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I personally like the theory that Satoshi is Nick Szabo and Hal Finney, with maybe one other. Nick Szabo was way ahead of the curve on the design of a proof-of

by frisco 13y ago

I personally like the theory that Satoshi is Nick Szabo and Hal Finney, with maybe one other. Nick Szabo was way ahead of the curve on the design of a proof-of-work based cryptocurrency. When Dan Kaminsky looked at the Bitcoin source early on, he reported that "entire classes of bugs are missing" [1] and that it was almost "preternaturally sound" [2] and Hal Finney is one of the the few people realistically capable of producing that kind of code. Hal Finney was the recipient of the first Bitcoin transaction, and was active on the mailing list that Bitcoin was announced through. Further, a few months before the Bitcoin paper announcement, Nick Szabo put out a request for collaborators to try and prototype out the proof-of-work currency system he'd been thinking about [3], and he and Hal Finney were known to get in touch around that time. I hope the identity of Satoshi is never confirmed. If it's them, good for them! If not, it doesn't matter! [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34458.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34458.0 [2] http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/lets-cut-through-the-bitcoin-hype/ http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/lets-cut-through-the-bi... [3] http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets.html#3741843833998921269 http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets.ht...

hendzen 13y ago
The relationship between Szabo and Finney goes back way further than that. They were both on the cypherpunks list in the 90's. See this paranoid rant [0] from the 90's about Hal Finney, Szabo and others being fake personas invented by Tim May (author of the Cyphernomicon). Additionally, Szabo was an employee of Agoric Systems, publisher of the Agoric Papers [1], a treatise on market based systems. He was also an employee of Digicash [2], a failed electronic money startup created by David Chaum. However, Szabo has released a bit of code [3], which is very different than code I would expect Satoshi Nakamoto to have written. That said, for someone who was a professor at GWU law school, there is a remarkably small amount of public information about Nick Szabo. [0] - http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore/Humor/squish.hoax http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore/Humor/squish.hoax [1] - http://e-drexler.com/d/09/00/AgoricsPapers/agoricpapers.html http://e-drexler.com/d/09/00/AgoricsPapers/agoricpapers.html [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash [3] - https://github.com/nicksz/jTime https://github.com/nicksz/jTime
- gojomo 13y ago
  Similar to your {0} and even earlier: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.privacy.anon-server/Bi3iCRfasWE[1-25-false] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.privacy.anon-ser...
- nawitus 13y ago
  One coincidence is that Finney was diagnosed with ALS around the same time Satoshi stopped posting. On the other hand, if Finney is Satoshi, he would probably like to use his bitcoins to fund ALS research.
nawitus 13y ago
I'm betting on Satoshi being Wei Dai. My clues: a) He lives in London. Satoshi's mining has been timezoned to indicate that he probably lived in the UK. The genesis block had a quote from The Times ("chancellor on brink of second bailout"). b) Wei is an expert C++ programmer, and the bitcoin client was written in C++ c) Wei created cryptopp, a C++ cryptographic library, so he definitely knew how to implement cryptographic features in C++. The bitcoin client heavily used the cryptopp library. The code seems similar too. d) Wei Dai published 'b-money' system in 1998 e) 'British formatting in his written work implies Nakamoto is of British origin. However, he also sometimes used American spelling, which may indicate that he was intentionally trying (but failed) to mask his writing style, or that he is more than one person. ' - Bitcoin wiki
- bachback 13y ago
  interesting. at what odds would you bet? I think the distribution is fairly flat, because it could be a random, unknown guy who just happen to work on it his whole life. it seems to me that satoshi had to be non-academic.
  - wintersFright 13y ago
    it seems unlikely that it was an unknown guy who threw out a workable solution on his first attempt. If it wasn't his first attempt, he must have left an internet footprint somewhere with prior ramblings. Much like DPR and silkroad.
    - bushido 13y ago
      This looks interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20061202010422/http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt https://web.archive.org/web/20061202010422/http://www.weidai...
    - bachback 13y ago
      not so sure. the main ingredient is the torrent principle. incidentally that was also written by one guy in a basement. the risk of floating a half-baked proposals is too high, so it seems likely satoshi did it all in one go, or had very private discussions. question really if anonymity was on his mind from the beginning or not.
tptacek 13y ago
Interesting. What bug classes would those be?
whywhywhy5 13y ago
Well Satoshi and Hal definitely worked together in some fashion: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=show...
dobbsbob 13y ago
There were a lot of problems in the early bitcoin client Kaminsky saw the refined product after Gavin, Satoshi and many others contributed
- jnbiche 13y ago
  Agreed. Most people don't realize that is was Gavin, along with the other early devs (including Satoshi), who took what was a brilliant prototype and turned it into a very solid, multiplatform piece of software. For example, Bitcoin didn't even run on Linux at first -- it was developed by Satoshi on Windows and had a lot of Windows-specific code despite the use of wxwidgets for UI.

by frisco 13y ago

hendzen 13y ago

The relationship between Szabo and Finney goes back way further than that. They were both on the cypherpunks list in the 90's. See this paranoid rant [0] from the 90's about Hal Finney, Szabo and others being fake personas invented by Tim May (author of the Cyphernomicon). Additionally, Szabo was an employee of Agoric Systems, publisher of the Agoric Papers [1], a treatise on market based systems. He was also an employee of Digicash [2], a failed electronic money startup created by David Chaum. However, Szabo has released a bit of code [3], which is very different than code I would expect Satoshi Nakamoto to have written. That said, for someone who was a professor at GWU law school, there is a remarkably small amount of public information about Nick Szabo. [0] - http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore/Humor/squish.hoax http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore/Humor/squish.hoax [1] - http://e-drexler.com/d/09/00/AgoricsPapers/agoricpapers.html http://e-drexler.com/d/09/00/AgoricsPapers/agoricpapers.html [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash [3] - https://github.com/nicksz/jTime https://github.com/nicksz/jTime

gojomo 13y ago
Similar to your {0} and even earlier: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.privacy.anon-server/Bi3iCRfasWE[1-25-false] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.privacy.anon-ser...
nawitus 13y ago
One coincidence is that Finney was diagnosed with ALS around the same time Satoshi stopped posting. On the other hand, if Finney is Satoshi, he would probably like to use his bitcoins to fund ALS research.

nawitus 13y ago

I'm betting on Satoshi being Wei Dai. My clues: a) He lives in London. Satoshi's mining has been timezoned to indicate that he probably lived in the UK. The genesis block had a quote from The Times ("chancellor on brink of second bailout"). b) Wei is an expert C++ programmer, and the bitcoin client was written in C++ c) Wei created cryptopp, a C++ cryptographic library, so he definitely knew how to implement cryptographic features in C++. The bitcoin client heavily used the cryptopp library. The code seems similar too. d) Wei Dai published 'b-money' system in 1998 e) 'British formatting in his written work implies Nakamoto is of British origin. However, he also sometimes used American spelling, which may indicate that he was intentionally trying (but failed) to mask his writing style, or that he is more than one person. ' - Bitcoin wiki

bachback 13y ago
interesting. at what odds would you bet? I think the distribution is fairly flat, because it could be a random, unknown guy who just happen to work on it his whole life. it seems to me that satoshi had to be non-academic.
- wintersFright 13y ago
  it seems unlikely that it was an unknown guy who threw out a workable solution on his first attempt. If it wasn't his first attempt, he must have left an internet footprint somewhere with prior ramblings. Much like DPR and silkroad.
  - bushido 13y ago
    This looks interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20061202010422/http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt https://web.archive.org/web/20061202010422/http://www.weidai...
  - bachback 13y ago
    not so sure. the main ingredient is the torrent principle. incidentally that was also written by one guy in a basement. the risk of floating a half-baked proposals is too high, so it seems likely satoshi did it all in one go, or had very private discussions. question really if anonymity was on his mind from the beginning or not.

tptacek 13y ago

Interesting. What bug classes would those be?

whywhywhy5 13y ago

Well Satoshi and Hal definitely worked together in some fashion: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=show...

dobbsbob 13y ago

There were a lot of problems in the early bitcoin client Kaminsky saw the refined product after Gavin, Satoshi and many others contributed

jnbiche 13y ago
Agreed. Most people don't realize that is was Gavin, along with the other early devs (including Satoshi), who took what was a brilliant prototype and turned it into a very solid, multiplatform piece of software. For example, Bitcoin didn't even run on Linux at first -- it was developed by Satoshi on Windows and had a lot of Windows-specific code despite the use of wxwidgets for UI.