Mystery creator of Bitcoin identified, new HBO documentary claims

misk@sopuli.xyz to Technology@lemmy.world – 192 points – Mystery creator of Bitcoin identified, new HBO documentary claims
politico.eu

Intriguingly, as the date for the airing of the documentary has drawn near, a number of high-value wallets from the "Satoshi era" have become active for the first time since 2009.

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extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Not really, all it requires is someone to produce a signed message with one of Satoshi's private keys, which can be easily verified with the public addresses on the blockchain. Whoever produced that message can be proven to possess that private key. Nothing short of that would be believable by the crypto nerds.

If we presume that Satoshi understood that Bitcoin may be valuable one day and kept the keys private, that would mean that the signer really is Satoshi, or one of his associates or heirs Satoshi trusted wih access. Even if that person wasn't actually Satoshi, their word on who it is would be considered authoritative.

Unless it's Craig. Fuck that guy. Nobody believes him.

That is the extraordinary evidence being referenced.

Ordinary claims require ordinary evidence, then?

No, because it's an extraordinary claim.

"Extraordinary" means outside the realm of ordinary. Signing a message is very ordinary

EDIT: Sorry I ment to say: saying "I own a key" is ordinary, and signing a message is the ordinary way to prove you own the key

Sure, anyone can sign with a key. Having THE key is the extraordinary part.

Saying you know who Satoshi is, that's the claim, and that's an extraordinary claim.

I hate how this phrase has been abused so much. There's nothing particularly extraordinary here--we're not talking about bigfoot or aliens--and the whole point of a documentary like this is to lay out evidence.

Where is the extraordinary claim? Pigs have been unmasking bitcoin owners for years. And the tools they use wouldn't be out of reach for an amateur detective or journalist.

There are laws and regulations to keep people out of your Visa statement, but the bitcoin ledger is pubic for anybody who cares to look.

They don't know. and the documentary will be bigfoot level speculation.

Hal Finney, no?

The software engineer, cryptography expert, and cyberpunk who received the first ever Bitcoin transaction and had a neighbor named "Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto"?

It's overwhelmingly likely to be someone none of us have ever heard of. If nothing else because that's the base rate. Also because someone nerdy enough to care about this stuff before cryptocurrency existed couldn't possibly have a life.

the NSA or other intelligence org invented it and provides ongoing funding to collect an enormous library of SHA256 hashes to aid in reducing the decryption space of SHA256 so they can watch people watching porn.

That's... that's a Pornhub category right? "Watching people watching porn" has got to be a tab on that site. It's sounds too much like a kink to not be a kink.

The NSA has many kinks. Watching people watch porn, precious bodily fluids/anti-flouride porn, that kind of thing. Good for them.

The nsa wants to watch people who are watching the pornhub video of someone else watching porn. The third level there is more difficult to find

Watch geraldo rivera, as he finds out what's in Capone's safe!

(Yes, I'm old)

It's truly not even a mystery.

There is only one person on earth who had both the skills and experience to create bitcoin, and actually was working to create bitcoin in the months leading up to the white paper.

That person is Nick Szabo.

Oh please.

The evidence for Szabo is circumstantial at best. I’ll give you he has the skills and experience and was working on digital currency at the time.

But Szabo was just one of hundreds of people working on different ideas related to digital currency around the time Bitcoin was released.

And how many hundreds of people developed their own cryptocurrency after getting the idea from the Bitcoin whitepaper? Clearly he not the only “person on earth who had both the skills and experience”.

Not to mention Szabo has repeatedly denied being Satoshi.

If it isn't Nick Szabo, it is somebody who has spent years ensuring all clues point to nobody but Nick Szabo, up to and including placing a Satoshi nakamoto statue in a rural Polish town where Nick Szabo's grandfather was born.

Let's just look at this logically: if you had written the 30+ papers building the ideas that eventually became bitcoin, actually were building bitcoin and months away from releasing, and then had all your work stolen without credit nor citation, you wouldn't be the world's biggest supporter of bitcoin. You would be mad that somebody stole your work and then spent years framing you for its creation.

The first usage of the word bitcoin was even on Nick Szabo's own blog, under a comment by the user Eddie. This leads to two outcomes: Eddie is Satoshi, or Nick's work wasn't stolen, bit gold is bitcoin and Nick is Satoshi.

Or it was likely not a single individual, but a government contractor. How else could a compartmentalized secret remain so for this long?

A single individual is the most likely way to keep a secret compartmentalized.

The government sucks at keeping secrets despite what the conspiracy nuts say.

I hope they either never find out who made it or the person who made it is dead and has lost their private keys somewhere where they can never ever be retrieved. Like, can you imagine the threat to your life that would occur if you were unmasked as Satoshi? Whoever the entity is deserves to be left alone. They did a great service for humanity, and humanity should respect them.

What service did they provide to humanity, one more speculative asset but that also contributes to global warming?

Allowed people to buy drugs online

How about sound money that works at the speed of information, unlike gold, and can replace our banking system and all the fossil fuels needed to run it?

Bitcoin isn't that.

True, it's not private and has too low throughput for transactions per second to be used as day-to-day currency, but something like Monero intends to solve both of those things. There are actually people accepting Monero as a day-to-day currency and living off of it, including myself.

Yeah but that's not Bitcoin tho

Fair point. There's a good chance somebody would have come up with the idea at some point, but Satoshi was the first to do so with the blockchain, which really did change everything.