1. Satoshi emailed me at the same time Hal was taking part in a marathon. Yes, technically emails can be delayed, but ... why? There was no urgency in those discussions.
2. Hal preferred to write C and was still writing C up until the moment he sadly passed away. Satoshi wrote in modern(ish) C++. Note that the same problem applies for Len Sassaman and basically everyone who has been fingered as a possible Satoshi. The combination of C++, Win32 and cryptography is not very common in the cypherpunk space.
3. Hal was a professional cryptographer who worked on an encrypted messaging product (PGP). Satoshi had some fairly basic misunderstandings about cryptography, like believing that you can't use elliptic curve keys to encrypt messages, and referenced having to do research to understand the cryptography he needed. Why would Hal pretend to be a newbie at cryptography, up to and including not having features Satoshi said he wanted?
4. Hal did try to create digital cash already, but tried to build it on trusted computing hardware. He had a long term interest in that approach, as did I, and his last project before his death was one I suggested related to this tech. In fact there are emails between me and Hal in list archives pre-Bitcoin where we swap notes on Intel LaGrande. If Hal had been Satoshi it seems likely that Satoshi would have at least commented on the ways TC could be used at some point, but Satoshi never showed any awareness the tech exists.
6. If you're trying to be anonymous, why would you immediately and pointlessly reveal your identity by messaging yourself?
7. He denied that he was Satoshi.
This paper makes a pretty good case that the late Len Sassaman was Satoshi. Its a pretty thorough examination regardless if you think it was Len or not and doesn't come to a definitive conclusion.
He was interviewed when he could no longer speak. He was asked if he was Satoshi. He just smiled.
It's just the kind of joke Hal would play.
To the extent that someone could argue that there is some public interest angle, I think that's only arguable in the case of certainty. Speculation is a dime a dozen. Even if there is a public interest angle in identifying Satoshi, I don't think that extends to idle speculation.
Hal was an amazing guy and I feel privileged for the bit of interaction I had with him, refraining from a fun game of public speculation is a small cost. I'm sure if he's cryonically revived in the far future he'll appreciate the consideration. :)
In general speculation like this risks creating a lot of harm for the targets, especially since brutal cryptocurrency related kidnapping and torture appears to be on the rise.
It's unclear what bitcoin Satoshi might have had access too, but people who aren't Satoshi certainly don't have access to it... and the cost of security against criminal gangs hoping for a billion dollar windfall are unreasonable large even for a wealthy person and are unimaginable for someone of more ordinary means.
Stylometry was known at the time, Hal might have changed his. People have been using computer stylometry for years to rule in or out pretenders to be Shakespeare.
Emails can be sent with a timer.
Plus, Satoshi's email was hacked in 2014 (or earlier), and it was likely hacked multiple times[0].
It's also nice to know another of Hal's friends.
That person was also familiar with Hal's PoW implementation (where Hal mentions it was an implementation of this guy's concept) 3 years before the Bitcoin paper, but attempted to obfuscate that fact.
As a result of timestamping emails with their DKIM into Bitcoin, now even rotated, broken, or released keys can be used to partially authenticate e.g. Google messages. You can see this for example in this project here:
https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim
And in particular, here:
https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim/pull/5
So you see, even historical DKIM signatures can act as strong authentication.
That's OK though - you're the only one insinuating that I faked the emails, nobody else ever has. You won't come out and say it directly of course, because if you had to spell out this theory explicitly it would sound obviously idiotic.
As far as key rotation goes, never to miss an XKCD386 opportunity: It's often pretty easy to go find historic keys and them confirm that they the correct ones by testing against contemporaneous messages received by other parties from the same domains or which got captured in places like public email archives.
The position of petertodd, Adam Back, and nullc appears to be that investigating the identity of Satoshi is pointless and shouldn’t be encouraged.
If you have the time you might be interested in a discussion I’ve been having with him about identifying Satoshi. Thank you for your time on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41803918
They are also arguing debug.log IP leak is questionable, retep was an unknown pseudonym not known handle for peter, they both are bad C++ devs in 2008. As a relative outside to your community, yet technically knowledgeable, it looks all very odd.
I don't think there is anything curious about the fact that I'm unwilling to lie or intentionally exaggerate my beliefs simply because it would further another preference of mine. -- The request for the headers on that message goes back long before anyone ever suggested any interaction with Hal.
Rather, I think it would be "curious" and show a lack of integrity if I were to just stop asking a question after a situation was created where my request was no longer in the interest of my other arguments.
I suspect we actually agree on many items.
I also support your question about the debug.log IP leak. I hope to study that in the next few days. That IP leak if real is probably the strongest lead we have on Satoshi.
Do you support unmasking Satoshi if it is possible?
All this drama is completely unnecessary. I made a complete regular and uncontroversial request. You could have just responded in kind.
(edit) I'm also not answering gmax; I'm answering you, with concrete specifics and an actual example, to inform you about the utility of DKIM even if Satoshi's email provider didn't use them, which you clearly didn't already know.
No.
The only argument I've heard to justify this which is at all credible is that the ownership of a particular pool very early coins may be a matter of significant public concern. I'm dubious of this argument given that it's a couple percent of the total and people seem to not care at all about other similar consolidations in Bitcoin. And it's normal for very wealthy people to be largely unknown e.g. in the US we have absolutely no idea who most billionaires are, a lot of the supposed lists are just speculation and nonsense. (a fun related story: https://sherwood.news/power/who-died-and-left-the-us-7-billi... )
But for the purpose of this discussion I'll accept that ownership of those coins matters. (I don't think we'd make any progress on debating that)
But if the motivation is those coins, we're not even sure they belong to Satoshi. And to the extent there is a concern it's a concern that their use could be disruptive to the economy, their identity alone is unlikely to help -- like why would Adam Back vs Petertodd matter for that question?
So what I think is that if we think carefully about what all this means and we're honest about it-- this demand for their identity is so that the public can use coercion to make them destroy their coins. The author of the documentary said the quiet part out loud in a surprisingly extortionary sounding tweet: "Satoshi, if you have access, you could burn the stash. Bring an end to this. Protect yourself, protect the network." (https://x.com/CullenHoback/status/1844144664825430242)
I think that kind of coercion would be immoral. But worse than immoral it would be unnecessary:
If the users of Bitcoin feel so threatened by these unmoved early coins that they're willing to ungratefully violate privacy of Bitcoin's creator, a person who might not even own those coins, in an act which might harm the creator seriously but not even address the concern ... they could instead just adopt a fork that makes those early unmoved coins forever inaccessible. -- and perhaps let whomever owns them come out to argue against it.
(Heck, people have already created such forks though that wasn't their motivation-- some forks have diverted all not-recently moved coins to the forks creators, as a kind of premine).
The fact that they haven't indicates that they don't feel that way. To summarize, I think trying to pursue Satoshi's identity is:
An ungrateful attack on someone who gifted the world with something new and interesting and whom wronged no one, motivated by fear of some trove of coins that may not even belong to the target, a fear which would not be addressed by merely knowing their identity (even assuming the coins were theirs), and if it does address it-- it would probably be through coercively depriving them of their coins by subjecting Satoshi to threat and attack... when all along the people supposedly being protected could, if they cared about it enough, simply neutralize "the threat" themselves by adopting a version that didn't have it, or by just not using Bitcoin at all. Clearly they don't feel that strongly.
But attacking someone elses privacy and safety is something many people don't consider much of a cost, I guess.
I just don't buy it.
If it sounds like I've made up my mind on the issue, remember that I've had some 14 years to think about this question.
Imo this "secret" is known by many people as I have seen so many censorship and misdirection campaigns throughout the years if people mention Adam being the one.
Him being Satoshi also makes bitcoin core seem more legitimate. He can guide his creation without being formally known as satoshi.
It is obvious. Especially if you have ever been a solo dev for an extended period of time (like adam was)
There is a ton more evidence but seems like no one really wants to dig into Adam.
Adam literally stopped updating hash cash and a year later Bitcoin is released... check his website on archive.org.
Its ok. I like that there is still conversation as to who it is. It gives protection to him since there likely wont be anything concrete (if hopefully he was slick enough)
(1) It's not Peter Todd. Anyone who knows Peter Todd and/or was around in the early days, can clearly tell Satoshi and Peter are not the same person.
(2) No good comes from speculation over the identity of Satoshi. When someone living is named, their life becomes absolute hell and the security risk imposed on them is very real. When someone dead is proposed, that hellish experience is passed to their family and heirs.
(3) It's not Peter Todd.
Any bitcoin oldheads know it's not Peter Todd based on tons of behavioral, timestamped, and logistical evidence. The actual leading candidate is Len Sassaman if you look objectively at the evidence.
Am I misunderstanding something, or do you want to edit that?
I just can't imagine the real Satoshi saying something this stupid.
If you freeze-frame the film at the right point and actually read the full conversation, this is obvious. I don't have it handy. But some people posted screenshots on Twitter (which HBO may have taken down via DMCA... they were getting video clips taken down too).
These days some stuff actually uses proof-of-sacrifice in production. The best example I think being Joinmarket: https://github.com/JoinMarket-Org/joinmarket-clientserver/bl...
Indeed.
Cullen should know better: his previous project was a documentary on the QAnon conspiracies, which have managed to get people hurt due to crazies looking for these conspiracies. Cullen's evidence is hopelessly coincidence based... exactly the kind of shoddy evidence that fuels conspiracies like QAnon.
Personally I suspect he made the accusation against me simply to create media interest. In particular, by making an accusation against someone who wasn't a leading contender, myself. I haven't seen the film yet myself. But friends of mine have, and said that other than the Satoshi nonsense it was a reasonable documentary about Bitcoin. Problem is, it's hard to build interest in that.
Anyway, hopefully this just blows over. But we'll see. I already took some precautions re: security just in case...
Shouldn't you be able to sue HBO for forcing you to take unnecessary expenses?
Stop looking to them for credible analysis.
As Bitcoin gains market value the issue of Satoshi’s coins is becoming more and more serious.
It’s not wildly understood yet but Bitcoin will go fully dark in the future, how to do this, especially with help of L2 systems, is well known in the deep technical circles.
I think all libertarian capitalists believe money should be private. However Satoshi will eventually be the wealthiest human to ever exist and if that wealth is 100% dark it raises some tricky issues.
Not a good reason. The person who developed bitcoin is responsible for billions (maybe trillions) of dollars of fraud and crime. They are responsible for a ludicrous amount of waste and carbon output. They should be held to account by the public.
The key piece of evidence seems to be this comment from Peter Todd: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2181.msg28739#msg287...
It stands out to the producers because: 1) Peter makes it just after joining the form, so he is unlikely to have detailed knowledge of bitcoin. 2) He seems to be finishing Satoshi's thought, as though he returned to an earlier post forgetting which account he was signed into. 3) The post happens just before Satoshi disappears and Peter leaves for a few years.
The doc also features many scenes with Peter and Adam Back where their eyes kind of shift around and they laugh awkwardly when asked about certain things. Since the doc it seems that Peter has taken to twitter to say he was mislead about the purpose of the interviews.
I've always kind of thought that Satoshi was probably one person who built it all in isolation, and I never played much attention to theories that Satoshi was actually multiple people. After watching the doc it does seem like Adam and Peter know a good deal more than they are letting on, even if it wasn't them specifically, it seems likely that they have some idea who it was.
His wallet would be worth around $70 billion dollars today and he hasn't touched it in over a decade.
Either he is A) dead, B) lost the wallet and wishes he were dead, or C) has achieved such spiritual enlightenment that has no interest in the personal or societal impact that $70 billion dollars could have.
He is not coming back folks, and even if we figure out who he was, that $70 billion is gone.
At least it's a good tax write-off. (Well… $3000 a year for life in the US iirc.)
Do you think the world really has $70B in cash to blow on bitcoin right now? Big players mine the stuff, they don't buy it.
To my reading, the bitcointalk reply only makes sense as a snarky comment (ie Todd isn't Satoshi). and the fact it was 1.5 hours after the Satoshi post also suggests it wasn't the same person making a quick correction.
(49 points, 5 days ago, 48 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41732985
(52 points, 4 days ago, 62 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41749352
The key piece of evidence seems to be this comment from Peter Todd: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2181.msg28739#msg287...
It stands out to the producers because: 1) Peter makes it just after joining the form, so he is unlikely to have detailed knowledge of bitcoin. 2) He seems to be finishing Satoshi's thought, as though he returned to an earlier post forgetting which account he was signed into. 3) The post happens just before Satoshi disappears and Peter leaves for a few years.
The doc also features many scenes with Peter and Adam Back where their eyes kind of shift around and they laugh awkwardly when asked about certain things. Since the doc it seems that Peter has taken to twitter to say he was mislead about the purpose of the interviews.
I've always kind of thought that Satoshi was probably one person who built it all in isolation, and I never played much attention to theories that Satoshi was actually multiple people. After watching the doc it does seem like Adam and Peter know a good deal more than they are letting on, even if they aren't behind it all, it seems likely that they have some idea who it was.
Who is more likely to build ontop of some obscure code base called "Hash Cash"? Some random people that trolled the same forums or the original creator of it?
Imo this "secret" is known by many people as I have seen so many censorship and misdirection campaigns throughout the years if people mention Adam being the one.
Him being Satoshi also makes bitcoin core seem more legitimate. He can guide his creation without being formally known as satoshi.
It is obvious. Especially if you have ever been a solo dev for an extended period of time (like adam was)
There is a ton more evidence but seems like no one really wants to dig into Adam.
Adam literally stopped updating hash cash and a year later Bitcoin is released... check his website on archive.org.
Its ok. I like that there is still conversation as to who it is. It gives protection to him since there likely wont be anything concrete (if hopefully he was slick enough)
My guess is that it's someone who was not particularly well-known prior to Bitcoin.
Then there's Google editorializing a headline at the top of search hits:
> Top stories
> Bitcoin creator's identity revealed in new HBO documentary
Yet none of the headlines they show makes that claim:
> POLITICO.eu - Bitcoin creator is Peter Todd, HBO film says
> Bloomberg - HBO Documentary Suggests Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Peter Todd
> The New York Times - A New Bitcoin Documentary Reopens the Search for Satoshi Nakamoto
> The Crypto Times - Peter Todd Denies He is Satoshi Nakamoto as claimed by HBO...
> The New Yorker - Has Bitcoin's Elusive Creator Finally Been Unmasked?
In general (not just in this case), there should also soon be some huge lawsuits for robo-slander, robo-libel, robo-defamation, robo-reckless-endangerment, etc.
Government is getting a lot more tech-savvy, and "everything's legal, if you claim an AI/algorithm/computer/dog did it" isn't flying anymore.
https://lite.cnn.com/2024/10/08/investing/satoshi-nakamoto-i...
CO2 emissions, fraud, attacking democracy is on the negative side. What’s on the positive? Why is it still legal?
It feels like Crypto at the systemic level is an open vulnerability not an asset. It’d be nice to have this vulnerability to get fixed.
Mind you, I don't think in its present form it is worth it (POW is intrinsically power-intensive; a lot of things about the banking system that seem like bugs are actually features; etc).
But I think A) value stored in tokens, and B) decentralized ledgers and nonrepudiation are things that are may want to have as core financial services in the future.
See also: Why I'm less than infinitely hostile to crypto
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-im-less-than-infinitely...
>CNN sat down with Hoback, prior to Todd’s denial, to discuss why the director is so confident in his theory, whether he’s worried about being sued, and that big dramatic confrontation at the end of the film.
Given the info we have, what are the chances that state actors, such as intelligence agencies, are aware beyond doubt of Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity?
The Son: Peter Todd
The Holy Ghost: Greg Maxwell"
https://www.wired.com/story/crypto-home-invasion-crime-ring/
But for someone involuntarily accused that's another matter. A security detail is eye wateringly expensive -- particularly one comprehensive enough to stop kidnappers in general.
That and various other evidence (coding style, british-english spelling) has suggested to me for a long time that it's an older gentleman from the UK, likely with an academic background in economics or related distributed systems. I don't know either way, but it seems borderline libel to suggest without much more substantial evidence that it's Peter Todd.
That said, Satoshi was clearly extremely diligent in concealing their identity, and so they may well have purposefully decided to use a headline that they wouldn't have had ordinary access too-- when someone is trying to conceal themselves it creates an environment which is hostile to logical reasoning. Any point which could point one direction might instead point the opposite or in a random direction.
Leave it at that.
The fact that the inputs, outputs, and fee of a transaction must add up isn't exactly "detailed knowledge" :) I don't think it took me all that long to figure that out when I first tried understanding how Bitcoin worked.
And frankly, the core of Bitcoin really isn't all that complex! You can have a very good understanding of all the parts after just a few days carefully studying it. Which is exactly what I did: I sat down with the Bitcoin Core codebase and figured out what all the code did. Especially at the time, it really wasn't that big of a codebase.
> After watching the doc it does seem like Adam and Peter know a good deal more than they are letting on, even if it wasn't them specifically, it seems likely that they have some idea who it was.
I can't speak for Adam. But I have no idea who Satoshi is. If anything, I think it could be literally hundreds or even thousands of potential people. Bitcoin is something so simple that you didn't need to be a super-genius to come up with it. You just needed to understand some relatively high-level, basic, cryptography and have a brilliant flash of inspiration. Satoshi was a very competent C++ programmer (it's a myth that his code was bad). But there's lots and lots of very competent C++ programmers out there.
It seems unlikely to me that it could be thousands of people, given the correspondence had with various people it seems likely to me that a few people have information that could lead in the correct direction. But I guess we'll never know.
They don't have to! (re: txid 5d80a29be1609db91658b401f85921a86ab4755969729b65257651bb9fd2c10d)
Can you prove what you were doing on 2009-01-10?
I find it interesting you have a curious prior interest in that IP leak and your spin on it.
If you are Satoshi then you should think carefully if you have any other OPSEC slip ups and then if you think there might be more … It’s better to confess and handle the issue of your coins.
Your safety should be priority number one.
It’s not bad for Bitcoin or you if it is you. Whomever Satoshi is they gifted the world with something incredible and it’s bigger than them now. The problem is the coins and the uncertainty around the intentions of them.
Destroying the evidence, I’m guessing smashed and/or magnets on drives, that one is Satoshi probably seemed like the best idea at the time. Perhaps burning the coins wasn’t given enough consideration. It means there is a dilemma. What in the game is the best move next?
Investigators who work in the real world have intuitive skills and will find the connections if they exist. Those of us who live in computers and data and math can sometimes underestimate the human pattern finding capabilities. They might be able to see and prove clearly who is Satoshi even if Satoshi thinks well all the data is gone, wiped, they “can’t” prove it, but that doesn’t mean that’s how the rest of society sees “proof” they might be able to “tell”.
Why is this my first post on bitcoin-dev: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2011... ?
I'm sure you've heard the adage, "It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it."
But online when you're silent you're not thought of as a fool-- you just don't even exist at all. Many of us whose contribution to world is primarily our knowledge and insight often prefer to self-educate to an advanced level on a subject before commenting on it at all.
My first bitcoin-dev post wasn't actually my first public comments on Bitcoin, but I'd read the entire bitcoin code base before ever saying anything about it...
It's not surprising to see Bitcoin developer people emerge from nowhere somewhat well informed, even back then (though to be fair fairly few people really understood txn internals).
I've known Peter and Adam for a very long time. Both have resting smirkface. Petertodd grins like he ate the canary any time he says something even the slightest bit clever. Adam too, now that I say it, though the clever threshold is a bit higher. That combined with talented editing can probably make either of them look guilty of whatever you want, or at least anything that they enjoy talking about.
I'm definitely still team Dave.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Kleiman
Last time I talked to Peter was in 2019 and he was making fun of me for spending Bitcoins continuously since 2011, and said Bitcoins are supposed to be hoarded like gold or something, not used as money. Definitely not the attitude of someone who supposedly burned the million Satoshi coins (which was a claim from the movie, I guess some leaked IRC transcript or something). I wouldn't be surprised if the leaked transcript came from Peter himself. He seems to get off on weird deception plays like that.
They don’t seem to occur in a speculative fashion where “maybe this person can pay…”.
Anyone who knows, knows the coins haven’t been touched in a suspiciously long time, and moving Bitcoin is not always anonymous…
For potentially tens of billions of dollars, I'm willing to bet that some criminals would make an exception.
Maybe, that claim is pretty speculative and shouldn't be repeated as established fact.
I agree with the rest of your points, though there were a lot of proxies other than tor. In particular, there were well known forums you could post on to get private proxies -- often used for kinda shady astroturfing and similar. So excluding tor alone isn't sufficient. Tor wouldn't have been as useful for Satoshi's bitcoin usage because he couldn't run a node over it that accepted inbound connections.
It doesn't say anything that support's the documentary's thesis, Petertood is talking about provably destroying coins in order to mint identities and similar. This couldn't apply to the coins alleged by some to belong to Satoshi, as they haven't moved.
Almost all of Bitcoin's history is completely public, but sadly the wealth of information seems to just enable conspiracy theorists to allege that there is more hidden.
> I'm definitely still team Dave.
I'm so tired of dealing with the victims of Wright's nonsense. It's gross. Posts like this are like a IV drug user showing off their radical track marks.
For whatever reason the documentary presented those logs as coming from another site which never has had logs for that channel prior to 2015. I have no clue why but it probably made it much harder for for many people to find.
A proof of stake system is essentially just a rehash on the earlier centralized digital cash systems where a quorum of key holders engage in a consensus that determines further updates to the system (including the set of keys allowed to authorize further updates).
We didn't need Satoshi to come up with that, that idea was already known.
Neither approach seems perfect, the important difference to me is that one approach, sans some technological advance like fusion energy, presents a major ecological problem that has existential risks for humanity.
Which logically makes little sense TBH in this case in particular, but yeah thugs might not be particularly reasonable.
>In a statement to CNN, Todd denied that the post was supposed to be written by Satoshi, calling it “a coincidence.”
>“I was simply pointing out a minor correction to what Satoshi wrote,” Todd told CNN in a statement. “Note that the bitcointalk forum has the ability to edit posts, so it doesn’t even make that much sense that Satoshi would follow up with another message rather than just editing the original to correct the mistake.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/08/investing/satoshi-nakamot...
>Hoback's theory relies on a chat log message written by Todd in which he claims to be the "world's leading expert on how to sacrifice your bitcoins ... I've done one such sacrifice and I did it by hand," Todd wrote.
>...
>"It's ludicrous," Todd told Hoback, also denying he's John Dillon. "This is going to be very funny when you put this into the documentary and a bunch of bitcoiners watch it."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/10/08/who-i...
In my mind all anyone has to do to prove they aren’t Satoshi is prove what they were doing on 2009-01-10 and had no possibility of using an IP from somewhere around Van Nuys California.
https://whoissatoshi.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/satoshi-in-cal...
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/bluesky/2001-03/msg00063...
Hal Finney and others interacted with Peter Todd as “retep” for more than a decade before the bitcointalk account and post. They would have immediately recognized him.
but also, it's not particularly identifying as there are a lot of peter's in and around bitcoin.
Then there are the other crypto people who have met grisly ends: Bob Lee and Li Chiming, as well as the suspicious deaths of John Forsyth, Tiantian Kullander, Vyacheslav Taran, and Park Mo. Not candidates for Satoshi, but it goes to show that "outing" potential Satoshis is not a safe thing to do.
The world is a big place. It's likely that in 2008 thousands of people had the right skillset to create Bitcoin, any one of which might have done it.
As long as Satoshi wants to stay hidden, we're not going to find them.
Even if he always used TOR/anonymous IPs, when accessing his @gmx.com account, with the number of sign-in's he had, it must be an absolute certainty, that he want through rogue exit nodes or some other de-anonymization methods we are not aware of, but deployed by gov. agencies.
Can you? it was more than 15 years ago.
Let me explain.
I see that you are now also arguing the IP leak is questionable and that others were running Bitcoin or could have been. Now combine this with the absurd idea that “retep” could have just been abandoned and it means nothing, even peter backwards, there are a million Peters whatever.
This is crazy you guys are basically accidentally admitting to technical somewhat knowledgable people like myself that retep is Satoshi because the excuses don’t pass the smell test. We know Peter was an actual wiz kid, it’s clear, Hal was emailing him in 2000, all using the email address that included … wait for it … “retep”, his IRC, his website, his freenode. It’s now obvious that he likely changed to his real name because the “cat was out of the bag” among the insiders. Hal would have immediately known Satoshi was Peter.
OMG guys get your act together fast. You need a plan B, no pun intended, because real investigators will tease it out, the top people doing that, have almost supernatural human intuition.
Regarding IP leak. Come on. Obviously it’s his IP. Was there a conference or vacation he was on maybe?
I’m just a dumb ass Bitcoiner from OG days and I can see though this charade so easily. I’m concerned.
Bitcoin is a gift to humanity from Satoshi (perhaps not retep!) and if the keys aren’t destroyed already and Satoshi is alive and has them then perhaps he should consider publicly burning the 1M coins or at least most of them. The nebulous case of supposedly the keys are destroyed is not a good situation tbh.
To answer your question. Yes I can definitely figure out where I was on January 10th, 2009. I know where I lived and worked then. I know if I took any vacations.
I’m hoping Peter Todd has a good alibi if he isn’t Satoshi. If he is … well time to confess and handle it in a way that doesn’t hurt the amazing invention.
EDIT: I wish I didn’t open this can of worms on HN. But I can’t delete it now …
Also, Satoshi almost certainly lived in the Benelux region when he released Bitcoin. See this paper for some actual evidence-based research: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.10257
Try considering an alternative hypothesis: This is a new absurd allegation which has only just shown up. Petertodd only learned the documentary would run with this claim hours before it came out as a result of journalists who saw a screener asking him questions. I am not petertodd.
At some point surprising late I realized that the retep account on the forum was petertodd, so it sounded like a fine reason to me that this would be surprising. But it turns out that when you reason backwards from having information after the fact there were already a number of links. Okay so what?
Consider how your logic would work if Todd was maliciously trying to falsely convince people he was a reluctant satoshi-- by e.g. using ineffectual arguments that he wasn't? or failing to to provide "proof".
You would be totally taken by him. Good reasoning doesn't have that vulnerability.
It's not even a speculative attack, this is part of what Wright did to him that enabled him to defraud so many. The kind of reasoning you're using is so vulnerable that it's being accidentally exploited by someone who isn't even trying to do so.
> Regarding IP leak. Come on. Obviously it’s his IP. Was there a conference or vacation he was on maybe?
simply reiterating a position isn't an argument.
> Yes I can definitely figure out where I was on January 10th, 2009. I know where I lived and worked then. I know if I took any vacations.
Where's the proof? That's what you demanded above.
Most people have jobs or school and maybe kids in school. It means there are records and also we can often have our emails. 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.
However it’s not limited to that. It could come from any of the Satoshi timestamps, being on an airplane (no internet back then) somewhere or in some situation that would make it impossible for him to be Satoshi.
You guys are a bit younger than my generation and so you still think 15 years is a long time. It’s not really.
I noticed you are also now questioning the Finney alibi and asking for DKIM email message. I mean yeah not a bad idea to check but interesting that you and petertodd seem to be actively questioning things, which honestly is also good. I mean these details are important.
For example I see you raise something about freenode and IPs with the IP leak. I’m planning to study what you said tomorrow. I don’t on the surface understand what you mean about that. It seems pretty clear the IP in the debug.log file is Satoshi’s node and IRC connection, likely a configuration mistake for the windows VM networking.
> I am not petertodd
I know that. However you and him I believe have a long history together.
> This is a new absurd allegation which has only just shown up.
Yes that’s exactly what I initially thought. But once people look closer I’m not so sure.
A few questions for you: - didn’t Hal actually know retep for a long time? and invite him to join the bluesky list?
- isn’t retep remarkably skilled for his age in 2009 and earlier? he worked professionally on a C++ large codebase at 17! and was clearly very gifted based on an early resume.
- petertodd/retep appears to be trying to misdirect. for instance claiming to he a poor C++ coder?
A good alibi will clear this up if he has it.
Yet you can't produce it for yourself, you don't see the issue here? I know I absolutely cannot prove anything about my whereabouts on most random days in 2009, I might be able to reason out where I was on some days but even that wouldn't result in transferable proof. Like I can say, 2009 was before I retired from Juniper and the tenth was a saturday-- so maybe I was home which wouldn't leave any evidence. 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).
Maybe some people can, if you could then I'd have to argue that just because you can it's no reason to assume everyone can, but it seems you can't prove where you were on that day.
So I guess you're Satoshi! Glad we settled it. :D
> It seems pretty clear the IP in the debug.log file is Satoshi’s node and IRC connection
Why do you believe these is clear?
> I know that. However you and him I believe have a long history together.
Sure, but that doesn't extend to knowing what usernames he used where back before I met him, except by chance.
> didn’t Hal actually know retep for a long time?
As far as I can tell the people on the bluesky list were sort of the expected fallout from the dying cypherpunks lists. But I communicated with Hal extensively in 2004-ish about RPOW, am I suddenly Satoshi?
My SO interacted with him due to the extropians list, I guess she's Satoshi now too?
> isn’t retep remarkably skilled for his age in 2009 and earlier?
Petertodd was 24 in 2009. Here is a wired article about a project of mine in 1997, when I was 18: https://archive.is/UT9NE
When I was 20 I helped crack the cryptography underlying CSS, addressing the risk of player key cancellation wack-a-mole. https://web.archive.org/web/20000226011228/http://www.emedia... (not specifically on the crack however)
It's always fun to talk about myself, but also I could give similar or better examples from other early Bitcoin developers, but I don't want to say anything that would drive this sort of bad logic to accusing them of being Satoshi... but an example:
Another early Bitcoin developer created a novel kind of arithmetic coder as a teenager, starting a line of development that eventually became JPEG-XL.
> for instance claiming to he a poor C++ coder?
He is, as am I. (I'm competent in _C_ however).
The standard for claiming proficiency when you are 18 and clueless is different than when you're 40 and competent. C++ has also evolved significantly over the time. While I can't speak for him, after working and Mozilla and with some of the other Bitcoin developers my idea of what qualifies as a good level of skill in C++ has changed radically.
Petertodd's about being poor re-C++ were specifically related to the Bitcoin codebase. And he like me would generally needs to get someone else to explain varrious fancy C++ features in it these days.
> he worked professionally on a C++ large codebase at 17!
I'm missing the context for this, his webpage from around that age says things like " A mass and springs physics sim I wrote in C++ I didn't manage to finish it though, the physics and math proved too difficult for me. :( The code is more messy then I'd like, I didn't have a good mental picture of what I was working on and my usual good commenting and clear style was hurt because of that." and "I was working on a nice large C++ TradeWars like game called Corporate Raiders. However I got bored of it and stopped work around June 2000. The last thing I did for it was make a compiler which I did manage to get working. Oh well, good learning experience. :) "
I don't think this supports what you're saying? But so what?
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.
But beyond that there are over three hundred million people in North America, so even if you're looking for one-in-a-million people there are hundreds of them, plenty to have a few show up in Bitcoin development, or even in a particularly interesting HN thread.
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?
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.
This is my assumption. It's too critical a question to leave unanswered, from a national security perspective.
I’ve been camp Szabo for a while. also have considered Sassaman however it’s not just his anti Bitcoin tweets, which could be misdirection, but people have reported he had genuine conversations with them with same sentiments.
I also initially thought Peter Todd theory was a joke. Wasn’t convinced by doc at all. However once you dig into his life from teen onward and see his current attempts to downplay himself and retell history in strange ways … I don’t know … my position has changed significantly, I think it’s looking more and more possible.
1) Why wouldn't he have used his Satoshi identity to discredit Craig Wright and save himself and fellow core developers a lot of pain and suffering?
2) Why wouldn't he have spent any of his large BTC stash?
3) Why is he fine being known as an early Bitcoin developer and adopter, but not fine being known as its creator?
4) How would he have a copy of the "20th Symposium on Information Theory in the Benelux", given that it was only distributed to attendants and university libraries in the Benelux?
5) How would he have gotten his hands on the British version of a newspaper on 03/Jan/2009?
Due to 1), I highly doubt that Satoshi remained an active member of the Bitcoin community following his departure. The fact that he stayed silent during the "block wars" and the Craig Wright shitshow shows a complete indifference towards Bitcoin or more likely, that he was dead or incapacitated.
I'm not saying Sassaman is Satoshi, but simply that Sassaman is a much better candidate. This is a picture that Sassaman took of his office in 2007: https://www.flickr.com/photos/enochsmiles/488460964/. Notice anything interesting?
Lots of possibilities.
I would take the source that you're taking these arguments from with a huge grain of salt.
> I'm not saying Sassaman is Satoshi, but simply that Sassaman is a much better candidate.
A hand full of random coincidences which are unsurprising for people of their interests isn't good evidence for any of them.
And it's also not unusual for people to have access to proceedings for events they didn't attend, or even to have them outright, e.g. I have a big set of FC proceedings but only was actually attending for a couple-- https://files.catbox.moe/w1dhwn.jpeg.
> 1) Why wouldn't he have used his Satoshi identity to discredit Craig Wright and save himself and fellow core developers a lot of pain and suffering?
In the documentary he tells you himself. He destroyed Satoshi thats “what he would do if he was Satoshi”. I can relate even. I’ve “destroyed” one of my own pseudonyms once and it was probably a panic move on his part.
Also don’t forget the 2015 “satoshi” email which people assume is “hacked” yet it’s completely possible it’s authentic. Satoshi may have retained access to the email address after all other data was “destroyed” simply because he remembered the passwords and didn’t delete the email account. Yet what was the lesson from that? nobody would believe it’s Satoshi unless the message is signed … which Satoshi can’t do … because the PGP keys are deleted.
> 2) Why wouldn't he have spent any of his large BTC stash?
Again because he destroyed Satoshi. But alternatively why move or spend coins if you don’t need to? I have unmoved coins from 2013. Somebody from very very early felt the need to move their coins recently, likely for security reasons as it moved to multisig.
29 Jan 2009 - mined coinbase transaction ——> !! https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/77fe7a6eb5e98bf53...
> 3) Why is he fine being known as an early Bitcoin developer and adopter, but not fine being known as its creator?
There is a LOT of baggage being Satoshi. Without PGP keys or other keys to sign with NOBODY will believe him anyway, is that not true?
> 4) How would he have a copy of the "20th Symposium on Information Theory in the Benelux", given that it was only distributed to attendants and university libraries in the Benelux?
retep could have easily been emailed this. He was also working on timestamping project like Sassaman though I have yet to see this project and code that supposedly exists.
> 5) How would he have gotten his hands on the British version of a newspaper on 03/Jan/2009?
Borders. It was awesome back then. My wife and I often reminisce over the foreign newspapers section of Borders. They were only 1 or 2 days old and very enjoyable. In Toronto Borders they would have had an excellent selection of newspapers from all over the world and especially British newspapers. They were flown in air mail since 1980s like that. I miss Borders over Barnes and Noble A LOT.
> Due to 1), I highly doubt that Satoshi remained an active member of the Bitcoin community following his departure. The fact that he stayed silent during the "block wars" and the Craig Wright shitshow shows a complete indifference towards Bitcoin or more likely, that he was dead or incapacitated.
As we can see your issues with Todd are not as solid as you think.
> I'm not saying Sassaman is Satoshi, but simply that Sassaman is a much better candidate. This is a picture that Sassaman took of his office in 2007: https://www.flickr.com/photos/enochsmiles/488460964/. Notice anything interesting?
I wish his wife could help prove it was him. She is clearly traumatized overall so perhaps she doesn’t yet accept she should help. The tweet about “according to it’s creator” is almost a smoking gun.
Let’s hope Satoshi is Sassaman, however I fear the case for Todd is much stronger than we all would think initially.
Neither do I, I was simply comparing them from a Bayesian point of view. There is indeed no "smoking gun". What you say about the citation is possible but I estimate that it's more likely he had a physical copy (I would change my mind about that if we found out he had indeed contacted the authors for citation information).
Also, Sassaman has some important points in his favor that Peter Todd lacks:
1) he is dead. I find it unlikely that Satoshi is still alive and even more unlikely that he is still alive and very publicly involved in Bitcoin.
2) strong connection to one of the white paper's citations
3) cares a lot about privacy/anonymity, e.g. he tried to convince Bram Cohen to release BitTorrent anonymously
But he also has some points that work against him: not being known as a Windows C++ programmer, his wife not believing him to be Satoshi, etc.
Overall I feel Sassaman is more likely than Todd, but I am not convinced he is Satoshi.
As morbid as it is we should all admit we want Sassaman to be Satoshi. It would be undeniably a better outcome for Bitcoin. I hope it can be proved personally.
What I don’t understand is why his wife wouldn’t help prove this. It would be in her interest in my opinion and likely the drives and systems he used can be tracked down and confirmed as either destroyed or still encrypted.
Satoshi’s coins are the elephant in the room. If the world is really headed towards a Bitcoin reserve world and value of a coin comtinuing to increase… then the Satoshi hoard can make him the first trillionare. The uncertainty around control of those coins is probably already a tail risk uncertainty that is holding back Bitcoin.
Back to Peter Todd it’s curious he was also actively working on distributed timestamping in 2007/8 apparently. Though I have yet to track down his code and only recently learned this.
If you didn’t watch the doc you probably should we have to acknowledge Todd’s and Back’s body language was definitely at a minimum curious.
My biggest concern is all 3 identified - Back, Maxwell, and Todd appear to be engaged in deflection and confusion tactics. They seem to promote this narrative that it’s best we don’t know who Satoshi was and so many people could be etc, I don’t buy that reasoning.
I hope Sassaman is Satoshi. Why not start having candidates show some alibis like Mike Kern has done for Finney … which curiously nullc has just questioned, though I’m glad he has, we should see the email headers the more we know to help track down Satoshi the better at this point imho. I’m aware many Bitcoiners seem to disagree with that opinion and it’s notable Back has not released his supposed correspondence with Satoshi at all.
New protocol rule: all coinbase outputs from before block 105,000 are unspendable after block 1,050,000.
