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Someone correct me if I am wrong but I don't think Bitcoin took genius levels of C++ or cryptography knowledge. I am not saying Bitcoin isn't a genius invention

Someone correct me if I am wrong but I don't think Bitcoin took genius levels of C++ or cryptography knowledge. I am not saying Bitcoin isn't a genius invention (it is), I am saying that it wasn't necessarily hard to code up once the inventor conceived the idea. Also, it is not an advancement of cryptography, just an incredibly cool application of already existing cryptography. Please don't take this as me saying it was easy to come up with Bitcoin, I am just saying the genius wasn't in Satoshi's coding skills, or advancements of cryptography, it was in his using of these tools to solve a problem many thought was impossible to solve (distributed consensus).

nashequilibrium 13y ago
This right here is the problem with HackerNews, everyone is making CRUD apps but then they want to comment on what is genius & what is not. What is even funnier is that most people here can't even complete their side projects or main projects/MVPs etc, but want to trivialize bitcoin.
- noname123 13y ago
  Ditto. I'm one of the plebes who can't finish the CRUD MVP but I consider myself at least a superior plebe because I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb.
  - argc 13y ago
    You're too smart for your own good. Prepare for extermination.
- doctoboggan 13y ago
  I assume you are accusing me of trivializing Bitcoin? I expected that, which is why I went out of my way to point out that I was _not_ trivializing Bitcoin. Please explain to me the reasons why you think I am wrong rather than condescending with no substance.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  You know, when someone says "hey, I may be wrong, please correct me if so" and you respond by going triple-time on the snark and smug condescension, that's kind of a dick move even if he is wrong.
oxryly1 13y ago
> Someone correct me if I am wrong but I don't think Bitcoin took genius levels of C++ or cryptography knowledge. I think bitcoin is direct evidence of genius levels of C++, cryptography, and general software engineering knowledge. I'd place on par or better than git by Linus Torvalds (and as such I expect Mr Nakamoto to be someone much more like Linus than Dorian.) The genius is in its relative simplicity, completeness, and effectiveness at both stating and solving the given problem. Upon seeing and understanding it (to the degree that I do), I'm curious at both who was able to invent it and what work it was that they built upon.
- meowface 13y ago
  I haven't reviewed the original Bitcoin 0.1 code, however... https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf Based on the white paper Nakamoto released, "genius" levels of crypto were absolutely not required. An intelligent recent undergraduate or graduate who studied crypto could understand, suggest, and implement all of the crypto primitives and ideas discussed in the paper if they were given the scenario ("implement a distributed form of currency, with the ability to send payments and use computing power to mine transaction blocks"). No new cryptographic algorithms were invented by Nakamoto whatsoever, and his use of all the algorithms he chose have been in standard use for decades. If you read the whole paper, you can see that any decently knowledgable CS student could grasp most, if not all of it, on the first read through. Hell, the most advanced math in the whole paper is just a handful of simple probability calculations. Regarding C++: he's certainly a good C++ programmer, but if I recall many early contributors found his code to be messy and not that refined. It did the job and implemented the protocol, but I believe they ended up rewriting it almost from scratch later on. The innovation in Bitcoin is the core idea and promoting the network; technically, it is not particularly innovative or unusual. Even the idea itself has been suggested by numerous cryptographers in the past decade, but only with toy implementations. I personally posit that Nakamoto is not even a professional cryptographer, let alone a "world-class expert" or "genius". He probably has a bachelor's and possibly a master's in Computer Science. He probably worked as a C++ developer for many years and worked on some projects that involved crypto, and eventually came upon the idea of Bitcoin due to his libertarian ideals. Going by his posting style and his actions in general, I think he was and likely still is a pretty ordinary, geeky programmer; not an academic. I think he's probably fairly young, too (under 40, maybe under 30). In fact, I think he falls right into HN's demographic.

nashequilibrium 13y ago

This right here is the problem with HackerNews, everyone is making CRUD apps but then they want to comment on what is genius & what is not. What is even funnier is that most people here can't even complete their side projects or main projects/MVPs etc, but want to trivialize bitcoin.

noname123 13y ago
Ditto. I'm one of the plebes who can't finish the CRUD MVP but I consider myself at least a superior plebe because I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb.
- argc 13y ago
  You're too smart for your own good. Prepare for extermination.
doctoboggan 13y ago
I assume you are accusing me of trivializing Bitcoin? I expected that, which is why I went out of my way to point out that I was _not_ trivializing Bitcoin. Please explain to me the reasons why you think I am wrong rather than condescending with no substance.
PhasmaFelis 13y ago
You know, when someone says "hey, I may be wrong, please correct me if so" and you respond by going triple-time on the snark and smug condescension, that's kind of a dick move even if he is wrong.

oxryly1 13y ago

> Someone correct me if I am wrong but I don't think Bitcoin took genius levels of C++ or cryptography knowledge. I think bitcoin is direct evidence of genius levels of C++, cryptography, and general software engineering knowledge. I'd place on par or better than git by Linus Torvalds (and as such I expect Mr Nakamoto to be someone much more like Linus than Dorian.) The genius is in its relative simplicity, completeness, and effectiveness at both stating and solving the given problem. Upon seeing and understanding it (to the degree that I do), I'm curious at both who was able to invent it and what work it was that they built upon.

meowface 13y ago
I haven't reviewed the original Bitcoin 0.1 code, however... https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf Based on the white paper Nakamoto released, "genius" levels of crypto were absolutely not required. An intelligent recent undergraduate or graduate who studied crypto could understand, suggest, and implement all of the crypto primitives and ideas discussed in the paper if they were given the scenario ("implement a distributed form of currency, with the ability to send payments and use computing power to mine transaction blocks"). No new cryptographic algorithms were invented by Nakamoto whatsoever, and his use of all the algorithms he chose have been in standard use for decades. If you read the whole paper, you can see that any decently knowledgable CS student could grasp most, if not all of it, on the first read through. Hell, the most advanced math in the whole paper is just a handful of simple probability calculations. Regarding C++: he's certainly a good C++ programmer, but if I recall many early contributors found his code to be messy and not that refined. It did the job and implemented the protocol, but I believe they ended up rewriting it almost from scratch later on. The innovation in Bitcoin is the core idea and promoting the network; technically, it is not particularly innovative or unusual. Even the idea itself has been suggested by numerous cryptographers in the past decade, but only with toy implementations. I personally posit that Nakamoto is not even a professional cryptographer, let alone a "world-class expert" or "genius". He probably has a bachelor's and possibly a master's in Computer Science. He probably worked as a C++ developer for many years and worked on some projects that involved crypto, and eventually came upon the idea of Bitcoin due to his libertarian ideals. Going by his posting style and his actions in general, I think he was and likely still is a pretty ordinary, geeky programmer; not an academic. I think he's probably fairly young, too (under 40, maybe under 30). In fact, I think he falls right into HN's demographic.