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0 pointsalchemist1e91y ago0 comments

Let’s clarify a few things.

First, thank you for posting on HN and for your time. I also want to express my deep respect for you and all developers who helped build Bitcoin. I recognize it has come at a personal cost.

A brief disclaimer - I’m not a significant open-source developer, but my life trajectory is entirely due to open source software, and I’ve achieved substantial financial success through my C++ and Linux skills. I became interested in Bitcoin in early 2011, yet I’ve never contributed directly, but have followed it closely, own it, and used it extensively for various purposes. I did spend some time on the wizards IRC and read the Bitcointalk forum, where I made a few minor posts.

I mention myself as there’s an interesting asymmetry with pseudonyms online. I know a lot about you since your username is a handle, but you likely know little about me, which is intentional on my part. You jokingly refer to me as a potential Satoshi candidate. The distinction between handle and pseudonym is important.

retep was a handle. Satoshi is a pseudonym. Many usernames are handles, some are pseudonyms like mine. Both you and Peter Todd are pretending that retep was a pseudonym. This is misleading and puzzling, as I’m confident you both understand the difference and its significance in this case. I sense misdirection.

Now, let’s address the foundational question:

Should we try to identify Satoshi?

You, Peter Todd, and the “We are Satoshi” crowd argue against it. This is absurd if we agree that Bitcoin could ideally become a global reserve asset and continue to gain value. Satoshi’s 1.1 million coins are the elephant in the room. They likely hold back Bitcoin significantly due to the uncertainty surrounding their status and intentions.

> We may be suffering from a disconnect about the caliber of people that contributed to Bitcoin early on. Every one of them was weird, every one was exceptional. Bitcoin was the most interesting and radical new thing at least since P2P file trading

There is no disconnect. We can agree that Satoshi could have been any number of them. The question is: Who?

> Petertodd's about being poor re-C++ were specifically related to the Bitcoin codebase.

As a professional C++ developer since the mid-'90s, I respectfully disagree with the narrative that something is "different" or "special" about either the nov08 draft code and version 0.1. There are two variants of this narrative - the Amir Taaki view that the coder was an amateur or scientist, and your and Todd’s claim that it was a skilled C++ coder. I find both takes to be misguided. The genius lies in the design, the code itself is neither amateur nor professional, but something in between. Version 0.1, with roughly 7000 loc, isn’t particularly impressive stylistically, the design, however, is stunning, as is the whitepaper.

> And he like me would generally needs to get someone else to explain varrious fancy C++ features in it these days.

This is strange because we’re discussing Satoshi’s code from 2008/2009, not C++17 or contemporary features. Again, I sense misdirection in claiming that Todd or you couldn’t have written the code.

> > It’s actually very likely in my opinion that Todd could easily figure out where he was that specific day and there would be corroborating evidence of that. > Yet you can't produce it for yourself, you don't see the issue here?

I can. I looked through my old emails and know exactly where I was that day. It’s not particularly hard for many people. It was right after Christmas '08, during the market crisis, while CES was happening. I could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

> Or maybe I was on a work trip. But if I was I wouldn't have any evidence of it, and even if I did it quite possibly would have been to California (though not socal, thankfully for my kidnapping risk).

Let’s revisit this later. I have a question for you

> So I guess you're Satoshi! Glad we settled it. :D

People who know me in real life but lack deep technical knowledge have asked me this seriously it seemed. It was amusing. One pointed out I used hashes of hashes in a tool I wrote at work! Very suspicious!

If someone genuinely believes this, what would I do? I’d release evidence to prove I’m not Satoshi. It’s not particularly difficult, there are 575 posts on Bitcointalk alone. I’ve likely been verifiably present in various locations during that time—presentations, on a plane, in a family video, at dinner, in a doctor's office. Those timestamps can serve as alibis. It seems like you don’t like Hal’s alibi based on the timestamps approach, but it can be a pretty solid approach I think.

Why don’t more candidates show alibis? Are they “protecting” Satoshi or objecting on principle? Adam Back should release all his emails (with DKIM-signed headers). Seriously, he should. Why? Because money is a social construct. If anything, Bitcoin has proven this threefold. Satoshi’s privacy cannot trump the need to determine the status and intentions of his coins. It’s the coins, stupid! should be the slogan.

> (though not socal, thankfully for my kidnapping risk).

I deeply sympathize with any trouble bad actors may have caused you. It’s horrific and outrageous. I fully understand. Personally, I carry multiple weapons for self-defense. Unfortunately, there will be a cost to the "disintermediation of the nation-state." I should read up on your experience if it’s been described, unfortunately, I’m unfamiliar with the details, just that I’ve seen it mentioned several times.

That said, did you have a risk in 2008/9 for some reason?

Before I say something extremely controversial, I want to draw an analogy about conspiracy theories and why, in my opinion, their purpose and function are often misunderstood and under appreciated. We understand that truth can’t be based on a central authority, they will corrupt it. Like economics, it must be messy, organic, distributed, and even error-prone. Conspiracy theories are like boundary conditions in math for the collective consciousness of a sociological system; they are designed to explore and push limits.

Can you explain this?

----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE----

This Transaction was made by Paul Leroux to Hal Finney on January 12, 2009 #bitcoin

----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNATURE---- Version: Bitcoin-qt (1.0) Address: 1Q2TWHE3GMdB6BZKafqwxXtWAWgFt5Jvm3

HM7vpPSUbNsfDHRX6gv8xxWcVNHEc/3pOk0YrVehaGoUdbWizznfzOdELkLd1EjSXsW1oE5vHAkNAPzrAVzhuoI= ----END BITCOIN SIGNATURE----

How does this exist? What is a logical explanation? It appears to show that the private keys to the address where Hal received the first Bitcoin transaction signed the message. At what date we have no idea, most likely after Hal’s passing. Yet it seems to exist and be properly signed. Did Hal lose his keys? To whom? When? Why?

Paul Le Roux is a certifiable madman, likely a sociopath, a mafia boss turned agency informant, and yet also likely a genius.

Did his people kidnap you once? Did he hire Craig Wright? Does he somehow have a copy of one of Hal’s drives with his keys?

What is going on here?

Are you sure identifying Satoshi isn’t the right thing to do?

0 comments

nullc1y ago

> Satoshi’s 1.1 million coins are the elephant in the room

The 1.1 million claim is a part of Craig Wright's fraud and is pedantically false (it's too many coins-- we know too many other owners).

What is actually known is that starting two weeks after bitcoin's release and running up to about a year after some person or organization mined with custom software that makes it possible to identify their blocks. None of these 13 thousand-ish blocks have been spent (the ish comes from the fact that the fingerprint is fuzzy). There is no evidence connecting this mining to Satoshi specifically though it's surely not a entirely crazy guess. The blocks that are known to be connected to Satoshi aren't part of this pattern.

The people most interested in this seem to be the pathological liars and so the claim gets continually expanded. Someone on reddit a day or two ago even insisted it was 2 million coins.

In any case even at the upper limit of common (false) claims it's 5% of all coins. Other entities are known to control more coins than that and it normally goes without remark. I think your argument is a grasping justification for abusive and unethical conduct, and the _pursuit_ of Satoshi is a gross prurient interest. You're not entitled to Satoshi's identity, full stop. If that makes you not want to use Bitcoin-- that's a choice you're free to make, no one is forcing you to use it.

> This is strange because we’re discussing Satoshi’s code from 2008/2009, not C++17 or contemporary features.

No. You're being sloppy. You and HBO have faulted Todd for making public statements about not being much of a C++ coder. These were statements made in the context of bitcoin conferences regarding his own ongoing contributions to Bitcoin. HBO implied that this was untrue and deceptive and constituted evidence that he was Satoshi because he was trying to mislead people about his background.

When it comes to "could someone have done it" -- it doesn't go very far, as Satoshi could have learned C++ specifically for that project precisely because it wasn't their preferred language. If your willing to believe a very young and inexperienced person could have created Bitcoin (still learning as they went) then someone writing in something other than their favorite language should seem even more likely.

In any case, feel free to go find some actual similarity in published code and bring it up. Absent that it's just a bunch of handwaving befitting only the code-illiterate.

> People who know me in real life but lack deep technical knowledge have asked me this seriously it seemed. It was amusing. One pointed out I used hashes of hashes in a tool I wrote at work! Very suspicious!

Yes, so you've seen the kind of fallacious reasoning people can engage in. "I know of a couple technical people interest in bitcoin, among them this one has some extra factor-- so they're probably satoshi". It doesn't just happen to people who lack deep technical knowledge.

> If someone genuinely believes this, what would I do? I’d release evidence to prove I’m not Satoshi. It’s not particularly difficult,

You keep reiterating how easy it is to produce proof. But when you first did it I requested you do so. You still haven't!

> I carry multiple weapons for self-defense.

The concern of many people isn't just the self-defense. It's what comes after. So you killed the idiot that was threatening you? Now you have to live with the consequence of that, which may include arrest and imprisonment. People who kill in obvious self defense still often go through a world of trouble for it.

Certainly it's better to be alive and charged with murder than dead. But it is very bad.

Harms like those created by being accused of being satoshi can be somewhat mitigated but they can't be eliminated except by not making the accusation in the first place.

The most recent attack pattern used by the cryptokidnappers seems to be to break into your home when you're not there and hide. You come home and find yourself facing a gun. It's pretty hard to secure against that without considerable cost.

> Can you explain this?

Yes, I can: https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-inte... search maxwell.

> At what date we have no idea, most likely after Hal’s passing

Certainly after because the particular signing algorithm used postdates him.

Le roux was in custody since September 2013, I don't think there is any reason to believe he was involved in that message. Considering that the message is reported to have been made public by an investor that previously went to prison from securities fraud, my assumption is that the key was purchased from the extortionists that attacked Hal's family and then was deployed in that manner in lame market manipulation attempt that was thwarted by competent journalism.

> Are you sure identifying Satoshi isn’t the right thing to do?

As much as one can be sure of anything of that sort, but it's also an irrelevant question: I don't know who Satoshi is, and as far as I can tell no one does.

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