The Saga of Craig Wright, the Latest “Inventor of Bitcoin”

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/bizarre-saga-craig-wright-latest-inventor-bitcoin

by jstoiko • 11 years ago

70 33 11 years ago

newyorker.com

mbrutsch• 11 years ago

Who doesn't love ~~doxxing~~ investigative journalism?

Kutta• 11 years ago

Please don't propagate this crap. The stories came out only after the guy publicly paraded himself as Nakamoto.

Quite possibly we would have gotten articles published even if Wright didn't "out" himself, but I highly doubt that gwern would have given his name in that case, and Wright did out himself after all.

baby• 11 years ago

How did he out himself? He was outed after an "investigation". This is doxxing, not journalism, I will agree with the parent comment.

runn1ng2• 11 years ago

As others have said, I lost a little confidence in Gwern, who was a co-author of the the Wired piece and who I, until now, viewed as more skeptical. Especially given his history at LessWrong.

Kiro• 11 years ago

You say it like he's wrong now.

Moshe_Silnorin• 11 years ago

Gwern has a sterling reputation at LessWrong - or do you just mean having an association with LessWrong is bad in itself. One Satoshi candidate, Hal Finney, was a LessWronger, too.

I, too, am surprised he believes this, but I'm not about to write him off. He could still be right and if he's wrong so what.

runn1ng2• 11 years ago

Yeah, that's what I meant. He has a great reputation, so I held him in high regard somewhat until now

spooningtamarin• 11 years ago

Gwern is Satoshi.

clamprecht• 11 years ago

To be fair, the original Wired article did end with this sentence:

Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.

jnbiche3• 11 years ago

Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.

That's a total cop-out, and may represent the last sentence I ever read from Wired (used to love it). Anyone with a modicum of technical ability could have done all the "brilliant" hoaxing Wright has done, such as back-dating GPG keys and spoofing email. He even screwed up those (e.g., not realizing that he used GPG preferred hash algorithms that didn't even exist until 2009 when back-dating a key to 2008).

In addition, Wright totally, completely ruined his scam with his ridiculous bragging about his half dozen of (non-existent) degrees, which set many people's Spidey senses tingling. Satoshi was a pretty low-key guy. A competent hoaxer would have made a bigger effort to match the personality and character of the person he was trying to emulate.

This isn't Kaiser Soze level scheming here. This is a fairly uneducated, boastful man with a bit of technical knowledge and a load of dishonest intentions. It's horribly disappointing that so many people in both the journalist and Bitcoin communities were so quick to fall for it, especially after what happened with Dorian Nakamoto.

jnbiche3• 11 years ago

Given Gwern's naturally skeptical nature, along with how obvious of a scammer this guy Wright is, combine to make me wonder what drove Gwern to burn his reputation like this, even if it was just his pseudonym.

nkurz• 11 years ago

I feel the same, but would put a different "spin" on it. Gwern is still the same bright skeptical individual that you wanted him to be, but his imperfect track record might be as good as one can hope to expect from any expert.

Losing some confidence is appropriate if one was overconfident to begin with. But rather than restricting this update to future proclamations from Gwern, possibly I should reconsider my reliance on expert opinion itself, even my own.

Lazare• 11 years ago

Regardless of whether Craig Wright is Nakamoto, there's an interesting story here, and I'm looking forward to it coming out. Someone has spent a fair amount of time and effort forging documents and setting up an elaborate paper trail to lead some journalists to this conclusion. Why?

It's easy to compare this to the Dorian Nakamoto thing, but this is quite different. Nobody had a vested interest in making Dorian look like Satoshi, it was just sloppy journalism. This is something else (although it might be sloppy journalism too...)

adrtessier• 11 years ago

I agree. Regardless of the outcome, I'm grabbing the popcorn. I'm half-waiting for another P2P foundation signed post discrediting him, too.

Even if Craig Wright is (wholly or part of) Nakamoto, I'm confused as to why it is he thinks it is a good idea to advertise the fact that he is some years later; whose benefit does it serve other than that of his own ego? This type of work could easily be the ramblings of a mad scientist who feels perpetually underappreciated, and is trying to latch onto this because he thinks he will finally get the worldwide recognition he feels he deserves.

The easiest way for Wright or another to prove he is who he says he is is to simply sign a message using Nakamoto's keys. Since we still have no mathematical evidence, I personally will believe this is a hoax.

ufo2• 11 years ago

Satoshi is rumored to have amassed a fortune in Bitcoins. One of the theories going around is that by pretending to be Satoshi, Craig would be able to take fraudulent loans with the bitcoin fortune as collateral. (There is some evidence that Craig himself might be the one forging the documents)

The other theory is that he is just a crazy egomaniac.

joosters• 11 years ago

My best guess is that the fraud angle is most likely. Especially the 'fortunate' emergence of draft contracts showing that the guy has claim to a huge stash of bitcoins (but conveniently he can't access them until 2020). Perhaps he hoped that by appearing to be 'doxxed' it would lend more credence to his claims that he owned/controlled this wealth.

A fraudster could get a lot of mileage out of a "I will pay you back later, look I've got all this future wealth" claim.

jgalt212• 11 years ago

but conveniently he can't access them until 2020

Maybe that's his estimate of when the supercomputer he's built in Iceland will crack Satoshi's private key.

canjobear• 11 years ago

Is there anywhere I can read a concise summary of the evidence for and against this guy as Satoshi?

Right now the facts seem spread out across popular press articles and random forum threads.

vesinisa• 11 years ago

Wired did a pretty good job (see the three bullet points):

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/new-clues-suggest-satoshi-suspe...

jnbiche3• 11 years ago

If you're technical, this alone should be enough to convince you that none of this has any connection to Satoshi:

- http://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-proba...

If not, then this will probably at least convince you of the (lack of) veracity of Craig Wright's many claims:

- http://www.zdnet.com/article/sgi-denies-links-with-alleged-b... (Wright claimed to have SGI supercomputer, turns out to not be true)

- http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/12/11/bitcoi... (Wright claimed to have CSU PhD, turns out to be false)

Go and look up the claims this guy has made that turned out false. The guy is clearly a massive fraudster, which was crystal clear to me from the moment I first heard him speak, and who has encouraged this "I'm Satoshi" thing for the last year or so (probably for financial reasons).

I mean, the fact that a lot of people in the "technical community" and "Bitcoin community" fell for this have seriously lowered my esteem of both. Bitcoin in particular seems to have been attracting a certain type of gullible gold-seeker since ~2013. Sadly, the scammers go wherever these folks go, and so Bitcoin has been absolutely besieged by them.

Similarly, the number of "journalists" who wrote off the difference between "satoshin@gmx.com" and "satoshi@gmx" as it were an unimportant detail is pretty stunning (my opinion of them was already pretty low, so no real hard done).

vezzy-fnord• 11 years ago

I swear with all the rampant speculation and hunting for Satoshi's identity that have led deep to a multitude of rabbit holes, the only way for the real Satoshi's uncovering not to end up a disappointment, would be if he's also revealed to be simultaneously D.B. Cooper and Jimmy Hoffa (maybe even the Zodiac Killer while we're at it).

keithpeter2• 11 years ago

The reality might be quite everyday like the strange case of David Rodinsky [1]

I'm just wondering why those early-mined bitcoins have not been touched...

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/may/22/books.guardianr...

oh_sigh• 11 years ago

Perhaps he just used a throwaway key and Satoshi no longer has access to it.

fiatjaf2• 11 years ago

Why is the police trying to catch Satoshi Nakamoto?

ufo2• 11 years ago

The police is going after Craig because he owes millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. It has nothing to do with him claiming to be Satoshi (although his name getting in the news might have prompted them to raid his house before he ran away with the evidence).

fiatjaf2• 11 years ago

Thank you for summing that up for me.

phpnode• 11 years ago

This reddit thread offers some pretty interesting / convincing speculation on Craig Wright's scam - https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3web4s/some_more_...

fredgrott• 11 years ago

Craig Wright is not the inventor of Bitcoin...

First Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym first part implies clear thinking second part implies central in origin..its meaning might be central to the origin of cyber-encryption movement..although that probably is not it..but the made up name does imply that the inventor is central to an encryption movement.

plorg• 11 years ago

I probably need not explain that this is simply tautological.

cornchips• 11 years ago

My summaries (with evidence):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3weotb/evidence_th...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3wi2qk/twitter_acc...

There's a whole other story to people's reactions to this. I'm quite surprised there is an equivalent of lack of belief here; as reddit can be really childish and vile. Meme phrase "Regardless of the outcome.. I believe this is a hoax"

ikeboy• 11 years ago

That's probably the most "forum" links I've ever seen in a mainstream publication.

The Saga of Craig Wright, the Latest “Inventor of Bitcoin”

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