. Digital cash has been extensively studied by cryptographers, but that mountain of work was not mentioned at all. Bitcoin is a multiparty computation system meant to operate on a massive scale, yet at no point did Satoshi mention the even larger body of work that has been published on secure multiparty computation. Satoshi did not even mention the various ways that distributed systems can be attacked, which are presented in the unmentioned related work. These are not signs that experienced researchers are behind Bitcoin. From where I sit, these all point to Bitcoin having been the work of a cryptography enthusiast, probably a high school or college student with some extra time on his hands.

fkssaa 13y ago
> these all point to Bitcoin having been the work of a cryptography enthusiast, probably a high school or college student with some extra time on his hands. If true, that's just embarrassing for the cryptography community. Having worked on the problem for years and then be shown up by an amateur who creates a system that hasn't been cracked despite a $multi-billion incentive to do so.
- betterunix 13y ago
  You make it sound like cryptographers were stumped by the problem of digital cash. In fact, the cryptography research community had basically solved that problem; the only difference between Bitcoin and the academic constructions is that Bitcoin does not have any central bank. There were almost no cryptographers trying to find a way to remove the central bank from digital cash systems when Satoshi came along. Nobody should be surprised by that, as there is still no rigorous definition of digital cash that does not invoke a central bank or authority of some kind. Had Satoshi presented such a definition, he would have unquestionably "shown up" cryptography researchers. At best, all you can say is that Satoshi demonstrated that cryptographers were solving the wrong problem with digital cash. That, however, was not news in 2008. Cryptographers had thought that credit card payments were too insecure to make sense on the Internet; the failure of DigiCash and related efforts in the 90s proved otherwise.
clarkm 13y ago
I've studied the origins of bitcoin extensively, and I agree with almost everything you've said. One nitpick: I don't think it was necessarily the work of a high school or college student, but rather someone older who had been following the cypherpunk movement since the early 90s.

jonny_eh 13y ago

The end of the article mentions this. The whitepaper is only one piece of bitcoin, there's also the software and peer-review. The article just makes a persuasive argument that Nick was the primary author of the whitepaper.

ScottWhigham 13y ago

Just take into account the value + size of the BTC portfolio. It's over 1m bitcoins now. If this was a conglomerate of some size and the value of the portfolio grew from $1m US to $1b US in such a short time, wouldn't there be a lot of pressure to sell and take a large amount of cash for each shareholder? I'd think there would be a LOT of talk about that and that, yes, it would be likely to see each person taking $10m US out at the very least. So, anecdotally, I see the fact/appearance that this hasn't happened as evidence that Satoshi's bitcoins are owned by one person. One person who owned so many BTC could sell enough to raise $10m without anyone really thinking much about it. But if a group of twelve, for example, owned that many bitcoins and each wanted to pull out $10m in cash, that size of a transaction goes noticed. Wasn't it just last week that someone did a $147m BTC transfer? It made headlines everywhere.