[HN Gopher] Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin'...
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Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
https://archive.is/iRBng
Author : jfirebaugh
Score : 399 points
Date : 2026-04-08 04:37 UTC (1 days ago)
HTML web link (www.nytimes.com)
TEXT w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| xvxvx wrote:
| He's not one person but a front for a US law enforcement task
| force dedicated to tracking down cyber criminals and anyone who
| would need anonymity online. It started, alongside TOR, as a way
| for drug dealers, weapons dealers, and pedophiles to do business.
| Neither cryptocurrency nor TOR are actually anonymous. They're
| part of a pretty impressive honeypot ecosystem.
|
| What I'm interested in is the pivot when crypto tried to go
| legit. Some spook or suit decided that it would be used for other
| reasons also. Now it has some semblance of legitimacy.
|
| Before anyone asks: social media is another part of the same
| ecosystem. Nurtured and protected by the government and law
| enforcement, despite any number of practices that would bankrupt
| most companies and sent people to jail.
| someperson wrote:
| The FBI created the purportedly encrypted "AN0M" messaging app
| [1] as part of a sting operation running between 2018-2021 used
| to catch drug-traffickers.
|
| Creating a fake app that people believe is secure or anonymous
| is an easier way to run a police sting operation than first
| making a significant breakthrough in Distributed Systems around
| the Byzantine Generals Problem.
|
| For your conspiracy theory to be true, at some point a
| honeypot/sting operation must actually end and arrests be made
| and the evidence be used in court.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield
| jahnu wrote:
| Would make a good tv show where a small group in a secretive
| TLA org started this but then made so much money they decided
| to keep it to themselves and get rich.
|
| "Sorry director, the experimental project was a failure. We
| deleted it all now to clean up and free resources. Oh and
| yeah unrelated, I need to hand in my notice. Want to spend
| more time with my ...er... family. Thanks."
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| People who've seen what the nation state can do to those
| who draw it's ire don't do such things.
|
| But other than that it would make a good show.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| That's my theory as well, but not just to catch digital
| criminals, but it's a test bed for the digital wallet / ID
|
| I don't think it's exclusively american tho, it's a consortium
| between US/EU/ASIA, to establish the foundation of the world
| government, digital first
| Lammy wrote:
| It also locks us all down to just the computers that are in our
| possession and the big tech silos, because now nobody can offer
| any computer resources free to the public without crypto miners
| immediately getting dropped on them. Even GitHub Actions got
| used this way, for example. Now every-goddamn-thing is sign up,
| log in, Know Your Customer, show us your ID, move your head
| like the arrows on screen, enter the digits from your
| authenticator app, check your email for the unique code.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| > I'd learned enough by then to know that P.G.P. relies on
| public-key cryptography.
|
| > So does Bitcoin. A Bitcoin user has two keys: a public key,
| from which an address is derived that acts as a digital safe
| deposit box; and a private key, which is the secret combination
| used to unlock that box and spend the coins it contains.
|
| > How interesting, I thought, that Mr. Back's grad-school hobby
| involved the same cryptographic technique that Satoshi had
| repurposed.
|
| I read up to here, but I wasn't convinced that this is the
| revelation that the author claims. To my knowledge, asymmetric
| cryptography is widely used. I have no opinions on the rest of
| the article, though.
| kgeist wrote:
| >I read up to here, but I wasn't convinced that this is the
| revelation that the author claims
|
| The rest of the arguments is as weak:
|
| 1) both released open-source software
|
| 2) both don't like spam
|
| 3) both like using pseudonyms online
|
| 4) both love freedom
|
| 5) both are anti-copyright
|
| etc.
|
| Basically, the author found that Adam Back used the same words
| on X as Satoshi did in some emails (including such rare words
| as "dang," "backup," and "abandonware") and then decided to
| find every possible "link" they could to build the case, even
| if most of the links are along the lines of "Both are humans!
| Coincidence? I think not."
| tovej wrote:
| I think this misses the point. The point is that interests
| and writing style matches, which means there's a higher
| chance they are the same person.
|
| The more similarities you find, the closer the match. It's in
| no way proof, of course. But it does provide good reason to
| look closer
| rcxdude wrote:
| Only if those similarities are indicating more than
| 'generic internet hacker' for both of them. You only need
| 23 bits to identify a person but those are 23
| _uncorrelated_ bits, and all the 'similarities' presented
| here are extremely strongly correlated with themselves.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Where are you getting 23 from? That's only 8-ish million
| values max.
| bnjemian wrote:
| Suspect it's a typo. 33, not 23, gives ~8.6*10^9.
| rcxdude wrote:
| D'oh, yeah.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Probably used logn not log2. >>>
| math.log(8_000_000_000) 22.80270737862625
| defrost wrote:
| Similarities in style and word were common enough in small
| circles such as the cyphyrpunks that spawned those
| discussions.
|
| Then there's not altogether unlikely chance that Satoshi is
| a nodding homage to Nicolas Bourbaki, each contributor
| holding part of a multiparty voting key.
| alwa wrote:
| The interests and writing style differentiate Mr. (Dr.?)
| Back from the general public, sure. But from what I'm
| reading, they don't do a great job of distinguishing
| _between_ 90s hackers.
|
| "Get this, his PhD thesis dealt with a computer language
| called C++, _just like Bitcoin papers used_ " seems both
| confused and impossibly lazy to me.
|
| > _"Scrap patents and copyright," Mr. Back wrote in
| September 1997._
|
| > _Satoshi did a similar thing. He released the Bitcoin
| software under M.I.T.'s open-source license_
|
| Really?
|
| Like saying "get this, his college-aged musical interests
| included the Urban American musical style known as 'Hip
| Hop'; therefore Tupac didn't really die and _this is him_."
| Heavy on insinuation, light on seriousness. Strong
| "...you're not from around here, are you?" vibes.
|
| What does this kind of journalism hope to accomplish,
| anyway? Beyond bothering middle-aged nerds for gossip? And
| providing a frame for the author's cute little sleuth jape?
|
| "Good reason to look closer" assumes there's good reason to
| pick through ancient rubble in the first place.
| freejazz wrote:
| Did you read most of the article or what?
| alwa wrote:
| All 12,000 words. Kept expecting it to take a turn toward
| something beyond pre-judgment and insinuation. Instead it
| unfolded as a cautionary tale, of the power of a
| premature conclusion to close an investigator's mind to
| reasonable alternative possibilities. About escalating
| commitment to an early hunch, even as it leads you down
| an investigative dead end.
|
| For example it sure seems like his mountain of
| circumstantial evidence fits better with the theory that
| "Satoshi" could be a pen name for a small group of people
| --maybe even the small group whose history he traces and
| whose styles he has trouble teasing apart--rather than
| one "suspect" (as he calls it). But we don't even really
| weigh that possibility seriously.
|
| So, like--why are we coming at this one guy by name and
| spooky hacker photo in the New York Times, with the
| suggestion that he has $110 billion under his mattress?
| All these speculations and arguments have been done over
| and over--what does this reporting add that's worth
| 12,000 words?
|
| The colorful journey down a dead end, fine--but leave it
| at "My Quest," don't do the weasel subhed "the trail of
| clues [...] led to Adam Back" to insinuate that it proved
| what it set out to prove. Or even added anything
| significant to the well-trodden record.
| DeliciousSeaCow wrote:
| It's weird they spent so much time on the written word
| similarities, when the biggest reveal here is that Back
| disappears off the email lists (on a topic he is VERY
| interested in and has historically corresponded on) when
| Nakamoto appears, and then comes back when Nakamoto
| disappears.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Befitting a writer, though.
| refulgentis wrote:
| That's the weak evidence. Nobody cares that they both like
| open source and freedom, half the cypherpunks list fits that.
|
| The parts worth engaging with: Back described a system
| combining Hashcash and b-money with inflation adjustment and
| public timestamping on the cypherpunks list between
| 1997-1999. That's basically Bitcoin's architecture, a decade
| early. He was one of the most prolific digital cash posters
| for years, went silent when Satoshi appeared, came back when
| Satoshi left. And this person who independently arrived at
| the same technical design also independently landed on the
| same Napster vs Gnutella analogy, the same celebrity email
| filtering idea, and the same FDR gold ban trivia.
|
| Any one of these is a coincidence. At some point you have to
| ask how many you need before the simpler explanation wins.
| bobbiechen wrote:
| This article is a great example of "strong + weak = weak".
|
| I only made it to the interesting stuff because of
| Carreyou's name, otherwise I would have stopped.
|
| The email timing and lack of email metadata were also
| strong, in my opinion. But all of this nonsense like "Wow,
| these guys both talk about PGP??" distracts from it.
| vidarh wrote:
| All of those similarities can be explained by Satoshi
| having read what Back wrote.
| refulgentis wrote:
| You need someone who read Back's obscure 1997-1999
| cypherpunks posts about combining Hashcash and b-money,
| implemented exactly that system a decade later,
| independently came up with the same non-technical
| analogies and trivia, wrote with the same hyphenation
| errors, and then happened to be active during the exact
| window Back went silent. The more you flesh out the
| "someone who read Back" profile, the more it just sounds
| like Back.
| vidarh wrote:
| Someone who has read his material would be likely to
| _repeat_ the same analogies and trivia.
|
| As for the hyphen errors, they are common for people for
| whom English is their second language. I commit hyphen
| errors similar to what is described _all the time_
| because English hyphenation makes absolutely no sense. In
| fact, reading the list of examples, the mistakes listed
| makes more sense to me than the correct way of writing
| those.
|
| I _also_ switch back and forth on a lot of the phrases
| the article mentions.
|
| I _also_ switch back and forth between US and UK
| spelling, because I learned UK spelling at school, but
| was far more exposed to US spelling in practice.
|
| This seems to me to be exceedingly weak.
| refulgentis wrote:
| At some point "Satoshi was a devoted reader of obscure
| 1997 Adam Back mailing list posts who shares his
| hyphenation errors, his Napster vs Gnutella analogy, his
| celebrity email filtering idea, his FDR gold ban
| interest, his 'burning the money' metaphor, his 'Achilles
| heel' description of DigiCash, his 'better with code than
| words' self-assessment, his energy-vs-banking defense,
| his British spellings mixed with American ones, his
| double-spacing habit, his it's/its confusion, his
| sentence-final 'also' tic, his 'proof-of-work'
| hyphenation, his WebMoney references, and who went active
| the exact week Back went silent" is just a longer way of
| saying it's Adam Back.
|
| I'm not sure I agree with that, but it's what I came up
| with after challenging myself to read the article in toto
| again and note 1 by 1.
|
| It's clear it's beyond a couple tics everyone has, and
| when you combine that with the starting set being ~500
| instead of "all 8 billion people on earth", well, it's
| worth mentioning.
| grog454 wrote:
| Where does your 500 come from? Why can't Satoshi be
| someone who simply had no deanonymized online presence?
| dboreham wrote:
| It's been extremely widely known that whoever created
| Bitcoin had a strong interest in Hashcash, and perhaps
| created that or worked on it, for years and years. If
| that's the only smoking gun, why didn't we identify Satoshi
| long ago?
| refulgentis wrote:
| You're right, "interested in Hashcash" describes dozens
| of people, and has been a known Satoshi filter for years.
|
| The new claim is more specific: between 1997-1999, Back
| proposed combining Hashcash with b-money, adding
| inflation adjustment via increasing computational
| difficulty, and using hash trees for public timestamping.
|
| That's most of Bitcoin's architecture in one package, a
| decade early.
|
| The number of people who proposed that particular
| combination of ideas is much smaller than the number who
| were merely interested in Hashcash.
| backscratches wrote:
| In every parallel universe where a different person
| invents bitcoin, every single one is familiar with becks
| ideas from a decade earlier.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I remember having conversations with my brother about
| Hashcash at the time. There were plenty of nerds that
| followed that mailing list that had similar technical and
| political ideas, so I think you'd find a high number of
| coincidences within an audience that I'd guess was a small
| multiple of the number of people active on the cypherpunks
| list. There definitely were a lot of people at my brother's
| college discussing the same ideas.
|
| FWIW my brother did his own bit of Satoshi hunting with
| coworkers at his hedge fund. They didn't come to a strong
| answer but my brother believed Nick Szabo was probably part
| of a group that helped edit the paper. He suspected Hal
| Finney was involved similarly at a minimum.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I use "dang" as a nod to Gary Larson.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Yep, As fans of Larson's The Far Side, probably every
| American and Americo-phile computer geek and cypherpunk used
| 'dang'
|
| Same goes for the rest of your list.
| adastra22 wrote:
| TIL I am Satoshi.
| discmonkey wrote:
| I got about two sentences further, it turns out another smoking
| gun is Mr. Back using c++ in his graduate studies, just like
| the original bitcoin implementation.
| vidarh wrote:
| Yeah, based on the list of interests, I guess I've been
| Satoshi all this time and didn't know it. A shame my memory
| must have been wiped as I'd quite like all of those bitcoins.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I quit here too. This article is an embarrassment that should
| never have passed the editorial process.
| danso wrote:
| I don't blame you for this initial reaction, which would have
| been mine too had I not known who the author was. I don't mean
| that I automatically trust anything published by the reporter
| who busted Theranos (and won two Pulitzers for _other_ major
| investigations). But I do mean that if John Carreyrou and his
| editors decided to publish something this long, that means they
| (and they 're lawyers) are willing to die on this hill, no
| matter how meandering the first paragraphs of his 1st-person
| narrative.
|
| Since the story doesn't end with: "And then Adam Back bowed his
| head and said, 'You have found me, Satoshi'", I'm guessing they
| preferred to go for the softer "how we did this story" first-
| person narrative. There is no explicit smoking gun, like an
| official document or eyewitness who asserts Satoshi's identity.
| But the circumstantial and technical evidence is quite
| thorough, to the point where the most likeliest conclusions
| are:
|
| 1. Adam Back is Satoshi
|
| 2. Satoshi is someone who is either a close friend or frenemy
| of Back, and deliberately chose to leave a obfuscated trail
| that correlates with Back's persona and personal timeline.
| trgn wrote:
| wrt (2) that is if satoshi had the foresight btc would ever
| blow up in the way it did. obviously, he had some intuition,
| remaining anonymous, but deliberately creating a fake trail
| does not seem super plausible to me
| icelancer wrote:
| All of us "olds" had this as a hobby. Or used it regularly.
|
| Just a bunch of weird stuff in this article.
| vintermann wrote:
| You can't sell books or articles from saying something that's
| been said before, but Nick Szabo remains the best Satoshi
| candidate by a mile.
|
| He had developed the system closest to Bitcoin, he was actively
| seeking collaborators to turn his system into a practical
| offering briefly before Bitcoin was released, and he was the only
| cipherpunk who conspicuously said very little when the system
| he'd been trying to realize for a decade suddenly appeared.
| Satoshi credited all his inspirations except for the most obvious
| one, Szabo's. No one in the cipherpunks mailing list thought any
| of this was odd, probably because it was obvious to them who
| Satoshi was.
|
| In contrast to a certain convicted Australian fraudster who got
| caught trying to backdate his statements, Szabo got caught trying
| to _front_ -date them. His politics are a match to Satoshi (tbf.
| true of all the cipherpunks), his coding style matches Satoshi,
| his writing style matches Satoshi if you disable the British
| English spellchecker. For good measure his initials match
| Satoshi.
|
| I view articles like these as a good test of which investigative
| journalists are hacks indifferent to the truth - except for that
| Wired guy, who I think knows better but thinks it's righteous to
| lie a little to protect Satoshi's anonymity.
| triage8004 wrote:
| Szabo is definitely top 3 candidates or on team
| chistev wrote:
| > In contrast to a certain convicted Australian fraudster who
| got caught trying to backdate his statements,
|
| Who?
| greazy wrote:
| This embarrassing wanker
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-28/craig-wright-not-
| sato...
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Nick Szabo doesn't know how to program enough to deliver the
| original bitcoin source code.
| vintermann wrote:
| We know he - Szabo, whether Satoshi or not - asked for help
| in realizing something a lot like Bitcoin, a short time
| before Bitcoin appeared. I don't rule out that he could have
| had some help with the coding.
|
| But I've also not seen anything suggesting he wasn't good
| enough of a coder to make it himself. He has a bachelor's
| degree in computer science.
| tim333 wrote:
| He probably worked with Finney who helped out.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts down to the indictment of the thought
| process of a top investigative journalist. The amount of tunnel
| vision here, that dismisses Szabo based on a tweet of wanting
| to understand developments in core 10 years later? In all this
| writing, there's not a hint of investigation into every damning
| link to Szabo, including the IP leak which was simply dismissed
| as "dead end". Carreyrou is flying across the world to finally
| get a weak slip in speech he thinks finally implicates Back,
| meanwhile Szabo already slipped up in speech years ago for
| anyone to find.
|
| Incredible gell-mann reminder for reporting...
| danso wrote:
| > _No one in the cipherpunks mailing list thought any of this
| was odd, probably because it was obvious to them who Satoshi
| was._
|
| If dozens of people affiliated on a mailing list knew that
| Sbazo was Satoshi is a decade ago, would't his identity be
| treated as an open secret by now?
| tim333 wrote:
| I think a lot of people in the know assume it's Szabo but are
| happy to let the waters be muddy to give some privacy.
| donkeylazy456 wrote:
| another pointless debate. who cares who satoshi is. only TV and
| magazines.
| jmkni wrote:
| Who doesn't like a good mystery?
| themafia wrote:
| I don't. It's a tool used by modern "journalism" to distract
| and detract from a story. If you have something reliable to
| report, then by all means, report it. If all you have is a
| "compelling narrative" then put it on the shelf and do NOT
| waste my time with it.
|
| If you can't manage that then publish fiction books.
| ghost-of-dmr wrote:
| You already wasted your time bringing yourself into the
| conversation.
| themafia wrote:
| Why? You've expressed no more meaningful of a position
| than I have. Perhaps you're confused as to the purpose of
| a "forum?"
| donkeylazy456 wrote:
| I like good mysteries too but satoshi mystery articles come
| out with same thing everytime.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Non-paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/business/bitcoin-
| satoshi-...
| triage8004 wrote:
| Hal Finney
| chistev wrote:
| If Satoshi is still alive (I believe it's a single guy), then
| it's incredible the amount of self-control he has to not reveal
| his identity after all these years. Not needing the wealth or the
| fame and ego-stroking that comes with being behind such a
| revolutionary technology is enviable.
|
| Not many people are like that.
|
| If he is still alive and just moved on to other things as he
| said, I can't applaud that kind of personality enough.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| If I were Satoshi I'd keep my head down. I wouldn't want my
| life f-d up by outing myself.
|
| Think about the kind of world view you need to have to decide
| to dedicate the necessary time to develop a system for
| transacting outside of approved channels. Dude's probably
| worried about polonium finding its way into his tea or
| whatever.
|
| Assuming he is even an individual.
| chistev wrote:
| What would killing him achieve? The Bitcoin technology is out
| of his control.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| You probably won't get killed, but of course you might by
| someone looking to make a point, in any case your life is
| gonna get turned upside down, various interests are going
| to want you to do things for them, people will want to hire
| you to say things or confer them legitimacy, people will
| want you to opine on things, etc.
|
| If you're in a nice enough place to dedicate the time to a
| project like Bitcoin is that something you really need? If
| you have sufficient frame of mind to develop Bitcoin that's
| probably not something you want in the first place.
| chistev wrote:
| Good point
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| "Hit him with this $5 wrench until he tells us his
| passphrase." Which he has likely forgotten or lost.
| GJim wrote:
| > Not needing the wealth or the fame and ego-stroking that
| comes with being behind such a revolutionary technology is
| enviable.
|
| I can only assume you haven't met very many engineers!
| chistev wrote:
| I haven't.
| ghost-of-dmr wrote:
| Plenty of them on HN.
| bcjdjsndon wrote:
| I've met plenty of engineers with egos
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| What if he is already very wealthy and very famous ... and
| knows there is no upside for Bitcoin if they disclose it.
| chistev wrote:
| Wealthy people are notorious for having a ravenous desire for
| more wealth... It's often the mindset that made them wealthy
| in the first place - unless they inherited it, and even then.
| eddiewithzato wrote:
| Like a certain Adam Back
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| Or Jack Dorsey.
|
| https://x.com/financeguy74/status/1890850549035110558
|
| https://x.com/matthew_sigel/status/1891852538376487327
| cameldrv wrote:
| One factor is that it's known that he controls the wallet with
| many billions of dollars in it. That would make him a target
| for kidnapping/extortion/etc. He could have easily kept mining
| under a different address though and become very wealthy aside
| from the main wallet.
| manarth wrote:
| https://archive.is/iRBng
| nickvec wrote:
| thank you!
| instagraham wrote:
| I don't think this reveals Satoshi's identity, nor that any prior
| piece of reporting may have done so. But I do think there's a
| high probability that Satoshi lurks or has lurked on HN, and
| perhaps reads these posts with an initial sense of apprehension
| followed by a chuckle at the inevitable misidentification.
| szmarczak wrote:
| > misidentification
|
| We don't know if that's misidentification either. The author
| provides good evidence that the writing style matches, which
| doesn't provide a strong proof, however it's a good clue of who
| might it be.
| gertop wrote:
| I'm surprised that this is the best NYT investigative journalism
| could do. It's well written and comprehensive, but it also
| contains no new information.
|
| And I truly mean it, all the proofs listed here are so well known
| that you're likely to learn just as much by watching one of the
| hundreds of "Adam is Satoshi!!1" YouTube videos.
|
| Given the title (a quest!) I would have expected some personal
| findings to be added to the shared narrative, not just rehash of
| the first 2 pages of a Google search.
| hnsdev wrote:
| Particularly I believe that Satoshi Nakamoto is a nation-state
| who created Bitcoin to bypass sanctions. Simple as that.
| exabrial wrote:
| I've subscribed to the nation-state theory as well, but
| intentions unknown.
| Jackpillar wrote:
| It was the CIA and anyone who aren't starry eyed tech dorks has
| known this forever
| Aboutplants wrote:
| Occam's razor in this case is most likely true
| hatthew wrote:
| Isn't occam's razor that he's just some guy who doesn't
| like being famous
| newsclues wrote:
| The skills would be at the NSA for this project
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I tend to think this, too. Or rather a small group of
| cryptographers working for a nation-state. It's the only way to
| make sense of the fact that Satoshi is enormously wealthy. I
| don't think any individual could sit on this kind of wealth and
| not cash out visibly.
| arcxi wrote:
| Satoshi may also be unable to cash out simply because they
| are dead.
| arctic-true wrote:
| I tend to agree, but for the sake of argument: it's possible
| that he's such a true believer that he'd see cashing out as a
| betrayal. Alternatively, he might understand that cashing out
| would significantly aid the (clearly large number of) people
| engaged in unmasking him. Further, he may simply realize that
| liquidating holdings of his size would drastically alter the
| market in ways that could end with the whole thing coming
| apart.
| empath75 wrote:
| Keep in mind that he could not have cashed out his tokens in
| the early days without destroying the whole project and by
| the time btc was valuable and liquid enough for him to sell,
| he would have already been wealthy from blockstream (if this
| is really him) and wouldn't need the money. What would he do
| with it? buy gold, real estate, tbills? What asset would he
| ever put the money into that he would think is better than
| bitcoin?
| lancewiggs wrote:
| I like it. In particular the descriptions of how he reacted when
| confronted. The public key anecdote is a red herring - there is
| far more convincing evidence in the article.
| jmkni wrote:
| I can't get past the fact that Hal Finney lived around the corner
| from someone called " Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto"
|
| I know coincidences happen but that's one hell of a coincidence
| DeliciousSeaCow wrote:
| Given Back and Finney's close-ish relationship, that same fact
| could have permeated to Back, and would be a further reason for
| him to use the name. That said, it's all pure speculation so
| :shrug:?.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Is it a coincidence? Or is it really bad opsec from someone who
| was otherwise pretty good at it? Or was it really good opsec
| and someone wanted to plant little clues that it was finney?
| levocardia wrote:
| Yeah this one seems absolutely insane, how many Satoshi
| Nakamotos are there in the world? It's very plausible to see
| the name on a mailbox (or meet the person) and think "that'd be
| a cool handle." And it's so wildly improbable that _someone
| else_ would make up exactly the name of a neighbor of one of a
| small clique of obscure internet cypherpunks. It 's not like
| the name was "John Smith" or anything.
|
| But I don't know how to square that with the "Finney was
| running a marathon while satoshi sent emails" claim.
| raphlinus wrote:
| I found this article about as compelling as all the other
| attempts at identifying him. Half of the cypherpunks (I was
| pretty active) had the same set of interests in public key
| cryptography, libertarianism, anonymity, criticism of copyright,
| and predecessor systems like Chaum's ecash; we talked about those
| in virtually every meeting.
|
| The most compelling evidence is Adam Back's body language, as
| subjectively observed by a reporter who is clearly in love with
| his own story. The stylometry also struck me as a form of
| p-hacking--keep re-rolling the methodology until you get the
| answer you want.
|
| It's entirely possible Adam is Satoshi, but in my opinion this
| article moves us no closer to knowing whether that's true or not.
| He's been on everybody's top 5 list for years, and this article
| provides no actual evidence that hasn't been seen before.
| lumirth wrote:
| What struck me in particular was the fact the reporter noticed
| that Back had theorized how to evade stylometry. Obviously, if
| one of the people in question had specifically come up with
| ways to evade methods, you'd want to re-roll those methods to
| account for that.
|
| That, alongside a number of other tidbits (Back's activity and
| inactivity patterns lining up with Satoshi's appearance and
| disappearance, his refusal to provide email metadata, his
| financial incentive to hide his identity as Satoshi under US
| securities law) makes the case a lot more meaningful than just
| "likely p-hacking."
| Lerc wrote:
| > _his financial incentive to hide his identity as Satoshi
| under US securities law_
|
| I don't think you can attribute this to financial incentive.
| The actual Satoshi could forfeit 90% of their BTC and still
| have more than they could know what to do with.
|
| At those kinds of levels I can see personal security being a
| higher consideration.
|
| Either way it would give no indication who might be Satoshi
| because all candidates would have a similar incentive if they
| were Satoshi, and you are measuring the absence of
| information.
| philistine wrote:
| why does everybody assume that whoever is Satoshi still has
| access to their wallet? It's absolutely possible whoever is
| Satoshi has simply lost the key.
|
| We're talking new technology where you're running fast and
| loose. It's absolutely possible, and I'd say a big reason
| why someone would not want to admit to being Satoshi.
|
| _I 'm Satoshi, but I also lost billions because I messed
| up a Debian upgrade_.
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| Or what if Satoshi deliberately destroyed their key?
|
| The motivations behind Bitcoin were clear.
|
| All the wealthy people I know don't really do it for the
| money. The money is the gauge or the metric they use to
| judge how well they are playing the game but what
| motivates them is the love of the game and their sense of
| purpose.
|
| If someone was to truly believe that Bitcoin was going to
| be a gold/USD/Eurodollar/swift etc. replacement then
| their metric of success isn't money if they got in early.
| prawn wrote:
| Further, no one would believe them, and they'd still
| endlessly be a target for criminals. No benefit to
| revealing any information beyond mild dismissals, IMO.
| ctippett wrote:
| I commented elsewhere in this thread theorising that
| Satoshi could be the work of both Finney and Back. If
| that has any basis in reality, then it stands to reason
| that perhaps the wallet is locked away in a trust or at
| least legally unobtainable until certain conditions are
| met (e.g. Adam Back's passing). I can imagine a scenario
| in the future where a law firm makes a press release
| confirming they're in possession of Satoshi's wallet and
| have been instructed to liquidate and donate its
| proceeds.
| pdntspa wrote:
| For that wealth to mean anything he has to withdraw from
| it, and wouldn't that produce a paper trail?
|
| Apologies if its mentioned in TFA, I only got halfway
| through it... the author's self-indulgence was getting to
| be a bit much
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > What struck me in particular was the fact the reporter
| noticed that Back had theorized how to evade stylometry.
|
| there are automated tools for this now that students use
| routinely so that their papers don't get flagged as AI
| whether they wrote it or not
|
| there would be lots of people that looked this up as it has
| been discussed a lot on those same mailing lists before being
| so commonplace
| eddiewithzato wrote:
| Also Back's response on X was very telling
| apeace wrote:
| The body language thing really bothers me.
|
| Personally, if someone accuses me of lying, but I am actually
| telling the truth, I immediately start acting like a liar. It's
| really embarrassing and hard to explain. I can't believe such a
| seasoned reporter is leaning so hard on "his face went red."
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Yea pretty similar idea to a polygraph test which for years
| was called a "lie detector."
|
| In reality, they measure a bunch of things that may indicate
| lying, but they are just as likely to indicate that a person
| is nervous or reacting to the fact they're being tested at
| all.
|
| They're typically inadmissible in court these days, however,
| there is still a pretty solid amount of blind trust in their
| results.
|
| That part of the article gives a similar "lie detecting"
| hypothesis, just without the machine.
| vidarh wrote:
| In fact, we are _incredibly bad_ at telling lies from the
| body language of people we don 't know well. Pretty much all
| the "well known" tells are sheer and utter bullshit that at
| best tells you if a person is _stressed_. That may or may not
| mean they are lying, but unless you know that person well
| enough to know if they have specific tells that correlates
| with lying _for them_ , your odds are poor.
| windowliker wrote:
| What's also worth noting is that they were not alone in the
| room, talking privately. Everything being said could
| presumably be heard by Back's business associates as well.
| Some of the questions could well be enough to cause
| embarrassment or unease on that account.
| ufmace wrote:
| It did make me think - if he seems nervous under this
| questioning, it could be because he's actually Satoshi. Or it
| could also be because he's thinking something like, oh god,
| if this jerkoff convinces a bunch of people I'm actually
| Satoshi, all of the businesses I've worked so hard to found
| will collapse, I might be convicted of crimes around lying
| about it while founding these businesses, I might get
| targeted by any number of criminal gangs or even nation-
| states who will do all kinds of torture to me and my loved
| ones and will never believe that I'm not actually Satoshi and
| don't really have a secret stash of a bazillion Bitcoins.
|
| Naturally, this journalist doesn't seem to care much about
| any of that, or that it wouldn't really change anything at
| this point besides making the life of whoever it actually is
| hell.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Just a shot in the dark but any chance you grew up in an
| intensely religious household?
|
| I grew up evangelical and I've noticed this tendency in
| myself, and saw the connection to how the authorities at my
| school or church basically demanded dishonest performances or
| apologies under threat of physical punishment. Several
| friends over the years have said roughly the same, so I have
| an armchair theory this is pretty prevalent for that sort of
| childhood.
| archagon wrote:
| Same set of interests? Clearly Raph is Satoshi.
| archagon wrote:
| (Sorry, this was a joke, not a snipe.)
| empath75 wrote:
| I actually think the most compelling evidence is the fact that
| he was one of the first people to get rich from it, which also
| explains why he never had to touch his vault of coins.
| n0um3n4 wrote:
| Len Sassaman with contributions from others through time. We
| already know that.
| djao wrote:
| The refusal to provide email metadata is the most damning
| evidence. Adam Back clearly has the emails; he is the one who
| provided them in the first place during the previous court case.
| Everyone knows he has the emails. If Adam Back and Satoshi are
| two different people, the metadata should be exculpatory, and
| easy to share. There's literally no reason whatsoever to hide the
| metadata unless he is the one.
|
| In a court of law, self-disclosure of inculpatory information
| cannot be compelled, so this analysis does not pass muster in a
| court of law. The court of public opinion, however, is quite
| different.
| ShowalkKama wrote:
| >There's literally no reason whatsoever to hide the metadata
| unless he is the one.
|
| privacy?
| neffy wrote:
| Time? He's busy starting a company, taking the time to drag
| out decade old emails and digging out the meta data for a
| journalist who is borderline stalking (assuming he even has
| them somewhere). I wouldn't give that the time of day either.
| djao wrote:
| If privacy were such a big concern, then why did he release
| the messages (without metadata) in the first place? Wouldn't
| it be more appropriate to keep the messages completely
| private?
| ianferrel wrote:
| The thing is, most of the people heavily involved in early
| Bitcoin are fairly characterized as cryptoanarchists, a group
| strongly devoted to the principle of privacy and liberty
| effected through technological means.
|
| The refusal to provide personal communications metadata by such
| a person is evidence of nothing but their steadfast commitment
| to the philosophy that presented them with the opportunity to
| be part of those email conversations in the first place.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Then again, if I weren't Satoshi, but people suspected that I
| was, I'd be willing to do just about anything to prove that
| it's not me. No one in their right mind would want that kind
| of target on their back.
|
| Satoshi is either dead, or he lost his keys and probably
| wishes he were.
| argsnd wrote:
| Supposing it is Adam Back, and supposing he lost his keys,
| he's still worth at least nine figures and is one of the
| most influential figures in the field he's devoted his life
| to. Why would he wish he was dead?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| "Nine figures isn't cool. You know what's cool? _Eleven_
| figures. "
|
| That aside, I don't agree with the premise. Back might be
| Satoshi, but there's nowhere near enough evidence in
| Carreyrou's article to reach that conclusion. He should
| have run it by some other veteran figures in the crypto
| community, so they could point out how quotidian some of
| the language and tropes being cited really are.
| eddiewithzato wrote:
| it's simply that Back has nothing to gain to claim to be
| Satoshi. It would make bitcoin a lot more volatile. He even
| said just now
|
| > I also don't know who satoshi is, and i think it is good
| for bitcoin that this is the case, as it helps bitcoin be
| viewed a new asset class, the mathematically scarce digital
| commodity.
|
| That's as close to admitting it as you can get
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Point being, he has a lot to lose if people think he IS
| Satoshi.
|
| I would be coughing up those email headers if I were him.
| Or forging some, if necessary.
| icelancer wrote:
| Handing over email metadata, or whatever your interrogator
| wants from you, will only cause them to shift the
| goalposts, or find something they want to find in the
| metadata even if it exonerates you.
|
| There is no reason to cooperate with journalists with a
| slant.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I tend to agree with you, to be honest. Seems fairly
| clear that Carreyrou was going to conclude that Back is
| Satoshi, come hell or high water.
|
| Kind of a disappointing piece of work from the guy who
| took down Theranos. His journalistic talents are _sorely_
| needed elsewhere right now.
| vzaliva wrote:
| What would it show? If he logged in to Santoshi's email account
| and sent an email to his personal account, the metadata would
| be in order, and we would learn little from it.
| djao wrote:
| You have it backwards. The fact that he _doesn 't_ release
| the metadata is interesting. If he had released the metadata,
| it would be wholly uninteresting.
|
| I don't think the emails exist. What was published in court
| records, lacking metadata, could easily be forged. The
| metadata is harder to forge. Not impossible, but harder,
| especially long after the fact.
| nullc wrote:
| The author didn't make a serious effort to obtain the email
| metadata. The email w/ metadata has previously been part of
| litigation, -- if it indicated that Adam was Satoshi it would
| have come up.
|
| Adam has no reason to further fuck up Satoshi's privacy by
| sharing private information. But I can get how people who see
| no issue invading Adam's and Satoshi's privacy would have no
| concept as to why someone wouldn't publish it.
| leroy_masochist wrote:
| Regardless of whether Carreyrou is right, Mr. Back's life has now
| changed massively. The article points out that the market value
| of Satoshi's wallet is north of $100bn. Time to invest in some
| personal security.
| sonofaplum wrote:
| He was already the CEO of a billion dollar company and the
| article describes him traveling with security.
| nullc wrote:
| Yet another example of how the article failed to do basic
| research.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Blockstream is mentioned multiple times, as is Back's
| wealth;
|
| > _It was the beginning of an era in which Mr. Back quickly
| amassed influence and became a ring leader in the still
| small Bitcoin community. To staff Blockstream, he poached
| the top Bitcoin Core developers from their day jobs at
| companies like Google and Mozilla, giving him tremendous
| sway over the digital currency. He also became very
| wealthy: Over the next dozen years, Blockstream and its
| affiliates would raise $1 billion in funding and
| Blockstream would reach a valuation of $3.2 billion._
| ghywertelling wrote:
| I haven't seen this question answered anywhere.
|
| Why would anyone use bitcoin if the world's factory ie China
| wants gold as payments?
|
| Even pro Bitcoin people like Balaji and Lyn Alden haven't
| answered this structural question. There exists market for what
| counts as money. If that market (led by China) says we don't
| accept Bitcoin, then these are just some random numbers.
| arctic-true wrote:
| China probably doesn't accept Dominican pesos, either, and
| yet you'd be hard pressed to say that somebody with 100
| billion Dominican pesos just has some random numbers. If you
| can exchange something for another form of value, then it has
| value. I think the trouble here is that there's just nobody
| out there who would actually give you $100 billion worth of
| value for this particular asset. At least not as a lump sum.
| int32_64 wrote:
| If you've ever seen Back's twitter you would know he's not
| Satoshi. I'm still firmly in the Finney camp.
|
| Every couple years one of these articles shows up focusing on one
| of the core Satoshi suspects, at least do a Wei Dai one next
| time.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I'm also in the Finney camp.
|
| The most important bit to me is that doing something like this
| would be entirely in-line with his personality.
|
| Also, I think he truly believed there was a good chance he'd
| eventually be brought back. The most likely case in my mind is
| that he died with the private keys in his head, and that we'll
| never get confirmation.
| mijoharas wrote:
| So I just searched the article for Finney to see why it claimed
| it wasn't him. It claims Satoshi was active after Finney had
| died?
|
| What's that about? I used to be of the opinion that it was
| probably hal, but haven't paid too much attention. What's the
| counter evidence here? And why do we disregard that?
| int32_64 wrote:
| Satoshi's email accounts were presumably hacked in 2014 and
| the emails sent from them later were presumed fake because
| they lacked PGP signatures.
| cloche wrote:
| Do you have a link for Satoshi's post after Hal had died?
| rowanG077 wrote:
| It's literally in TFA.
| cloche wrote:
| Thanks, admittedly, I hadn't read the article at the
| time.
| 4oo4 wrote:
| Someone already found this years ago:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcvX0P1b5g
|
| I haven't read the full article yet but I'm guessing they didn't
| give credit, as the New York Times tends to do. Not definitive
| but it's a very convincing case.
| sambaumann wrote:
| This video is linked in the article
| sambaumann wrote:
| This article is convincing, but ultimately still no true
| evidence, it's all circumstantial.
|
| After reading this, Back does seem like a pretty likely
| candidate, but maybe you could run the same kind of investigation
| on every other candidate and find similar matches. The filters
| they used for the text analysis did seem pretty arbitrary to
| match up with Back's language
| meonkeys wrote:
| fascinating. John Carreyrou is the guy who broke the Theranos
| story!
|
| But
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_Electric%3A_The_Bitcoin_...
| is a bit more compelling. Satoshi is Adam Back _and_ Peter Todd.
| stevenalowe wrote:
| Why does it matter? Changes nothing except doxxing someone
| blast wrote:
| Humans are social animals, so any mystery about another person
| is interesting, and wealth and fame multiply this.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Why do journalists try to doxx innocent people, putting their
| personal (and here actual) lives at risk? Bansky, Scott
| Alexander...
|
| Spend this effort investigating corruption.
| lumirth wrote:
| If you read the article there's an interesting bit where Mr.
| Back has an active incentive to hide his identity as Satoshi:
| US securities law, which requires disclosing things which'd be
| material to investors. Like, for example, a stash of bitcoin
| which if sold could crash the price of the thing.
|
| And also, from my understanding, Back allegedly had some not-
| insignificant ties or meetings with Epstein?
|
| Point being, journalism like this is morally complex, and not
| as simple as "doxxing innocent people." Of course, we are
| biased, as hackers on a web forum, we naturally relate with
| Satoshi, who was also a techie on a web forum.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Journalists job is to get clicks on their article.
| creato wrote:
| If this guy was still just a guy on a mailing list and
| otherwise living a private life, this article would be
| inappropriate to publish IMO.
|
| However, he's a significant public figure in the Bitcoin world
| (apparently). Still a gray area I guess but I don't think he's
| off limits from this kind of scrutiny.
| apeace wrote:
| I have always thought Satoshi must be dead (as a couple of past
| suspects are).
|
| How could someone not want one hundred BILLION dollars? There is
| no person alive who could resist that. I'm sorry, there's just
| not.
|
| To be fair, if Back was Satoshi, he would need to hide it so his
| company can go public, or whatever. Because that way he might
| make -- who knows! -- hundreds of millions of dollars?
|
| Even if moving the coins crashed the Bitcoin price by 90%,
| Satoshi would still be a billionaire. Generational wealth.
| DeliciousSeaCow wrote:
| Back has earned generational wealth already, and the wealthy
| borrow (at rates lower than capital appreciations) against
| capital to fund all their living. If I were Back, that's
| exactly what I'd be doing to preserve anonymity.
| browningstreet wrote:
| The billionaires ruining the world right now are certainly
| satisfied with their respective hauls.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| He (or the enterprise) could have ample bitcoin, on other
| accounts... the main account is just bait for people.
| bnjemian wrote:
| It's funny because the author notes a prior attempt to uncover
| Satoshi's identity and giving up because an implied lack of
| technical depth.
|
| I guess this time they were undaunted. Perhaps they received an
| AI assist and felt validated by AI sycophancy.
|
| Much of the technical evidence cited is weak (e.g. strong
| knowledge of public-key cryptography, both used C++, etc.).
| Still, the (somewhat lazy) forensic linguistics is interesting.
| danso wrote:
| Pretty compelling story. Not necessarily for its revelations, but
| for the fact that John Carreyrou and the NYT decided to publish
| it at all. If it were by anyone else, I would have stopped
| reading after the first thousand words of meandering narrative,
| but Carreyrou is staking his massive and impeccable investigative
| journalistic reputation on this mountain of circumstantial
| evidence and statistical analysis. Him torching his reputation
| (especially with Elizabeth Holmes fighting hard for a
| pardon/clemency!) would be as interesting as a story as actually
| finding Satoshi's real identity.
|
| The evidence is good. What was more interesting to me is the
| section where he explains how he eliminated all the other
| asserted and likely candidates. Since the story is already a very
| long read, I imagine much of this section got left out. So some
| of the reasons for eliminations are too brief to be convincing on
| their own. For example:
|
| > _What about other leading Satoshi suspects, I wondered? Were
| there any who fit the Satoshi profile better than Mr. Back? A
| 2015 article in this newspaper put forward the thesis that
| Satoshi was Nick Szabo, an American computer scientist of
| Hungarian descent who proposed a Bitcoin-like idea called "bit
| gold" in 1998. Mr. Szabo remained at the top of many people's
| lists until recently, but a heated debate that played out on X
| about a proposed update to the Bitcoin Core software exposed his
| ignorance of basic technical aspects of Bitcoin._
|
| _A 2015 article in this newspaper_ -- Decoding the Enigma of
| Satoshi Nakamoto and the Birth of Bitcoin, by Nathaniel Popper
| [0]
|
| _[Szabo] proposed a Bitcoin-like idea called "bit gold" in 1998_
| -- Szabo 's post on his Blogger site [1]
|
| _but a heated debate that played out on X about a proposed
| update to the Bitcoin Core software exposed his ignorance_ --
| links to a Sept 29, 2025 tweet by Adam Back replying to Szabo,
| who had tweeted:
|
| > Good info thanks. Follow-up questions: (1) to what extent is
| such an OP_RETURN-delete-switch feasible in practice? (I know it
| is feasible in theory, but there are many details of core that I
| am not familiar with). (2) has such a thing been seriously
| proposed or pursued as part of Core's roadmap?
|
| _exposed [Szabo 's] ignorance of basic technical aspects of
| Bitcoin_ -- links to another reply tweet by Back in October 2025
| [3]:
|
| > Nick, you're actually wrong because there is a unified weight
| resource. eg byte undiscounted chain space reduces by 4 bytes
| segwit discounted weight. no need for insults - people who are
| rational here are just talking about technical and risk tradeoffs
| like rational humans.
|
| Szabo's tweet was: "Another coretard who thinks their followers
| are mind-numbingly stupid."
|
| ----
|
| Can someone explain why this relatively recent tweet fight is
| convincing evidence that Szabo is too ignorant to have been
| behind Bitcoin? I know he went silent for a bit when Bitcoin
| first got big, but he hadn't revealed his ostensibly overwhelming
| ignorance until a few months ago?
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/business/decoding-the-
| eni...
|
| [1] https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html
|
| [2] https://x.com/adam3us/status/1972888761257415129
|
| [3] https://x.com/adam3us/status/1981329274721149396
| andy800 wrote:
| > a heated debate ... exposed his ignorance
|
| Didnt follow everything here, but wouldn't that make for a
| perfect cover story? If you're Satoshi, and people are getting
| close to verifying (or at least nominating you as "most likely
| candidate"), what better way to throw people off than to engage
| in a public conversation in which you (creatively) get all
| kinds of technical details wrong and make yourself look too
| ignorant or dumb to ever have been Satoshi?
| thakoppno wrote:
| There's no bottom to this line of reasoning, however.
|
| One can always suppose the identified individual is a double,
| triple, quadruple agent.
| aftbit wrote:
| What level do you play at?
|
| One level higher than you.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >One can always suppose the identified individual is a
| double, triple, quadruple agent.
|
| yes in general it's not good reasoning but given that in
| this case we know that we're talking about someone who
| tried to stay anonymous and comes out of the cypherpunk
| culture we can pretty much assume that if they've been
| interviewed they've denied it.
|
| It's not like that accusation is random, it's that this is
| what the real Nakamoto, whoever it is, would have said
| idopmstuff wrote:
| The funny thing is that the author uses your exact logic when
| he finds evidence that goes against his hypothesis. He made
| posts that asked questions about things that Satoshi
| definitely would've known? Misdirection! Somebody else does
| it? Strong evidence against them!
| dmix wrote:
| This is why I stopped reading these Bitcoin creator
| stories. It's usually more about the journalist and their
| 'process' than the story.
| ufmace wrote:
| The interesting thing to me is, it seems likely that
| whichever individual or small group actually is Satoshi
| must have planted at least a few misdirection false flags
| like that at some point. But how in the world would you
| ever tell which ones are that sort of misdirection and
| which are real?
| ozten wrote:
| Does Carreyrou give reasons for eliminating Hal Finney from
| being (part or all of) Satoshi?
| sho_hn wrote:
| Yes, he mentions he was photographed running a foot race
| during a date and time Satoshi sent emails (of course that's
| a bit weak).
| ozten wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| Reasoning: They have the chops to create the world's first
| system where consensus, scarcity, and ownership exist
| without a central authority... But, they also lack the
| ability to write a Perl script to "Send Later". Checks out.
| atombender wrote:
| Why would they believe that someone in the future would
| be tracking their mailing list post history and
| correlating email timestamps with real-life activity?
| There's no motivation to take steps to hide one's tracks
| (by setting up a remote email send while one is were
| away) unless one thinks that is going to happen.
| jeffgreco wrote:
| As the article says, Back was very interested in methods
| of covering one's tracks.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Anyone sophisticated enough to hide their writing style and
| identity would be more than capable of setting an email to
| go out while they were at a public event.
|
| Likewise, the argument discounting szabo because he exposed
| some ignorance of Bitcoin is exactly what someone might do
| to throw off the scent.
| cloche wrote:
| If you believe that Satoshi's email wasn't hacked then his
| last emails came after Finney had passed away.
| ctippett wrote:
| (part or all of)
|
| Your aside suggests you might already have considered what
| I'm about propose, but why not Finney and Back both as
| Satoshi?
|
| The reporting already establishes all three parties (Satoshi
| being the third) were familiar/friendly with one another. The
| reporting says that Finney was the recipient of the first
| ever Bitcoin transaction, which seems like a completely
| natural thing to do if the two of you are working together.
|
| Finney's name also rises to the top in a few of the author's
| analysis, while also noting: > "But his
| analysis had been hampered by the fact that most of Mr.
| Back's papers were coauthored with other cryptographers,
| which made it difficult to know who really wrote them."
|
| Again, why not both of them as Satoshi?
|
| Hal Finney's passing also helps explain how such a monumental
| secret of Satoshi's identity has remained a secret for so
| long. The only other person who's in on the secret is Back
| himself.
|
| Edit: To add further conjecture, it wouldn't surprise me if
| Satoshi's wallet is locked away in a trust or tied up with
| Finney's estate. I can imagine a scenario where the keys to
| the wallet are legally unobtainable until such time that both
| Finney and Back have passed, at which point the wallet is
| liquidated and its proceeds donated (Finney previously raised
| money for ALS research).
| madars wrote:
| A major problem with the article is the author's inability to
| weigh the evidence: actual evidence, like presence/absence
| pattern, is buried whereas p-hacking stylometry (let me try
| another expert, this one didn't give me what I wanted! let me
| feed him the Satoshi/Adam Back tells that I'm already in love
| with!) is majority of the article. It also includes absolute
| garbage like the vistomail spoof email during the block size
| wars. And, oh by the way, both Satoshi and Adam Back knew C++.
| Theranos evidence was binary (machines either work or they
| don't) but it is not so here and the author is simply out of
| his depth here.
|
| It is sad - but entirely unsurprising - that NYT decided to
| paint a big target on someone's back just for clicks. Judith
| Miller-tier all over again. Miller too had real evidence and
| junk evidence, couldn't distinguish between the two, and
| editors wanted a flashy headline. Carreyrou has exactly the
| same problem here: NYT editors need multimedia events (like
| junk stylometry filtering - watch the number shrink from 34,000
| to 562 to 114 to 56 to 8 to 1!!!) because that's what its
| audience-product relationship demands. I think it not unfair to
| say that modern Times' editorial culture has no mechanism for
| distinguishing rigorous inference from merely compelling
| narrative. Open the front page on a random day: how often do
| you see the Times staking credibility on a causal claim "A
| causes B" vs simply "X happened. Then Y came." vibes/parataxis.
| busterarm wrote:
| I've had the fortune/misfortune to be directly or
| peripherally involved in nearly a dozen situations that made
| it to press and there isn't a single case where the story
| represented in the article wasn't blatantly misinterpreted
| from the facts. In nearly every case what was mentioned in
| the article was the complete opposite of what actually
| happened. Biggest/Most-egregious offenders were Vice and Vox
| Media but included are the NYT, WaPo and Time.
|
| One can only narrow the things they care about to those they
| can verify (or personally affect them) and go after primary
| sources themselves and form their own conclusions. I'm no
| longer convinced that modern journalism is good for anything
| more than starting bonfires.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Pretty compelling story. Not necessarily for its revelations,
| but for the fact that John Carreyrou and the NYT decided to
| publish it at all.
|
| When is the line crossed from journalism into doxxing? Whoever
| created Bitcoin has a legitimate safety reason to stay
| anonymous. Anyone suspected of holding that much wealth becomes
| a target - as does their family.
| tptacek wrote:
| There is no such line. The actual line is whether someone is
| newsworthy; the safeguard you have against journalism abusing
| random people (which it has done, often, over the last 150
| years) is that journalists ordinarily don't write intrusive
| stories about random people.
|
| (There are some other safeguards, but they're highly
| situational.)
|
| The conflict between journalism and "doxxing" is a Redditism
| that people are frantically trying to import into real life.
| Maybe Reddit norms will upend the longstanding norms (and
| purpose) of journalism! But nobody should kid themselves that
| the norms have always been compatible.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I agree, in that Journalism has always been an unethical
| business masquerading as moral imperative.
|
| But I think this "Redditism applied to real life" is
| actually society grappling with the ethics of public safety
| and social accountability in the 21st century. Is it okay
| to dox a 16 year old Twitch streamer? Or a wealthy Satoshi?
| Or a crypto-Nazi? Laws only define so much, and we
| (society) have to fill in the gaps, which is messy. I think
| we're figuring out where the line is in real time.
| empath75 wrote:
| I hate this idea that doxxing is some kind if crime. "Who is
| the creator of bitcoin?" is a matter of great public and
| historical interest. Finding out who he is, is the purest
| form of journalism.
| catcowcostume wrote:
| Good point, personally I had never considered that doxing
| could be considered _not_ illegal /crime.
| shimon wrote:
| At what point does the use of clues to uncover the
| identity of a criminal cross the line from solid
| detective work to doxing? /s
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| What does that say about pure journalism? Publish
| information despite doing harm? How do you present the
| information, and what impact does that presentation have?
|
| Historically, newspapers often published the full name and
| physical address of every person they covered, from judges
| to drunks to rape victims to people suspected of a crime.
| I'm sure people back in the day called that pure
| journalism, but I don't think we'd call it "good" today.
| Our standards today might also not be as good as we assume.
| ghaff wrote:
| Historically, people got a big book every year with the
| name and address of most people in it. You could get
| unlisted numbers but now everyone has a cellphone which
| just isn't broadly published but because now many use it
| for everything it's probably not that hard to find.
|
| Also, has others have noted it's trivial to put other a
| list of wealthy people. In fact, it's probably better to
| skip the Forbes 400 list who probably have some level of
| private security. Just go through the board member lists
| of Fortune 500 companies.
| Lu2025 wrote:
| Username doesn't check out.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Speculating about it using arguments like "he also uses C++
| and has used words popular in those circles" isn't though
| or at least shouldn't be.
|
| "Hey this guy probably had an access to a few billion USD
| worth of btc, maybe still has, his name is X, he lives in
| Y. He wishes to be anonymous but he knows C++ and we got
| him!".
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Except Satoshi has been "anonymous" and those Bitcoin have
| never moved, even when the sum total of that wallet might
| have been $10,000 or so.
|
| And if Satoshi's holdings now exceed $1B, well, for better or
| worse, multiple courts have ruled that billionaires are
| inherently public figures, because of their "outsized effect
| on public discourse".
| lovecg wrote:
| It would be hilarious if he intentionally or accidentally
| lost the key, and has been trying to cash out through those
| Bitcoin adjacent business ventures ever since.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Even if he is Satoshi he might not be a billionaire or rich
| at all.
| vintermann wrote:
| Isn't it a matter of legitimate interest for me to know
| whether you're obscenely rich or not? After all, if you are,
| you can probably do things like buying elections and sending
| hitmen after _my_ family.
|
| Either way, why can't they just deal with it the way other
| obscenely rich people deal with it?
| busterarm wrote:
| Impeccable? Carreyrou's articles and eventual book are built
| largely off of the deep investigative work done by Dr. John P.
| A. Ioannidis and Dr. Eleftherios P. Diamandis and a listserv
| with thousands of participating doctors...who aren't mentioned
| in the book once...Similarly-omitted are Softbank/Fortress and
| their eventual patent-holding shell company Labrador
| Diagnostics LLC...
| adastra22 wrote:
| > Can someone explain why this relatively recent tweet fight is
| convincing evidence that Szabo is too ignorant to have been
| behind Bitcoin?
|
| I'm a primary player in this sad saga. I can tell you that
| neither Szabo nor Back are Satoshi, as anyone who knows them
| would attest.
|
| But to your question, all this does is make this "journalist"
| look dumb. The thing being discussed by Adam and Nick wasn't
| wven proposed for bitcoin until 6 years after Satoshi
| disappeared.
| gridder wrote:
| Barely Sociable already explained it 5 years ago:
|
| https://youtu.be/XfcvX0P1b5g
| dang wrote:
| If people want rabbit holes
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| an0malous wrote:
| tl;dw?
| ex-aws-dude wrote:
| The article literally mentions that in the beginning
| talkfold wrote:
| The guy who took down Theranos spent a year on hyphenation
| patterns. Respect the commitment.
| themafia wrote:
| Every couple of years they convince some "intrepid" reporters to
| go make up a story about /the/ creator of bitcoin.
|
| Which I find highly suggestive about the true nature of the
| creator(s) of bitcoin.
| modeless wrote:
| I don't believe anyone claiming that Satoshi is still alive.
| There is zero chance any human who put so much effort into
| creating something would remain silent while it became a $2
| trillion phenomenon that succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
| Satoshi is certainly dead.
| cbxyp wrote:
| This is a ridiculous argument "zero chance" that completely
| discounts the possibility (or in all likelyhood, probability)
| that the creator may be compelled to stay silent, in jail, etc.
| kleene_op wrote:
| > There is zero chance any human who put so much effort into
| creating something would remain silent while it became a $2
| trillion phenomenon
|
| I'd argue this is the best reason to remain silent as much as
| one can.
| Dove wrote:
| I once became so famous that a community of several hundred
| people knew and recognized my name for a few years. At the
| time, it was very ego-flattering, and I was delighted to have
| done something that had such a big and positive impact.
| However, as an experience it really did not agree with me, and
| even this very minor level of fame has left me resolved to
| never, ever, ever become that famous again if I can help it.
|
| I don't think I am unique in that. In fact, I perceive that it
| is very normal for public figures, not merely to fade from
| public attention, but to actively seek out seclusion.
|
| While I'm not Satoshi, I would put the odds of someone in such
| a position of maintaining radio silence far from "zero chance".
| I would put it more around 70 or 80 percent. And at any rate,
| it is certainly what I would do.
| ploum wrote:
| My theory is that Satoshi is a persona created by Adam Back and
| Hal Finney.
|
| They probably devised something where both needed to agree and
| sign something for Satoshi to act. This also allowed them to
| say "I'm not Satoshi Nakamoto".
|
| They also probably ensured that anything that belongs to
| Satoshi required both of them. The death of Hal Finney ensure
| that Satoshi died definitely.
|
| But they may have "killed" him before by burning the keys
| because, when Bitcoin started to become a success, they
| probably anticipated the need to "kill" satoshi (few remember
| but Bitcoin passing 1$ was considered as a crazy bubble at the
| time! Some become millionnaires and exited when BTC did the 30$
| bubble. Satoshi's stack was already closely observed, bright
| mind of that time would have anticipated the need to kill it).
| Or it was just that "satoshi" was not needed or they
| accidentaly deleted some keys.
| vidarh wrote:
| I'd like to think that if I'd come up with something like
| this, I'd have quickly gone "oh shit" and realised it'd be
| hard to access the earliest coins without raising unwanted
| attention, and started mining with multiple different keys,
| and actively moved those coins around. If Satoshi is still
| around, I'd expect he has more than enough money without the
| need to risk the upheaval touching those earliest keys would
| cause.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| This may be the most convincing theory I've heard.
|
| I don't believe any live human being has the wherewithal to
| not use any of the $100B+ in the Satoshi wallets, which has
| led me to believe it was Hal Finney. Back and Finney both
| being in on it would explain some of the email timing as well
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| What if Satoshi is already a billionaire?
| AgentME wrote:
| Adam Back is the well-off CEO of a company in the blockchain
| space. From that position, he gets to continue to use his
| expertise in the field with plenty of connections while having
| more than enough money without needing to risk revealing
| himself as Satoshi or risk de-stabilizing Bitcoin's value by
| using Satoshi's known wallets. It seems like the best possible
| outcome for someone in Satoshi's position.
|
| I'll at least agree that I don't think any other living
| candidates for Satoshi make any sense. I can't believe someone
| who started a brand new influential field of study could fully
| exit from it while fully avoiding the proceeds from it, as
| would be necessary to believe in any other living candidate.
| afavour wrote:
| > would remain silent while it became a $2 trillion phenomenon
|
| I can see how it might be preferable. Satoshi has an incredible
| amount of wealth in a form that's very easy to transfer
| anonymously. Anyone that admits to being him will be a huge
| target.
| sfink wrote:
| If I were to invent something like bitcoin, I would use your
| exact logic to decide to burn the keys. I couldn't trust
| myself, so I would remove the possibility of agonizing over it.
| Obviously, I still might feel regret, but I'd choose the
| potential regret over the potential agony.
|
| Hell, even if I didn't burn the keys initially, I might do it
| as I observed it starting to take off. I'd be more attached to
| the idea and its success than to the idea of being filthy rich
| (and at risk of jail, extortion, and murder). It would feel
| like a giant middle finger to the parts of the system I
| disliked.
| shawn_w wrote:
| Maybe they're embarrassed to admit they lost the password for
| their wallet.
| 348asGaq7 wrote:
| It would not surprise me. Adam Back seems to have good
| connections to the deep state people, too. His company is merging
| via a SPAC with a Cantor Fitzgerald (Lutnick owned) company.
|
| Cantor Fitzgerald also handles the collateral for Tether, which
| relocated from the Caribbean (where it was associated with a CIA
| bank) to El Salvador.
|
| Bitcoin is very handy for avoiding awkward Iran Contra schemes
| for covert ops. You no longer need Lutnick's friend Epstein to
| handle the laundering.
| c83n2d8n39c9 wrote:
| what if satoshi is not one person but a phenomenon, a group of
| minds... the interesting thing about the technology is that it is
| a public ledger and everything that goes along with that when you
| tie it to the metadata trails across the networks people use it
| on... ohh the implications
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| A fun counter factual: try "proving" that famous scientists are
| their collaborators based on this methodology. Obviously Hardy
| and Littlewood are the same person. They're both British
| mathematicians who use analysis and number theory and have
| similar sensibilities in politics and math.
| refulgentis wrote:
| The Hardy-Littlewood comparison cuts the other way. Two
| collaborators in the same subfield sharing terminology is the
| baseline, not evidence of anything. What makes the Back case
| interesting is convergence on things that have nothing to do
| with cryptography: the same Napster vs Gnutella analogy, the
| same celebrity email filtering idea, the same obscure FDR gold
| ban interest, the same weird hyphenation errors. Pick any two
| cypherpunks at random and you won't find that kind of overlap
| on non-technical quirks.
|
| Then add the negative space. Back was one of the most prolific
| voices on these lists for a decade, especially on digital cash.
| Satoshi shows up, Back goes quiet. Satoshi leaves, Back comes
| back. Hardy and Littlewood never had that problem.
| kgeist wrote:
| >the same Napster vs Gnutella analogy, the same celebrity
| email filtering idea, the same obscure FDR gold ban interest,
| the same weird hyphenation errors
|
| Dunno it assumes their cypherpunk group must always discuss
| strictly cryptography and never discuss anything else. It
| could be just some off-topic ideas floating around in their
| community.
|
| For me, the only solid, damning evidence would be statistical
| methods of text analysis like they do to prove authenticity
| of a literary work.
| jsnell wrote:
| > Pick any two cypherpunks at random and you won't find that
| kind of overlap on non-technical quirks.
|
| That could be a valid methodology if you pre-registered the
| list of quirks before doing the investigation.
|
| But in this case the journalist clearly didn't do that, but
| tweaked the set of quirks until they produced the desired
| outcome.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Every time I see one of these articles about "unmasking"
| Nakamoto, I always wonder the same thing: why? I don't really see
| a compelling reason to unmask this person. Surely there are other
| more important things a journalist can spend their time looking
| into. It's the same with Banksy: why?
| afavour wrote:
| I agree about Banksy. But in this case Satoshi controls a huge
| about of bitcoin. If, whoever they are, they did something with
| it, it would absolutely move markets.
| afpx wrote:
| I always thought it was Argonne that built it. Interestingly it
| seems that Adam Back did work with them. So maybe?
| Lerc wrote:
| I found this amusing.
|
| _> P.G.P., a free encryption program used by antinuclear
| activists and human rights groups to shield their files and
| emails from government surveillance._
|
| I find it fascinating to see how the users of a program change,
| based on how a reporter wants to build or diminish.
|
| At least it's going in a positive direction today.
| 6thbit wrote:
| that's such a loaded statement.
| chii wrote:
| This is the power of language.
|
| The bias is built into it.
| torben-friis wrote:
| >Water, a drink consumed by nobel price winners and European
| kings...
| Lerc wrote:
| Oxygen, an element serial killers need in order to kill
| again.
| fny wrote:
| Dihydrogen monoxide - a constituent of many known toxic
| substances, diseases and disease-causing agents[0]
|
| [0]: https://www.dhmo.org/
| goodmythical wrote:
| I was alway taught that Adolf Hitler was a prevalent user
| of dihydrogen monoxide and refused to give it to his
| captives.
| dbt00 wrote:
| thousands of people die every year from DHMO toxicity,
| literal overdoses of DHMO, yet you can still find it in
| baby food and breast milk.
| wjessup wrote:
| 100% of people who've ever had DHMO have died.
|
| This is scientifically verified and yet nobody does
| anything about it.
| hcknwscommenter wrote:
| I know this is a joke, but you did it wrong. There are
| obviously people (like me) who have had DHMO and are not
| dead.
|
| 100% of the people who have died have been exposed to
| DHMO.
| Alive-in-2025 wrote:
| You aren't fooling anyone, you know.
|
| http://montypython.50webs.com/scripts/Holy_Grail/Scene2.h
| tm
| drdaeman wrote:
| > and yet nobody does anything about it
|
| So dismissive of all the transhumanist efforts to
| eradicate death!
| benlivengood wrote:
| Truly, we can eliminate the null hypothesis because only
| ~93% of humans who have ever lived have died. [0] [1]
|
| [0] https://www.prb.org/news/how-many-people-have-ever-
| lived-on-... [1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-
| population/
| Skidaddle wrote:
| Over 90% of people who've ever had DHMO have died.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Water? Like, from the toilet?
| echelon wrote:
| It's what plants crave.
|
| (I needed to be able to post that to HN tonight.)
| nytesky wrote:
| Very on brand for our darkest timeline, if you excuse the
| mixed media metaphor.
| Topfi wrote:
| Ah yes, the cautionary tale where the leadership is willing
| to accept their own faults, seeks out the most competent to
| solve their issue, despite initial reservations are willing
| to go with the suggestions provided and a public that, upon
| being provided evidence accepts it. Kinda hopeful, if one
| thinks about it, the Eugenics nonsense notwithstanding...
| ognarb wrote:
| And nowadays, PGP technology is mostly used by the government
| and military. I wouldn't be surprised if this was also the case
| when Bitcoins was originally developed
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Never seen it. What parts? Do you mean PKI?
| bawolff wrote:
| [Citation needed]
|
| Seriously why would gov use pgp? They would be the last group
| i would expect to use something like PGP.
| jazz9k wrote:
| "antinuclear activists and human rights groups to shield their
| files and emails from government surveillance"
|
| You mean the people responsible for not allowing us to embrace
| Nuclear 30 years before we should have?
| shimman wrote:
| Yeah the weird thing about living in a democracy is you have
| to convince people who don't agree with you to do things.
| Maybe try better politics rather than attacks or else you'll
| go another 30 years of no nuclear power then die without
| realizing your dream of nearly free clean unlimited power.
| pitaj wrote:
| Nuclear restrictions were instituted by beurocratic means,
| not democratic means.
| toyg wrote:
| It depends on the country. In many, there were actual
| rounds of dedicated votes.
| phil21 wrote:
| It's 10x easier to destroy things and block stuff than it
| is to build anything.
|
| As witnessed by the US inability to build anything for a
| generation or two. It's all NIMBY (or worse) all the time.
|
| Anti-anything is fighting a nearly unwinnable asymmetric
| political fight these days. Eventually times will get hard
| enough where this flips, but we are nowhere close to that
| yet.
| chii wrote:
| > people who don't agree with you to do things.
|
| the problem is that those people who don't agree with me
| are also not taking the externalized cost of non-action.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| No - Zimmerman was an anti nuclear _weapons_ activist with
| the Nuclear Freeze campaign when he invented PGP.
| hbbio wrote:
| > I would ping him over the Signal app
|
| Signal, the free encryption app used by journalists
| Topfi wrote:
| Signal, an App predominantly used by governmental officials
| to leak war plans or bypass historical recording obligations.
| Theodores wrote:
| PGP was different then. In the 90s the internet was unencrypted
| and the only people using PGP were those that had a reasonable
| need for it. However, there were a couple of big problems that
| the armchair historian would not be aware of.
|
| First off, communicating with PGP was hard. Imagine you are
| based in London and you want to publish something controversial
| without getting taken to court. You could email someone in New
| York and ask them to post your 'hot potato of juiciness'. But,
| how to you exchange keys without the beloved five eyes seeing
| what you are up to?
|
| This was in an era when very little was encrypted, so anything
| encrypted would theoretically get flagged for the three letter
| agencies to take a look at. Again, this would depend on the
| person you are trying to reach, if they were working at the
| equivalent of 'the Iranian embassy' then yeah, good luck with
| that, you are going to get caught.
|
| The next problem was that PGP was doable for the three letter
| agencies using what amounts to WW2 Enigma tactics. In period it
| was possible for them to man-in-the-middle attack an email, to
| ask the PGP using sender to 'use the right key and resend'. The
| sender does as told, even with the same, as provided, public
| key. However, they just change their original message, maybe to
| remove a typo, change the date or add a friendly note. Then the
| three letter agency does a glorified 'diff' and they are
| subsequently in on the chat.
|
| PGP was originally treated as a 'munition' with export
| controls. People weren't using PGP for their Uber Eats and
| Amazon orders, as per the article, it was only anti-government
| people that needed PGP, that being Western 'five eyes'
| governments.
|
| Hence, even though it is a tedious NYT article, the author is
| right about PGP, in period. And, don't ask how I know about how
| PGP was hacked, there was a certain fog of war that went on at
| the time.
| pgalvin wrote:
| > However, they just change their original message, maybe to
| remove a typo, change the date or add a friendly note. Then
| the three letter agency does a glorified 'diff' and they are
| subsequently in on the chat.
|
| Could you expand on this please?
| Theodores wrote:
| You must be joking!
| Dx5IQ wrote:
| It is hard to imagine that "modern" encryption would be
| susceptible to known plaintext attacks, please provide
| some citations.
| raisin_churn wrote:
| They cannot because PGP has no such vulnerability.
| vintermann wrote:
| It was never trivial for TLAs to man-in-the-middle anyone,
| because PGP users were very much aware of the problem and
| nothing about key exchange was automated, for good or ill.
| Key exchange parties, reading out key fingerprints in their
| own custom extended phonetic alphabet etc.
|
| A man in the middle attack would maybe work in rare cases, at
| great cost, and then you'd get one or two messages and
| immediately make people aware that they'd been attacked. It's
| not worth it. I'm confident the TLAs never bothered to do it
| against anyone with public keys on a key server, the minimum
| effort you could make to guard against MITM attacks.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I see your point, but PGP was literally invented by an anti-
| nuclear activist and intentionally disseminated to human rights
| groups.
| jojobas wrote:
| "Created" or "originally used" would be on point, 60 years
| after the fact it is just slop.
| julianz wrote:
| 60? Not even 40.
| mapmeld wrote:
| This section stood out to me because it started out explaining
| PGP to a layman like this, but then the author gets overly
| excited that a cryptographer would be interested in... basic
| cryptography
|
| > I'd learned enough by then to know that P.G.P. relies on
| public-key cryptography. So does Bitcoin. [...]
|
| > How interesting, I thought, that Mr. Back's grad-school hobby
| involved the same cryptographic technique that Satoshi had
| repurposed.
| qnleigh wrote:
| We also have this gem:
|
| > And Mr. Back's thesis project focused on C++ -- the same
| programming language Satoshi used to code the first version
| of the Bitcoin software.
|
| Amazing! I bet they both for loops too! I heard Bitcoin
| relies heavily on for loops.
|
| Infuriatingly, to people who don't know much about
| programming, these pieces of 'evidence' might sound quite
| compelling, because it will all sound equally obscure to
| them.
|
| I'm only a quarter of the way through this piece, but I'm
| finding it very hard to take seriously.
| Topfi wrote:
| The leaps here would get one laughed out of an early 2k
| conspiracy forum.
| mapmeld wrote:
| It's strange. I'm sure that he talked to experts who would
| immediately say, yes many programming languages exist. But
| two cryptographers who wrote money systems both using C++
| is not informative. Today maybe we could expect one to use
| Rust.
| Topfi wrote:
| Bob uses electricity provided from a coal power plant,
| therefore he must be able to design a Fission plant. Yeah,
| these are some massive leaps, the question of why, beyond
| morbid curiosity, one must dox Satoshi not withstanding.
| Satoshi or the wallets they controlled were never associated
| with anything beyond the creation of BTC after all, making
| the value of knowing who they are or were not really great in
| my view. If these coins suddenly started funding someone or
| something, there could be an argument, but this coupled with
| such a layperson approach makes me doubtful about the ethics
| or approach.
| coppsilgold wrote:
| The author has collected more than enough entropy to single out
| Mr. Back, especially when the anonymity set of who could be
| Satoshi is so small.
|
| It's either Back or someone who tried to frame him, long before
| Bitcoin was even remotely successful. Generally, framing someone
| like this is a poor strategy because it places you in the
| person's radius as opposed to being absolutely anyone.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My dorm room was next door to Hal Finney. He was a freakin genius
| at every intellectual endeavor he bothered to try. My fellow
| students and I were in awe of him.
|
| But you had to get to know him to realize what he was. To most
| people, he was just a regular guy, easy going, friendly, always
| willing to help.
|
| He was also a libertarian, and the concept of bitcoin must have
| been very appealing to him.
|
| And inventing "Satoshi" as the front man is just the prankish
| thing he'd do, as he had quite a sense of humor.
|
| I regret not getting to know him better, though I don't think he
| found me very interesting.
|
| My money's on Hal.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Hal was _likely part of the Satoshi team_ -- even receiving the
| first ever bitcoin transaction (on the main blockchain).
|
| Hopefully his children got to open extremely rewarding
| bankboxes, after his death (whether or not containing bitcoin
| -- but likely so). If it were myself, I'd also keep quiet about
| such a miracle.
|
| For my own meager holdings, I'll keep waiting (over a decade
| strong HODL, now).
| doublextremevil wrote:
| Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the
| pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared. Adam is a well known
| supporter of small blocks, ultimately the "winning" side of the
| debate. They are not the same person.
| cloche wrote:
| I haven't read the article yet but I remember this as well.
| IIRC Adam went the route of more towards a centralized group
| controlling Bitcoin's future during the BTC/BCH debates/fork.
| It seemed against what Satoshi would have pushed for. Plus
| Adam's group seemed like a catalyst for Gavin stepping back as
| a result of the political in-fighting and mud-slinging. It
| would be a huge surprise if Satoshi were Adam.
|
| Personally, I think Satoshi was Hal Finney.
| cloche wrote:
| Adding on now that I've read the article and this situation
| is covered:
|
| > The following year, in 2015, the Bitcoin community
| fractured over a proposal to increase Bitcoin's block size. A
| faction led by two Bitcoin developers, Gavin Andresen and
| Mike Hearn, wanted to make the blocks much bigger to
| accommodate more transactions. But this was controversial...
|
| > Mr. Back fiercely opposed increasing the block size. In a
| series of posts on the Bitcoin-dev list, he warned against
| Mr. Andresen and Mr. Hearn's proposal in increasingly
| strident tones.
|
| > Then, out of the blue, Satoshi appeared on the list with an
| email that neatly dovetailed with Mr. Back's position. It was
| the first time Satoshi had been heard from in more than four
| years, other than a five-word post the previous year denying
| a Newsweek article's claim to have unmasked him.
|
| > Many in the Bitcoin community questioned the new email's
| authenticity since another of Satoshi's email accounts had
| been hacked. But Mr. Back argued that the email sounded real.
| In a series of tweets, he called Satoshi's observations "spot
| on" and "consistent with Satoshi views IMO" and took to
| quoting from the email.
|
| I now realize that the Satoshi email was after Hal Finney's
| death so that changes my opinion.
|
| From OP:
|
| > Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered
| the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared
|
| This isn't correct. In fact, the linked email in the article
| says the opposite https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/6EC9DDF352
| DC4838AE9B088AB37...
| WatchDog wrote:
| >> Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and
| empowered the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared
|
| >
|
| > This isn't correct. In fact, the linked email in the
| article says the opposite
|
| Characterizing the arguments are big vs small blocks, seems
| wrong.
|
| There appeared to be broad agreement that the block size
| needed to be increased, however there were 4 competing
| proposed solutions(BIP 100, 101, 102, 103), and consensus
| on which approach to take could not be reached.
|
| Gavin decided to push ahead with BIP 101, and both Satoshi
| and Adam agreed that it was reckless to proceed without
| better consensus.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| I think Back reacts the way he does when being asked if he is
| the creator of BTC is that he knows it was Finney, and the
| key is gone.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| It can't be Finney because there was an entire send reply
| send reply sequence that was while Finney was in a marathon
| race between Satoshi and others which could not have been
| scripted.
|
| The case for Jack Dorsey is much stronger than the Back
| claim.
| danso wrote:
| Doesn't this fierce debate exist because people cannot agree
| what Satoshi would have written had he known Bitcoin would take
| off in such a massive way, versus what Satoshi believed back
| when bitcoin was just a paper? If it actually is the case that
| Adam Back is Satoshi, we shouldn't find it surprising that
| Back's views on bitcoin changed as bitcoin's viability and real
| world impact changed
| kinakomochidayo wrote:
| Exactly. Adam is also very emotional when he writes, and
| Satoshi was nothing like it.
| lateforwork wrote:
| Did you miss the part where Satoshi came to Adam's rescue, to
| thwart big blocks?
|
| https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/6EC9DDF352DC4838AE9B088AB37...
| coppsilgold wrote:
| > Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered
| the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared. Adam is a well
| known supporter of small blocks, ultimately the "winning" side
| of the debate. They are not the same person.
|
| From the article: Then, out of the blue,
| Satoshi appeared on the list with an email that neatly
| dovetailed with Mr. Back's position. It was the first time
| Satoshi had been heard from in more than four years, other than
| a five-word post the previous year denying a Newsweek article's
| claim to have unmasked him. Many in the Bitcoin
| community questioned the new email's authenticity since another
| of Satoshi's email accounts had been hacked. But Mr. Back
| argued that the email sounded real. In a series of tweets, he
| called Satoshi's observations "spot on" and "consistent with
| Satoshi views IMO" and took to quoting from the email.
| Mr. Back was likely correct: To this day, there is no evidence
| to indicate the email was a forgery, and no other emails from
| that account have surfaced. The Satoshi email
| sounded a lot like Mr. Back had in his posts during the
| preceding weeks, although no one took notice. Like Mr. Back,
| Satoshi argued that the Bitcoin network's increasing
| centralization jeopardized its security. He called the big
| block proposal very "dangerous" -- the same term Mr. Back had
| used repeatedly. He also used other words and phrases Mr. Back
| had used: "widespread consensus," "consensus rules,"
| "technical," "trivial" and "robust." At the end of
| the email, Satoshi denounced Mr. Andresen and Mr. Hearn as two
| reckless developers trying to hijack Bitcoin with populist
| tactics and added: "This present situation has been very
| disappointing to watch unfold."
|
| It also happened to be densely cited with hyperlinks:
|
| https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/6EC9DDF352DC4838AE9B088AB37...
|
| https://x.com/adam3us/status/632928398893907968
|
| https://x.com/adam3us/status/632650884011458560
|
| https://x.com/adam3us/status/632923680104841220
|
| https://x.com/adam3us/status/632919411112849410
|
| https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTHfU5+1ezP-Jnn5obpd62...
|
| https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTGBt7MNs5YWf8QzKe+4Fr...
|
| https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTFC7zBN9GvHAZLQj4SbXj...
|
| https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTFu6DRVMSLsGDa6AgVX1X...
|
| https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTG7+MMN50VH9-Y++B1_De...
|
| https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTGCkTZAs74bXk57L6JWK2...
|
| https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTH_5rtOs=aSNiVrfsG_sq...
| opengrass wrote:
| Congrats to the author citing a troll on a Vistomail account
| anyone could re-register when AnonymousSpeech was around.
| dboreham wrote:
| I'm going to call BS on this. Not that this guy couldn't be
| Satoshi, but the article has some serious nonsense in it. Ha said
| he learned to program on a "Timex Sinclair". It wasn't called
| that in the UK. Did he know the alternative name and auto-
| translate in speaking to a US journalist? Seems unlikely. Then he
| used C++! Amazing. So did everyone at that time. He took an
| interest in PK cryptography. So has every single serious software
| engineer since the 1990s. It's the same thing as Bitcoin!
| Seriously. I stopped reading when the next piece of evidence was
| that he used the word "libertarian".
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| this and the recent banksy 'umasking' by major news outlets is
| sad in our era of huge US governmental crimes and coverups.
| uxhacker wrote:
| Using the articles logic.
|
| Obviously Satoshi and Banksy are the same person. They are both
| from the same era and British.
|
| There are so many people I know from that Era who believed the
| same things that Mr. Back believed in. Half my work colleagues at
| the time where interested in distributed computers, Postage pay,
| and algorithmic payments.
|
| I am not convinced
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| Satoshi is the guy with the PhD in distributed computing who took
| a sabbatical during which bitcoin was published.
| nly wrote:
| Len Sassaman?
| sho_hn wrote:
| This was a fun article, but also an oddball collection of strong
| and weak claims.
|
| Some of the "isn't it interesting ..." type coincidences would,
| as people on this forum would know, be commonplace among the
| subculture or even just technologists, and often lack the
| comparison to the overall Cypherpunk corpus - for example: no,
| studying public-key cryptography in grad school certainly isn't a
| high-signal differentiating tell for Satoshi-ness.
|
| For some he does provide that though, and they're certainly
| compelling.
|
| What I like best about the Back attribution is that it totally
| makes sense in context of my operating model of humans and passes
| the Occam's Razor test: Still actively involved, interested in
| the governance, interested in acclaim/prestige, built up wealth
| masking his other wealth, etc. Ego and "Tell me you're Satoshi
| without telling me you're Satoshi" written all over it.
| levocardia wrote:
| Interesting: my Occam's Razor test is "$100B sitting around
| untouched, how can that be?" Well, simplest answer is that
| satoshi is dead.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| By now, this is a snipe hunt.
|
| If "Satoshi" were to ever try cashing out some of "his" BitCoin,
| I suspect that things could get interesting.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Seems like the IRS would have an enormous vested interest in
| tracking him down too...
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Would be darkly hilarious if Santoshi lost his wallet long ago...
|
| I've certainly lost a lot of the small scripts and utilities I
| wrote long ago. Can't remember any usernames, much less
| passwords, from 20 years ago...
| dools wrote:
| This is the most compelling "who is Satoshi?" post I've found:
|
| https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=628344.msg48198887#m...
|
| "I contend that James Simons put the team together that made up
| Satoshi Nakamoto and that Nick Szabo was the main public-facing
| voice behind the nym."
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Why would he do that surreptitiously, instead of just being
| clear that they were working on it? Why wouldn't they cash in
| the million or so bitcoins that were pre-mined? How did they
| get the whole team to communicate in a unified style? How did
| they get everyone to stay quiet after Bitcoin took off?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Looking at some of the linked examples, I did not feel convinced
| at the style similarity. For example:
|
| > In the spirit of building something in the public domain, Mr.
| Back and Satoshi also both created internet mailing lists
| dedicated to their creations -- the Hashcash list and the
| Bitcoin-dev list -- where they posted software updates listing
| new features and bug fixes in a format and style that looked
| strikingly similar.
|
| That paragraph links two release notes:
| https://www.freelists.org/post/hashcash/hashcash113-released...
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130401141714/http://sourceforg...
|
| They do have a similar "release notes rendered with Markdown"
| feel, but the actual text has some obvious capitalization and
| tone differences.
| dnnehgf wrote:
| satoshi:
| https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=show...
|
| adam back:
| https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=101601;sa...
|
| page through each of those profiles and search for the following
| strings:
|
| ")." "(i" "(e" "nor"
|
| you find:
|
| 1. adam back is constantly writing full sentences in parentheses
| with a period standing outside the end parenthesis. so, for
| example: "To review it will be clearer if you state your
| assumptions, and claimed benefits, and why you think those
| benefits hold. (Bear in mind if input assumptions are theoretical
| and known to not hold in practice, while that can be fine for
| theoretical results, it will be difficult to use the resulting
| conclusions in a real system)."
|
| that is non-standard, and satoshi never does it. when he (very
| rarely) uses parentheses for full sentences he either (a) (in a
| few cases) does not use a period at all (which is also non-
| standard), or (b) (in a single case) he puts it on the inside of
| the parentheses. back can barely get through a single long post
| without a full-sentence parenthesis. satoshi very rarely uses a
| full-sentence parenthesis.
|
| 2. back uses "(ie" and "(eg" very often. satoshi never uses
| these.
|
| 3. satoshi never uses "nor." back uses it very often.
| nodesocket wrote:
| Seems most probable it was Hal Finney. Hal passed away in 2014
| which explains the no movement of the Satoshi coins which are
| currently valued at a staggering ~$75 billion
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Maybe this is something to set Claude Mythos loose on. This seems
| like the kind of thing it would be good at.
| adi_kurian wrote:
| Yep def the lexical pattern piece.
| malbs wrote:
| When did Satoshi make an appearance in 2015? I couldn't find the
| spot in the article where the author cites it. Everywhere I've
| read it states his last interactions were 2010, and his wallet
| hasn't been touched since then either.
|
| Based on everything I've read, I think Satoshi is Len Sassaman
| cloche wrote:
| Search for this section:
|
| > Then, out of the blue, Satoshi appeared on the list with an
| email that neatly dovetailed with Mr. Back's position
| lateforwork wrote:
| Here it is:
|
| https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/6EC9DDF352DC4838AE9B088AB37...
|
| Satoshi came to Adam's rescue when it seemed like Adam is going
| to fail to prevent the fork.
| joshrw wrote:
| Terrible article. The real Satoshi is Nick Szabo and no one else
| is even close. Hal Finney, Wei Dai, etc. New York Times' quality
| has really gone downhill.
| niobe wrote:
| Steeped in confirmation bias.. the whole article - and apparently
| author's methods - are written from the point of view of trying
| to prove that Satoshi is Adam Back. This cannot be trusted, no
| matter how many times Back is mentioned in a single article
| blindriver wrote:
| Anyone who has access to Satoshi's account is worth $100B. If
| Satoshi were still alive some of the BTC would have been moved at
| least a little but they haven't.
|
| Whoever Satoshi was is now dead.
| cloche wrote:
| There was no guarantee that Bitcoin would take off. It may be
| tough to imagine looking back in retrospect but, in another
| world, Bitcoin could have turned out to have been another
| digital currency with limited value. Many people lost their
| keys in the early days when Bitcoin was worthless. It's not
| unreasonable to think the same wouldn't have happened to
| Satoshi. He may have also thrown them away on purpose.
| olalonde wrote:
| All you need to know about this "quest":
| https://xcancel.com/austinhill/status/2041986130871251141
|
| Plus, the most obvious reason that Adam Back is not Satoshi is
| that he'd absolutely take credit for Bitcoin if he could. And he
| would have put an end to Craig Wright's legal circus. The most
| plausible explanation is that Satoshi is either dead or
| incapacitated.
| eddiewithzato wrote:
| Look at his comment here, then you will realize why it's
| definitely Back. And why he certainly would never claim to be
| satoshi
|
| https://xcancel.com/adam3us/status/2041816020776611935?s=46
| olalonde wrote:
| I didn't realize anything. Everyone and their mother has been
| saying that about Satoshi since day one... Also, Adam would
| have infinitely more to gain from being Satoshi than from
| Satoshi remaining unknown. He's been trying to take credit
| for Bitcoin ever since he realized that Bitcoin was actually
| worth something (he initially dismissed it). All his actions
| point to someone who's largely motivated by financial gain
| whereas Satoshi hasn't touched a single of his 1M+ BTC.
|
| If you're interested in serious research about Satoshi's
| identity, try this paper instead:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.10257
| adastra22 wrote:
| And your HN account was created right between the release
| of the white paper and Bitcoin 0.1. Coincidence? Are you
| Satoshi?!?
|
| That's about the level of investigative journalism
| performed by NYT here. Thanks for being sensible.
| olalonde wrote:
| Maybe :) But seriously, Satoshi is most likely a
| relatively unknown dude. Why would you spend so much
| effort hiding your identity and then become a very public
| figure of the Bitcoin community? Among all candidates
| proposed, Len Sassaman checks the most boxes to me (e.g.
| died of suicide 2 months after Satoshi's last known
| message), but it's still probably not him.
| szmarczak wrote:
| As per the quotes, it could've been that he had read them,
| liked them and kept repeating them. However given other
| matching circumstances such as grammar this becomes unlikely.
| Also, this is just a single journalist; to know precisely
| this should be outsourced to a company doing forensics.
| ergocoder wrote:
| > The most plausible explanation is that Satoshi is either dead
| or incapacitated.
|
| He could have lost the key and doesn't want to be a target or
| ridiculed. Happened to a lot of people.
| Svoka wrote:
| Wouldn't Satoshi own some bitcoin in first blocks? Like about 60
| billion worth of bitcoins, the largest wallet in existence? For
| me this is necessary and sufficient proof of their persona.
| nullc wrote:
| Bad science, -- article contains a litany of points that are true
| for many other people (myself)-- and a number of the bits of I
| have personal experience with are just flatly untrue or
| misleading, e.g. citing Back's name at the top of a paper I
| coauthored as evidence of his importance to it, -- the names were
| alphabetic. Not that it was an important point, but I think
| failing to notice the names being alphabetic and including it
| speaks to the bar being held to the other 'evidence' there.
|
| That said-- I guess credit goes for naming someone who is
| essentially credible in the sense that they had the relevant
| interests and aptitudes, a lot of the journalists writing on this
| stuff have picked ludicrous names out of a hat. But so did a lot
| of other people. And unfortunately, the real person was clearly
| trying to obscure their identity and so they easily could have
| been adding chaff similarity to other people. (which may explain
| why there are good matches with _multiple_ of the highest
| visibility ecash authors). For the few journalists that don 't
| finger absolutely absurd people they keep going over and over
| again to some of the most visible people from the cypherpunks
| community, but in reality it may well have been a lurker that
| never posted or only posted pseudonymously.
|
| Probably the research on this stuff tends to not be very good
| because people who would do good work realize that it's a
| pointless effort and care that incorrectly implicating them
| causes harm by putting their safety at risk... and so they don't
| publish.
|
| In any case I would be _extremely_ surprised if it were so-- I
| 've known Adam for a long time, and he's been consistently
| straightforward and guileless. When he came into Bitcoin he had a
| number of significant misunderstandings that Satoshi couldn't
| have had, (unless Bitcoin was developed multiple people, of
| course). To have consistently played dumb like that would be
| entirely inconsistent with the person I know, and perhaps outside
| of his capability.
|
| Fundamentally the article ignores the base rate and the
| correlations... as in yes this or that thing is true about adam
| and satoshi, but it's also true of a large number of odd people
| who have the other prerequisites. Normal people don't talk about
| pre-images but cryptographers do. When you use correlated
| characteristics you overweight the underlying common factor. You
| also basically hand Satoshi a win on hiding if he was in fact
| copying visible characteristics from other people.
|
| In any case, at least I haven't yet heard rumors that this was a
| paid piece by someone with an agenda ... sad that I can't say
| that about all NYT writing.
|
| Aside, the comments about Adam's body language and emphatic
| denial: I can tell you what that is straight up: He's afraid of
| being harmed because of these accusations and he's afraid of
| being criticized for _not_ denying it if he doesn 't do so
| directly and clearly enough doubly so because some actual Satoshi
| fakers have accused him of being one himself, and tried to
| dismiss the respect Adam has earned as an unearned product of
| being suspected of being Satoshi. This is absolutely a witch-test
| where you're dammed one way or the other: In the HBO documentary,
| Peter Todd gave a cutesy demurring response which was the polar
| opposite of Adam's and in that case the program used _that_ as
| evidence of the same. That kind of subjective judgement is just a
| coat-rack to hang your preconceived notions on.
| kinakomochidayo wrote:
| Why are journalists giving this guy exposure?
|
| He doesn't write anything like Satoshi.
| SilentM68 wrote:
| Satoshi has many contributors. In my view, he/she is not one
| person but many. Why, because it would take a genius with
| multiple skills, e.g. engineering, programming, cryptography,
| mathematics, financial knowledge and a lot of time, a lotta time
| to come up with something like this.
|
| It is more plausible that Satoshi was a rogue AI, ET, the
| Illuminati or future time traveler instead of one single person
| :)
| tclover wrote:
| Satoshi Nakamoto is CIA
| Syzygies wrote:
| That's funny. My paper on digital timestamping is one of eight
| references in the original bitcoin paper. You'd think if anyone
| was serious about unmasking her they would have asked me.
| D-Coder wrote:
| So... who is Satoshi?
| suzzer99 wrote:
| > Ancestors of today's message boards, mailing lists were large
| group emails in old typewriter font that subscribers received in
| their inbox. To communicate, respondents replied-all.
|
| There was no HTML email in the early 90s. The font was the
| display font of whatever you read it on. Sheesh NYT.
| gxd wrote:
| Believe it or not, but the answer is revealed in this videogame:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/3040110/Outsider/
|
| Spoiler: it's not Adam Back!
| tgtweak wrote:
| Has Back not produced any c++ code from his thesis or days in
| University? That would be more useful for satoshi-profiling than
| his written prose, I would think.
| vlatoshi wrote:
| Adam fits better as someone Satoshi respected, not who Satoshi
| was... Bitcoin explicitly cites hashcash. If Adam was so careful,
| why would he name himself in the paper; tongue-in-cheek? hide in
| plain sight? I don't buy it...
|
| Hal Finney is the strongest alternative, but even there, I'm not
| fully convinced. Hal had the technical profile, mined early, and
| received the first transaction. But he also feels almost too
| obvious. I believe, just as Adam Back's hashcash, Hal's RPOW was
| a precursor.
|
| I lean toward Len Sassaman, who was deeply embedded in the exact
| world Satoshi seemed to come from: remailers, anonymity systems,
| OpenPGP, and privacy-first engineering. Same things that got his
| conversations with Adam and Hal going... Adam here is probably
| just protecting his friend's legacy
| colordrops wrote:
| You could game theory this out forever. Maybe he put his name
| in there because people like you would only use first order
| logic and conclude that it wasn't him because it would be crazy
| to "hide in plain site".
|
| I always had Adam Back as my main candidate because HashCash
| somehow had the same energy and thought to it. But I have no
| concrete reason to believe it was him.
| eleventen wrote:
| So clearly I cannot choose the wine in front of me!
| lexandstuff wrote:
| I had always assumed that all of them shared the pseudonym of
| Satoshi, along with Nick Szabo.
|
| Back wrote the white paper with input from Hal and Nick Szabo.
| Sassaman did the coding work on the client. Sassaman had the
| keys to the Satoshi wallet, hence it never moving since his
| passing.
|
| Since Satoshi is a collective, it means that each of them
| individually can claim, without lying, that they're not
| Satoshi.
|
| That's my uninformed guess.
| jojobas wrote:
| Why would a newspaper openly try to doxx someone who did nothing
| wrong?
|
| Clearly the guy doesn't want to be public and there is no public
| interest in figuring him out either.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The simplest filter to exclude potential Satoshi candidates is to
| read Satoshi's early posts discussing bitcoin which never seems
| to come up in these convos.
|
| He had a calm, cool, consistent, professional demeanor. Always
| worlds different than the people people claim him to be.
|
| You'd have to believe these public figures were playing 4D chess
| where they invented a persona and spent a couple years impeccably
| roleplaying it with no mistakes only to abandon it.
|
| Aside from it being incredibly difficult, unlikely, and
| premeditated to do that, you can read the posts of Szabo et al
| and see they literally don't have it in them.
|
| Meanwhile, I'm thinking of that Show HN 10 years ago that
| deanonymized all of our HN alt accounts with a basic trigram
| comparison or whatever it was, even alt accounts with three short
| posts.
| ex-aws-dude wrote:
| Its a good story but it sorta seems like the author decided on
| Adam Back then was working backwards to prove it by the end
| dmfdmf wrote:
| My working hypothesis has always been that Satoshi was a CIA or
| NSA working group partly to fund black ops. Also, it could be
| that Bitcoin was a psyop to get people used to digital currency
| followed by the bait and switch to CBDC. Seem to be working.
| tavavex wrote:
| Can I just ask why people are so fixated on revealing Satoshi's
| identity? This article phrases it as some pure, innocent and
| almost academic pursuit, driven by curiosity and the mystique
| itself. But the amount of effort spent on trying to find Satoshi
| is immense. He must be the internet's most doxxed person by now.
| Is it just because of his wealth? Is someone trying to exact
| revenge on him? Or is he wanted by the authorities of some
| country? Why is finding him so important?
| farfatched wrote:
| I'm curious about his life, in the same way I might read a
| biography or the Early Life section on a Wikipedia page.
|
| Some people like mysteries.
| wpm wrote:
| So am I. I presume I can read if after he passes away, if I
| am still around. Otherwise I am content to respect people's
| wishes for anonymity and privacy, as there are plenty of
| other interesting things to learn about.
| farfatched wrote:
| I agree. I'm interested, but think Satoshi should keep his
| anonymity.
|
| I was articulating why someone might want to know, as
| tavavex asked.
| tavavex wrote:
| What I'm saying is that the overall amount of effort being
| spent on this isn't very proportional to sheer curiosity.
| Curious people may go out of their way to do something
| difficult, but years-long research campaigns with a single
| person in the crosshair feel like a step too far. Not even
| the perpetrators of famous unsolved crimes receive this much
| scrutiny. I don't doubt there's many people in the mix who
| are just curious about this, like you are, but I feel like
| people who spend months of their lives on this could be
| trying to get at something bigger. Maybe hurting him or
| trying to profit off of the knowledge somehow, or even just
| becoming famous for being the person who found Satoshi
| Nakamoto.
| ChaitanyaSai wrote:
| Here's my armchair two cents: Whoever it is, has to be British.
| The language is unmistakeably British or Commonwealth. It's
| likely him. I'd wager if there was a polymarket bet. But I also
| feel for him. Does this make him a target for both half-wit
| criminials and rogue nation states?
| connorboyle wrote:
| > And Mr. Back's thesis project focused on C++ -- the same
| programming language Satoshi used to code the first version of
| the Bitcoin software.
|
| I know the author isn't claiming this is definitive evidence, but
| I think it's so comically weak it is probably not worth
| mentioning at all.
| piekvorst wrote:
| It seems like this "journalist" speaks English. Guess who also
| spoke English? That's exactly right, Satoshi did.
| voldacar wrote:
| The common linguistic quirks are interesting and extremely
| convincing at first glance, but the article doesn't investigate
| C++ coding style, which as others have mentioned, seems quite
| different between Back and Satoshi. And Satoshi didn't believe
| the blocksize should be set in stone, the notion that he just
| casually changed his mind on that isn't impossible but deserves a
| closer look than the article gives it.
| gyomu wrote:
| Simple question for anyone who's familiar with this world of
| journalism: how does the author and the NYTimes cope with the
| fact that making such claims paint a huge target on the person
| they claim to have "unmasked"?
|
| Satoshi's wallets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and
| there have been kidnappings/torture/murders for much less than
| that.
|
| Do they just not care about the ethical implications?
|
| And really, for what? What is gained by "unmasking" Satoshi other
| than satisfying one's curiosity? There is no argument to be made
| there for the greater public good or anything like that.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| I was just wondering the same thing.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Exposing the wealthy is pretty standard journalism
| anamax wrote:
| And if this guy isn't Satoshi?
|
| And if he comes to harm as a result of someone believing
| the NYT?
| righthand wrote:
| Then the person who harmed him will be prosecuted. And
| life will go on.
|
| The NY Times isn't calling for violence.
| Topfi wrote:
| Harm from exposure can take a lot of shapes and sizes
| that go beyond the physical and the potential prosecution
| that someone may be held accountable I find weak.
| chii wrote:
| > Then the person who harmed him will be prosecuted ...
| NY Times isn't calling for violence.
|
| And the negligent driver also didn't mean to cause
| injury, yet we have laws on negligent driving.
|
| If the NY Times would have known that harm could come to
| someone by having information published, they should
| consult and/or take measures to prevent that harm (or at
| least, take measures to minimize it).
| yreg wrote:
| And yet they would be responsible.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I think the wallets go well beyond "hundreds of millions".
| Aren't there like a million Bitcoin in dormant wallets
| associated with Satoshi? Personally, I'd assumed that whoever
| the person or persons were, they're dead because nobody can
| resist the pull of tens of billions of dollars regardless of
| their ideological position on cryptocurrencies. But that's just
| a guess.
|
| There's absolutely a public interest in this. Sorry. This is a
| trillion dollar market now. Was this a state actor? If so, why?
| what was the plan here exactly? I see absolutely no reason to
| respect anonymity here. You don't get to sit on $50 billion and
| have people respect your desire to remain hidden.
| adventured wrote:
| An estimated 22,000 addresses, 1.1 million Bitcoin. Present
| value $78 billion. That would make him the 23rd richest
| person in the world. Bill Gates by comparison is 'only' worth
| $102 billion these days.
|
| If you priced Gates backwards in gold, his $102 billion is
| about $13 billion two decades ago. He hasn't kept ahead of
| the destruction of the dollar very well.
| jmyeet wrote:
| 1.1m Bitcoin is currently $77B not $7B.
|
| Gold is a weird one. It's has a hell of a run over the last
| decade. I'm not sure it looked so rosy in 2015. I kinda
| feel like betting on gold is betting on the end of
| civilization. I don't really want to be right.
| zzzoom wrote:
| If any of those addresses sold a single sat the price would
| crash _hard_.
| timr wrote:
| > He hasn't kept ahead of the destruction of the dollar
| very well.
|
| The dollar is trading pretty much at 30-year historic highs
| relative to all other currencies. You have to go back to
| ~2000 to find a stronger era, and then the 1980s before
| that.
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy
| brainwad wrote:
| > He hasn't kept ahead of the destruction of the dollar
| very well.
|
| That hasn't been his goal. For the last two decades he's
| been running a huge charitable foundation...
| johnnienaked wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. If you don't want to be famous in
| today's day and age, don't do infamous shit.
| zamadatix wrote:
| At least Adam Back is already publicly known to be worth at
| least tens of millions anywyas. Many of those dozens/hundreds
| of other guesses are not so lucky.
|
| If the private key still exists, the BTC would be worth more
| like 10s of billions though. I choose to believe the key is
| long gone from this world though, whoever originally had it.
| hart_russell wrote:
| Long gone until quantum computers crack all the legacy
| wallets
| klipt wrote:
| At which point the bitcoin in legacy wallets is clearly
| worthless
| bluecalm wrote:
| I was thinking along the same lines. Isn't it just doxxing?
| Going deep into someone's online history and making hypothesis
| about who they are in real life, then publishing their name and
| what they do?
| chii wrote:
| Indeed, unless they're already a public person (such as
| celebrity or public figure of note).
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >Satoshi's wallets are worth hundreds of millions of dollars,
| and there have been kidnappings/torture/murders for much less
| than that.
|
| So if Forbes publishes a list of the richest people in the
| world, it makes them targets?
| anshumankmr wrote:
| do you need the forbes list of billionaires to know who is
| bezos, gates or musk?
| helloplanets wrote:
| Sadly it does. Most of those people have to spend a lot of
| money on security. But usually it's not the Forbes list that
| specifically outs them as being wealthy. You can't really
| build a billion dollar company under the radar.
|
| This is just a strange situation where someone has made
| billions without their identity being known, without being a
| criminal.
| aaa_aaa wrote:
| When you are not actually rich, it matters.
| chii wrote:
| No, because those people are already public figures. They own
| companies that are publicly known (i don't mean publicly
| traded), and thus by proxy, are public face of those
| companies.
|
| Or they appear(ed) in public to make something of being in
| public (such as lobbying, or civic activities, or
| philanthropy etc). This makes any article about them not a
| doxx - they already revealed themselves publicly. You cannot
| segregate public affairs of the person with private affairs.
| Lapsa wrote:
| a killer from Moscow used to cost $5000
| johnfn wrote:
| The NYTimes infamously doxxed Slate Star Codex[1], despite him
| basically begging them not to because it would upend his
| psychiatry practice, back in 2020 for no reason other than
| because they could.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23610416
| adastra22 wrote:
| Hundreds of billions, not millions.
| taberiand wrote:
| At least until they actually tried selling them
| verisimi wrote:
| I would assume that they don't care about the unmasking,
| because the whole thing is a just a misleading show, intended
| to misdirect you from the reality. I don't know the reality,
| but perhaps if the USG was behind the creation of BTC, that
| would explain it.
| arthurofbabylon wrote:
| This is a journalistic publication with a foundational value of
| transparency. If you study the history of institutions that
| favor transparency, they rarely ever need to further justify
| efforts of transparency beyond that underlying value.
| Transparency needs no further analysis of second order effects.
|
| "What is gained...?" is simply not a question asked, for the
| same reason that advocates for privacy rarely if ever
| circumstantially ask the same question.
| iwontberude wrote:
| Well given they have hunreds of millions of dollars to protect
| themselves with, it seems like it would be a good time to start
| using it.
| potsandpans wrote:
| > I'd learned enough by then to know that P.G.P. relies on
| public-key cryptography. >So does Bitcoin... > And Mr. Back's
| thesis project focused on C++ -- the same programming language
| Satoshi used to code the first version of the Bitcoin software.
|
| This is such poor quality writing, I'm kind of shocked to see it
| in nyt. It reads like a family guy cutaway lampooning a
| whodunnit.
|
| I honestly can't believe this warranted a full piece. I was
| wondering if this a symptom of the author going down some llm
| psychosis rabbit hole?
|
| _youre absolutely right, you've repeatedly shown signs that back
| is satoshi. The pattern is clear: back isn't just some
| cypherpunk, he's Satoshi._
| rurban wrote:
| Aba wouldn't have said: "Send X bitcoins to my priority hotline
| at this IP and I'll read the message personally."
|
| Because aba knew about how email worked, unlike Satoshi. A
| hotline is not at in IP, it is at a domain with an MX record.
| Satoshi was a Windows guy.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| What if Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever he is, lost the key to his
| wallet?
|
| I've read somewhere that there are some very big bitcoin wallets
| nobody has touched since long ago. So it's safe to assume the
| keys are gone.
|
| Does it matter if a large proportion of bitcoins are gone from
| the network?
| sergiotapia wrote:
| john mcafee already unmasked who it is years ago.
|
| "Now, there are only two of the accused who were British and only
| one of those has two spaces in every one of his papers. Figure it
| out people. It'll take you 15 minutes."
|
| british guy.
|
| the paper has two spaces after periods, and only one of these two
| british guys has two spaces after each period.
|
| seems pretty conclusive.
|
| it's Adam Back
| johnnienaked wrote:
| I thought bitcoin was cool for about 6 months back in 2014, and
| read everything I could about it. For the life of me I simply
| can't understand how people are still so interested in it or who
| created it.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I think there's a pretty good chance Adam Back is Satoshi, but I
| don't think this is a great article. Perhaps he's rendering a
| careful scientific process in a way that makes for a readable
| narrative, but as written, it sounds like a lot of gut feel and
| confirmation bias.
|
| The biggest new contribution to the Satoshi question seems to be
| ad hoc stylometry. To have faith in his methodology, he should be
| testing it on identitying other people. If he were to show me
| that a repeatable methodology that doesn't require hand tuning
| can identify other people with low error rate, and it said
| Back=Satoshi, that would be much more convincing.
|
| Like so much tech writing done by non engineers, there are many
| places where mundane things are made to sound remarkable (e.g.
| Black's thesis used C++, the "heated debate").
| iamankur wrote:
| I think the NSA is Satoshi Nakamoto. That makes most sense.
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