Ask HN: Why do people care about Satoshi Nakamoto's identity?

faanghacker · 2024-02-26T22:23:04.000Z

Why is this even a thing, people wondering about who Satoshi really is? What good would it do for the rest of us to find out his real identity? Bitcoin has already taken off without him publicly revealing himself. There are plenty of cryptocurrency experts out there commenting on it.Is this just a case of celebrity worship? Or is there something practical that I'm missing?I have searched this question online and haven't found any threads discussing it. The only results I've found were threads discussing whom he might be, or why he might have chosen to stay anonymous.

mikewarot 2 years ago |

Estimates place the size of Satoshi Nakamoto's holdings at between 600,000 BTC and 1.1 million BTC.

The vast majority of Satoshi Nakamoto's wallets received a 50 BTC block reward and have remained dormant since.

If those resources were to come into play, it could cause a major disruption of the value of bitcoin.

muzani 2 years ago | |

Also someone with that much wealth probably owes some tax somewhere. He's pretty much El Dorado.

ffpip 2 years ago | | |

He hasn't spent anything. Do any countries have taxes on assets instead of income?

muzani 2 years ago | | |

"Do any countries have taxes on assets instead of income?"

Not applicable to this situation, but zakat in Islamic countries requires a 2.5% payment to the government, similar to a tithe. This is why many of the theocratic Islamic countries have 0% income tax. It's always applied to assets above a certain amount, but some places apply it on income as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

But the joke is that you can't run from taxes. If there's that much money floating around in one person's wallet, someone will figure out how to tax it. If it doesn't get taxed, well, someone will figure out how to rob him.

DANmode 2 years ago | | |

You may have shone a light on the real point, here.

For as long as they're not taxed, robbed, or otherwise, people will continue to take confidence in the security of the protocol.

iraKleiman 2 years ago | | |

how do u report a digital wallet theft? are their cyber cops in cyber space

ffpip 2 years ago | | |

You can report cyber crimes to cops in your country

tromp 2 years ago | | |

Yes, several countries have a so-called wealth tax, in addition to income tax.

techcode 2 years ago | | |

In The Netherlands normal savings (retirement/pension savings are taxed once you retire), stocks, crypto ...etc are all taxed to everyone except Dutch Royal Family.

yulaow 2 years ago | | |

yes, in Italy for example you pay 0.2% annually on whatever you hold (stock, bonds, cryptos, etc) even if you sell nothing or they depreciate compared to the year before

ncgl 2 years ago | | |

This is what property tax is, right?

ffpip 2 years ago | | |

I meant assets like crypto, stocks, etc

syndeo 2 years ago | |

(For the lazy, that's between $33.5B and $61.5B, at current exchange rates.)

sk11001 2 years ago |

Because it's interesting, someone did a significant thing and we don't know who they are.

> What good would it do for the rest of us to find out his real identity?

Other people's curiosity isn't about you or some potential good that you receive.

LiquidSky 2 years ago |

You’re really overthinking this.

It’s a mystery. People like mysteries. People naturally want to see mysteries solved. It’s that simple.

callalex 2 years ago |

For me it’s interesting because in the general case, nobody is perfect at opsec and eventually slips up. Satoshi is a super prominent counter-example.

DANmode 2 years ago | |

Yes.

Either an absolute legend in the sec pub,

or powerful group(s) have incentive to retain the secret.

nullc 2 years ago |

Fairly few people do, but some of them can't seem to shut up about it. Media outlets like the cheap clicks too.

It's also like those cheap "reddit comments" that are discouraged on HN-- the sort of thing anyone can comment on which most people will find mildly interesting.

The discussion threads are usually low in insight and even contain a lot of outright falsehoods, but the people involved are having fun.

nunobrito 2 years ago |

The identity seems to have been shared initially between 2 people. One of them being Craig Wright, the other is the genius Dave Kleinman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Kleiman

Dave died years ago following depression, before releasing bitcoin he published papers on the topic of Cipher Block Chaining and similar cryptographic tech: https://www.davekleiman.com/

This has already been known for years. There were good reasons to keep his anonimity at the time, especially if you consider that his main customer was the same government where cryptography tech is considered an ammunition. At that time he could face jail for his work, or in the best scenario lose his customers/reputation.

You have to remember that in 2009 and next years, BTC was something only relevant for cybersec researchers and criminals. You would not want to be seen as associated with the latter.

defrost 2 years ago | |

Maybe those two, maybe not.

There's a very high chance that Satoshi is some form of modern day Nicolas Bourbaki with a segmented shared key.

Whether it's a majority vote share or an all in or nothing key split, that's a good back story on the long silence, either some are dead or not everybody agrees to move forward on joint releases or cashing in.

cbxyp 2 years ago | |

Craig Wright is a fraud and there are numerous instances where people have caught him directly contradicting the opinions and factual assertions about code Satoshi wrote. Like a patent troll without any patent.

mrkramer 2 years ago | |

Craig Wright being Satoshi is unpopular opinion in the Bitcoin community but I think there is a good chance that he is indeed Satoshi or that he was a leader of Satoshi group.

I did some research on him and his past activities, and the things that I found on the Web and on the Internet Archive are somewhat compelling.

I will write it up sooner or later as a blog post(the clues that I found).

DANmode 2 years ago | | |

I could buy that he's a straggler that was left to "muddy the waters" in search of the "one true" person (or group).

Would be interested in links to the most personally compelling evidence (in either direction), for those reading.

mrkramer 2 years ago | | |

>Would be interested in links to the most personally compelling evidence (in either direction), for those reading.

Search for Craig's blog posts and computer security newsletter groups where he was active 15-20 years ago; he talks about P2P networks, hashing(Craig discusses how SHA-1 is vulnerable and not secure anymore), statistics(Poisson distribution, the same statistical model that was mentioned by Satoshi in the Bitcoin whitepaper).

I found some tids and bits that he and "Satoshi" have in common, plus Satoshi used British English and Craig is an Australian. All of this means nothing but either Satoshi is dead or this Australian guy has something to do with Satoshi and Bitcoin because he wouldn't be pushing so hard as Satoshi persona if he was't involved with Bitcoin in one way or another.

Craig also said couple of years ago that he will share his bank statement of him buy the original bitcoin.org domain but he still didn't do it. Again this would be indirect proof but Satoshi signing his private keys won't be happening anytime soon(and anyone can sign keys if s/he steals them, again indirect proof).

iraKleiman 2 years ago | | |

this post was written in the year 2009

After reading this, it sounds like a great idea to store files using the SHA-1 for the directory.

I have no idea what this means however, all I know is that SHA-1 and MD5 are hashing algorithms. If I calculate the SHA-1 hash using this ruby script, and I change the file's content (which changes the hash), how do I know where the file is stored then?

My question is then, what are the basics of implementing a SHA-1/file-storage system?

If all of the files are changing content all the time, is there a better solution for storing them, or do you just have to keep updating the hash?

I'm just thinking about how to create a generic file storing system like GoogleDocs, Flickr, Youtube, DropBox, etc., something that you could reuse in different environments (such as storing PubMed journal articles or Cramster homework assignments and tests, or just images like on Flickr). I'd probably store them on Amazon EC2. Just some system so I can say "this is how I'll 99% of the time do file storing from now on", so I can stop thinking about building a solid/consistent way to store files and get onto some real problems.

iraKleiman 2 years ago | | |

Compelling evidence is making the price go up so keep talking about satoshi or take my advice and buy whatever is in the red and cheep right now because if this digital money stuff is legit than we are all wealthy

mrkramer 2 years ago | | |

computer security mailing list groups*

sry for mixing up the two

ajvpot 2 years ago | |

FYI Craig Wright’s claims are quite contentious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Steven_Wright

DaSHacka 2 years ago | | |

From the article:

> In order to resolve Wright's claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto, the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) opened a lawsuit against Wright in United Kingdom on 5 February 2024 in London High Court.[46]

I wonder if this will lead anywhere

iraKleiman 2 years ago | | |

no its in the wrong court

yen223 2 years ago |

Do people still care? This is the first time in a long time I've seen Satoshi being mentioned at all. Though admittedly I'm not big into crypto.

iraKleiman 2 years ago | |

neither is he

aaronrobinson 2 years ago | |

They care. A bunch of previously unseen by the public emails got released of them interacting with others thought to be candidates. I expect they’re dead, already captured by the American Stasi or is hiding very well from them.

DANmode 2 years ago | | |

Which faction of the American power structure do you believe both: 1. would actually want Satoshi, and 2. have the juice to do it?

aaronrobinson 2 years ago | | |

The SEC probably :)

kayamon 2 years ago |

Bitcoin works because you can prove it mathematically without Satoshi's involvement. He made a quote in the recent email dump that reinforces this: "self-evident proof of the majority consensus”. [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1760718747768087033

The world doesn't need Satoshi for Bitcoin to continue working. And so the reason people want to find his identity is because there exist people in the world who lie, cheat, steal and ultimately kill. Those people want to find Satoshi, to punish him for inventing a fair system of economic trade that doesn't cut them into it.

aChattuio 2 years ago | |

That's probably the most ridiculous answer there is.

1. The chance that something like Bitcoin is a logical virus and being though of is.not that far fetched. All of it's tec was already here.

2. Just because people believe in Bitcoin and don't understand it doesn't make it fair.

3. People like to think about it because he is still the inventor even if his invention is responsible for a tremendous amount of CO2 and he should be very rich which makes this 'mystery' interesting

And as said in a thread yesterday: Bitcoin doesn't even solve the trust issue.

DANmode 2 years ago | | |

"he should be very rich"?! (emphasis mine)

Also, out of curiosity since I'm here: what trust issue does Bitcoin not solve?

aChattuio 2 years ago | | |

Bitcoin fans say it solves 'the' trust issue.

If you do something on the block chain with your Bitcoins it's save.

Just that the only thing it does is making sure you can send or retrieve a Bitcoin securely but that you need other security mechanism to make sure the trade is protected gets ignored.

Like every trade involving something outside the chain is still not save.

Buying Bitcoin, selling Bitcoin, trading a Bitcoin for a service.

iraKleiman 2 years ago | |

common core math

sneak 2 years ago |

Human beings are obsessed with narrative: x did y to z. This repeats everywhere - the identity of the characters is as important as the events themselves.

I don’t know why this is, but I do know that it is much, much bigger than Bitcoin.

It’s not about the billions of dollars, it’s not about the mystery. It’s because we are pack animals obsessed with hierarchy and cannot rest as organisms until we identify which people are important.

It could be related to survival in pre-civilized times. Not being aware of the social hierarchy and society’s expectations placed on you based on your position in it could very well have proven to be lethal throughout most of human history.

faanghacker 2 years ago | |

Great answer, thank you for your perspective.

illuminant 2 years ago |

If Craig Wright is Satoshi he can claim it all as his intellectual property, which could be worth billions.

If Satoshi remains a ghost, it belongs to everyone and it is whatever it is.

I think mostly people only want to prove it isn't Craig Wright.

RicoElectrico 2 years ago | |

Can he, though? On which grounds? Patent not so much because he published it before filing, copyright also is out of question because of MIT licence.

DANmode 2 years ago | |

> he can claim it all as his intellectual property, which could be worth billions.

Let's pretend he does the impossible: what does this look like, in your opinion?

cusspvz 2 years ago |

I think it is a mixture of both celebrity worship and the fact that his stake within his invention is significantly high. He specifically stated that he didn't want to be associated with the project anymore, so I'm pretty sure he had his own reasoning behind that decision. Taking into consideration the fact that he used a nickname to keep his anonymity, I assume that not becoming a public figure was one of those.

ParadisoShlee 2 years ago |

We don't want to hurt him..... We just want to talk

barber_the_dope 2 years ago |

It's all money laundering. The creators are probably Russian oligarchs and mobsters. There is no Satoshi, just Ivan, Vladimir, and so on.

NewJazz 2 years ago | |

Gotta get demand up for their fossil fuel based economy somehow!

reducesuffering 2 years ago | |

No it's very high probability he's not that.

apache101 2 years ago | |

Or the CIA

lionkor 2 years ago | |

"Its probably the baddies again!"

mrkramer 2 years ago |

It's like asking why historians care who was the author of some historical piece of art or literature. We mammals are curious, curiosity is driving evolution and innovation. The quest of understanding the world our us and beyond us never stops.

mrkramer 2 years ago | |

The quest of understanding the world around us*

swman 2 years ago |

I don't personally care about his identity.

As a layman I think its cool that there's some mystery dude who built something cool, "valuable" (debatable), and then disappeared.

I'd honestly be disappointed if his identity is ever revealed. Even worse would be if it turns out to be some d bag we all know lol.

DANmode 2 years ago | |

There are a couple of "d bags we all know" on the tech/hacker side that would make for a very satisfying answer to this question.

a-dub 2 years ago |

because it's a tale of intrigue!

cozzyd 2 years ago |

People like puzzles.

iraKleiman 2 years ago |

I just want to know his ip address “Hint”

slater 2 years ago |

i always thought it was that Swiss guy living in Tokyo

RCitronsBroker 2 years ago | |

you know what? one factoid that just came to mind is that he listed an @gmx mail address on the original Bitcoin paper. I genuinely don’t know a single person using GMX without some sort of connection to DACh (Germany, Austria and Switzerland).

thiago_fm 2 years ago | | |

I always have this in my mind. For some reason, people want to believe he's American.

Yet even before crypto was a thing, Germany always had a thriving community of people concerned with privacy, hell, even the average german prefer to pay in cash to not be tracked. We have CCC and so on.

About the gmx email: I've seen people from abroad using those gmx emails, mainly in the security space. I find it funny because gmx is kinda crappy, full of ads.