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Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto and the Birth of Bitcoin
- pyabo 11y agoI would have asked Szabo: if you were Satoshi, would you change your answers?
- drcode 11y agoIf I were both Szabo and Satoshi, I would answer "no" to that question, because in that case I would lie on that question.
- noobie 11y agoNot following..Can you explain?
- pyabo 11y agoI mean that he would answer exactly the same if he was or not Satoshi.
- differentView 11y agoThen what's the point of your question?
- pyabo 11y agoThe point is that asking Szabo if he is Satoshi is pointless since you will get a 'no' as answer if he is or not.
- c0achmcguirk 11y agoCouldn't he return the question to you? I mean would your answers differ if you were or weren't Satoshi? Let people have their privacy.
- lotsofmangos 11y agoMy personal bet is that Satoshi Nakamoto is probably the creation of a security agency. Bitcoin has done wonders for illuminating vast swathes of the black market, especially for anyone with a good network overview.
- vectorpush 11y agoHmm, I'm not so sure. If anything, it seems to me that bitcoin has actually been quite a boon for the viability of darknet markets; certainly the silk road would have never risen to such heights were it not for bitcoin, and as far as I'm aware, bitcoin itself has never actually played a direct role in helping to identify darknet kingpins (who end up tipping their hand in some other fashion). Honestly, I'd say darknet markets are the only place where bitcoin is genuinely useful.
- seanwessmith 11y agoWhich in turns feeds the security agency. A la private prisons
- jahewson 11y agoWhich in turn feeds the orange jumpsuit industry.
- imglorp 11y agoBut it will. The journal contains connections, just like facebook, between every miner, buyer, and seller ever. If you make a new wallet and transfer your coins there, it's recorded. If you buy some on the street for cash from some guy, it's recorded. You don't always know the details, but you always know the connection. Cash, laundering, shell corps; they have none of these properties.
- drjesusphd 11y ago> bitcoin itself has never actually played a direct role in helping to identify darknet kingpins (who end up tipping their hand in some other fashion) See: parallel construction. Bitcoin or not, if the technology existed to identify "darknet kingpins", the technique wouldn't show up on the open press.
- oskarth 11y agoOh dear, here we go again.
- exo762 11y agoThis article should result in huge court settlements payed by NYTimes to Mr. Szabo. They are literally putting his life and life of his family in danger. I hope will sue their asses.
- spellboots 11y agoWhy wouldn't this be protected speech under the first amendment? As long as the newspaper believes it to be true, why wouldn't they be allowed to publish it?
- piker 11y agoI don't think this is nearly the case here, but to answer your question publication of false information with "reckless disregard" for it's truth or falsity is also actionable under New York Times v. Sullivan. NYT does not have to believe it to be false to have First Amendment protections stripped.
- s73v3r 11y agoHe didn't say a damn thing about this being a free speech issue.
- Aqueous 11y agoNick Szabo has been ID'd repeatedly as the most likely author of BitCoin by various attempts to discover Satoshi's identity, and this article does not do anything more than that. Yet he remains stubbornly alive!
- Amezarak 11y ago> They are literally putting his life and life of his family in danger. The world is filled with millionaires and billionaires who are publicly known and yet perfectly safe, even though the vast majority of them don't have security guards or anything like that. Why do you think things would be different for the creator of Bitcoin? The reality is that very few criminals are of the take-hostages-and-murder type in the first place and murdering or stealing from a semi-famous rich person is a surefire way to get caught, especially when Bitcoins are traceable in a way that cash is not. You might as well break in and steal a Picasso painting from some other millionaire. There are lots of people who want to remain private and unknown; the best (though not guaranteed) way is to not do anything worthy of the public notice. If you do, you should expect some scrutiny. So while I sympathize with Szabo, I don't feel very sorry for him. He pursued his dream of working on cryptocurrency (whether or not he is Satoshi) and this is a perfectly reasonable and predictable consequence of that dream.
- zby 11y agoAnything new in this one?
- mod 11y agoYes. I'm not to the details yet, but they're profiling a new man, Nick Szabo.
- zby 11y agoThat was sarcasm or not?
- mod 11y agoNo, sorry--I'm not deep enough into this speculation to have heard of Nick Szabo. I didn't read your mind to know that your level of knowledge is far greater than mine on the topic. I just previously read the Wired piece that profiled the wrong man, and the ensuing discussion here.
- zby 11y agoOK OK - I did not mean to stress you or anything :)
- celticninja 11y agoThat was a newsweek article not a WIRED article you previously would have read.
- Aqueous 11y agoYes. I don't think it's been reported that Nick Szabo has been involved in any BitCoin startup, let alone an exchange called "Vaurum" / "Mirror." Credit to the guy: in the world of the Internet where perfect privacy is nearly impossible, not so much as a picture of him has surfaced. Or, well, until recently; if you do a Google Search of his name one of the photos seems similar (sans beard) to the physical description of him in this article. Despite this, he has to this day remained an extraordinarily secretive individual, while being widely suspected to be the creator of BTC. Looks like all that practice (http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/10/msg00759.html http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/10/msg00759.html) paid off.
- chrisdbaldwin 11y agoWe should not reveal the creator. Stop it.
- amyjess 11y agoPlease stop trying to censor journalists. We have a free press for a reason.
- 100timesthis 11y agowe should also have freedom of speech then.
- krapp 11y agothis is free speech - as long as no one gets arrested for expressing an opinion. Free speech doesn't mean no one gets to disagree with you in a public forum. https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- 100timesthis 11y agoI never said it was, and I never asked amyjess not to express his opinion, I was just pointing out that screaming against censorship is completely irrelevant with the parent post, I tough this was pretty clear.
- juliangregorian 11y agoHow did you look at the username "amyjess" and then decide "this person clearly prefers to be addressed by male pronouns"?
- amyjess 11y agoThe charitable explanation is that they don't pay attention to usernames (I'm guilty of this too) and default to male pronouns for everyone. The sinister explanation is that they dug through my post history, saw that I'm trans (I'm very open about it, and in fact I've been discussing my name change in another thread this morning), and decided to misgender me either out of bigotry or just to be hurtful. I'm not sure which one to believe.
- RedNifre 11y agoMaybe, one day, we'll find a PGP signed "I am Satoshi Nakamoto" in someone's last will. If he/she/they won't do this or if PGP is broken by then we will never know for sure.
- drcode 11y ago> or if PGP is broken by then we will never know for sure. Unless they have already put encrypted messages into the existing blockchain using different algos with such a signed message- Then they could use another signature to prove they signed the message with PGP before PGP was broken.
- lordnacho 11y agoHow about just using www.proofofexistence.com? Of course you might have expected the real Satoshi to have done this before the site came up.
- nly 11y agoNo need to do that. Satoshi has bitcoin in the blockchain already that he or she may have secp256k1 keypairs for. Being able to spend these coins would be proof enough.
- waterlesscloud 11y agoThey probably just have something on file with gwern.
- wsxcde 11y agoNothing really new here, just speculation that Nick Szabo is Satoshi. It mainly appears to be a submarine piece praising bitcoin.
- ikeboy 11y agoWhat's new is info on Szabo, including that he worked at Vaurum, his age, and where he went to college.
- myth_buster 11y agoAlso: “I’m not Satoshi, and I’m not a college professor. In fact, I never was a college professor.” It was widely held belief that he is/was professor at George Washington University.
- ikeboy 11y agoThat part wasn't new, it was denied by GMU; see http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/04/16/bitcoin-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-unmasked-again/ http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/04/16/bitcoin-creator-sa.... >Furthermore, George Washington University says that despite widespread reports that Mr. Szabo worked as a law professor at the school, it has no records of his ever working there in that capacity. The university did confirm, though, that he received a law degree from the school in 2006.
- ikeboy 11y agoWhoops, I meant GWU.
- arfliw 11y agoWhy would something like that need to be a a 'widely held belief' -- aren't faculty easily identifiable i.e. listed on their website, or confirmed via a phone call?
- thieving_magpie 11y agoIt's nothing like a submarine piece. It has original reporting, no clear endorsement of any company (not even Vaurum). This is original reporting, don't discount it just because it doesn't go so far as to make crazy certainties about the identify of Satoshi. Nobody writes a submarine piece and goes to bitcoin conferences.
- ebbv 11y agoDepending on your perspective this profile could seem more or less compelling than the last one, but either way it's nowhere near conclusive. Fortunately unlike the Newsweek article, this one doesn't try to claim it is conclusive. Personally I do think the creator should be unmasked. This person stands to profit hugely from BitCoin's adoption and continued use. I want to know if they really are doing it for eventual personal financial gain or not. And what kind of person they are, how the massive amount of money they gain will be used. Maybe Satoshi was a secret CIA project all along and the government will use the huge BitCoin stash to fund black ops that we'd rather not have happen. Maybe it was similar but the KGB instead. Maybe it was some lone hacker or group of hackers like Mr. Szabo, and they threw away the keys. Or maybe they didn't throw away the keys but they will just eventually split it up and give the money to their children. There's lots of good and bad possibilities, none of which we know until the identity of Satoshi is revealed. Personally, I have always been skeptical of BitCoin. There's no reason why it should be the crypto currency. If cryptocurrencies do take off as more than just a toy for libertarians and rich technophiles, then governments will start their own fork and decree that these are the official cryptocurrencies of their nations, and all others are junk. Over night the value of BitCoin will plummet, because the wider population will choose the government backed one.
- vbezhenar 11y agoThose who trust their governments already use government-issued money. Nothing will change. Bitcoin made for those who don't think that government should be able to control money.
- ebbv 11y agoI realize that's who made it and initially adopted it and currently uses it. But lots of BitCoin fans talk about it being adopted more universally. Which is what I was referring to being unlikely.
- tablewatcher 11y agoThere is no way back to fiat from cryptoCurrencies. They work 24/7 with minimal overheads. Technology has disintermediated a lot of other industries, why do you think it wont do so for banking (other than your cultural beliefs)?
- zby 11y agoBy the way I recommend the essays by Szabo: http://szabo.best.vwh.net/ http://szabo.best.vwh.net/ ! Also his blog: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/ http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/
- ChrisArchitect 11y agoso much William Gibson in the Bitcoin mystery
- archenemy 11y agoso... it would be a ploy by an early version of Winterm.. I mean IBM's Watson, who is using bitcoin-laundered money to bootstrap itself into a weird-art-making godlike IA?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pat2man 11y agoSame with gold, etc. You could simply store your bitcoin in a "bank" like Coinbase and they would secure your bitcoin for you.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- lisper 11y ago> Same with gold Not quite. Gold imposes physical constraints and attendant risks that bitcoin doesn't: gold is heavy, and you have to store it someplace physical. If the location of your hiding place is discovered, it's hard to move. And you have to be physically present to accept the initial delivery. None of these are true for bitcoin. For the kidnapping scenario you still have to take physical risks, but once that is accomplished the extortion itself can be conducted form the comfort of your living room, wherever that may happen to be.
- jonknee 11y agoGold is heavy, but not traceable (at least with a little bit of effort--melt it down and re-cast, you'll never trace it!). You wouldn't be able to do anything with Satoshi's stolen BTC.
- Amezarak 11y ago> If a kidnapper knew of Nick's whereabouts, he could be tortured for days in the privacy of his own home before finally giving up the $200MM. This hypothetical kidnapper could do exactly the same thing to anyone. Bitcoin is not a necessary component. The details of how he carried it out would just differ. Either way, torturing a semi-public figure for days in his own home and then stealing $200 million worth of Bitcoins sounds like a guaranteed way to get caught and go to prison, unless nobody would notice him missing (I suppose he'll have to kill him, too) and the thief never, ever sells the Bitcoins. This hypothetical kidnapper doesn't need to track down Szabo, he could go after any rich person and extort them.
- vectorpush 11y agoIt seems odd to me that many bitcoin supporters consider Satoshi's pre-mined coins to be a personal security risk (to the tune of $200 million), but simultaneously refuse to hold that fact against bitcoin even though "pre-mined" is a common pejorative used to criticize altcoins.
- Buge 11y agoWhen used as a pejorative, it means coins that were mined before releasing the mining client to the world. Satoshi only started mining after releasing the client, so those coins are not really pre-mined.
- vectorpush 11y agoThat's a fair point, but it doesn't seem like there's much of a practical difference in terms of user apprehension related to the consequences of pre-mining (namely, that the creator controls a gigantic sum of coins at close to zero cost)
- kinghajj 11y agoIt's a problem of fairness. Satoshi released Bitcoin publicly and only then began mining coins, just like everyone else was potentially able to do. It's hard to begrudge him from using his own invention, after all! Whereas pre-mined cryptocurrencies make others feel cheated.
- vectorpush 11y agoI understand the fairness argument, but I wonder where the line is drawn between pre-mine and low-key release. Just releasing the client doesn't seem like it'd be enough to evade criticism if the practical effect is the same as a pre-mine (i.e the creator gets a huge head start before people start to catch on).
- tablewatcher 11y ago
- gwern 11y agoReddit discussion, with some criticism of specific points & replies by the author: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/361niw/decoding_the_enigma_of_satoshi_nakamoto_and_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/361niw/decoding_th...
- nqureshi 11y ago>> "That item, in May 2011, was one of the last posts Mr. Szabo made before he went on a lengthy hiatus to work, he said later, on a new concept he called temporal programming." Anyone know what 'temporal programming' refers to? Sounds intriguing.
- drcode 11y agoEerie how the the linked message from his cypherpunk days makes reference to a "Digital Silk Road" http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/08/msg00426.html http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/08/msg00426.html
- loma7 11y agoEveryone in the know, knows it was Kaiser Sozay and Kobayashi who started Bitcoin.
- bandris 11y agoIf you would like to pronounce Szabo, saying 'sawbow' is close enough. (Sz is a letter in Hungarian, pronounced as S in English.) IPA: /ˈsɒboː/ http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Szab%C3%B3 http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Szab%C3%B3
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoit's more like 'sah-boh'