New Evidence Suggests Satoshi Nakamoto Is Paul Le Roux

https://www.investinblockchain.com/new-evidence-suggests-satoshi-nakamoto-is-paul-solotshi-the-creator-of-encryption-software-e4m-and-truecrypt/

by jbegley • 7 years ago

181 146 7 years ago

investinblockchain.com

jimbob452• 7 years ago

Why say Paul Solotshi instead of Paul Le Roux, a name everyone is far more familiar with?

None of the evidence presented was compelling. It was circumstantial at best. Save yourself the five minutes it takes to read this article.

the_watcher2• 7 years ago

Seriously. The author apparently considers "both are familiar with payments" evidence.

dmix2• 7 years ago

What is the "new evidence" mentioned in the headline?

playeren• 7 years ago

Oh my god. I AM SATOSHI!?

I have read a bit about Le Roux over the years, and I got an impression of someone who always seeks the short term benefit (albeit often a quite sizeable benefit) over a long term benefit. Among droves of other crazy things, the guy was trying to set himself up as a warlord in Somalia, allegedly aiming to provide mercenary services to highest bidder. It's really hard for me to reconcile someone like that with the thoughtful debate SN dealt in. But that's mostly my biases talking, and less an objective analysis.

bena2• 7 years ago

"Circumstantial" does not mean "weak".

Circumstantial evidence is often strong enough and compelling enough to determine court cases. Circumstantial evidence is often better than direct evidence.

Circumstantial evidence: Stuff like DNA, fingerprints

Direct evidence: Bob's memory of the event.

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

But please, continue using "the evidence is circumstantial" as if it means that it's not good enough.

N_trglctc_joe• 7 years ago

This is a really good point. Direct evidence of Satoshi's identity can only be in the form of someone claiming to be him, and that just wouldn't be credible. Circumstantial evidence is all we're going to get; even somebody spending Satoshi's BTC wouldn't be direct evidence since, as the article points out, someone else could have obtained (and be in the process of cracking) his hard drives.

michaelterryio• 7 years ago

Yes!

And eye witness testimony is often terrible. It's disappointing that circumstantial evidence gets such a bad rap.

Very unlikely things happen all the time. But beyond a certain level of unlikeliness, combined with a strong motive, it has to be enough.

And of course in practice everyone gets this because cases are decided every day by this implicit understanding.

    Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you
    find a trout in the milk.

    -- Henry David Thoreau

strikelaserclaw• 7 years ago

Damn dude, that guy is like Walter White.

brokenkebab• 7 years ago

Because SatoSHI, SolotSHI - we found him! CASE CLOSED!

netsharc• 7 years ago

Wasn't that a Newsweek conclusion? They found some guy named Nakamoto and concluded so. Yay Journalism! https://www.newsweek.com/newsweeks-statement-bitcoin-story-2...

nostrademons4• 7 years ago

I'd still bet on Hal Finney, RIP.

api2• 7 years ago

If so that means the creator of the first true cryptocurrency is currently frozen in liquid nitrogen awaiting potential revival in the future, which is even more evidence that we are in fact living in a cyberpunk novel. All we need now is a Rastafarian operated space station at one of the Lagrange points.

nostrademons4• 7 years ago

We also have pervasive surveillance, drones that bomb enemies of the state at their weddings, social credit scores, masses who are addicted to their (two way, voice controlled!) telescreens, bionic humans with RFID chips embedded in their hands, reality TV stars running the government, people drinking green mush called Soylent, reusable rockets to colonize Mars, a cloud of Internet-bearing satellites surrounding the earth, and a cult of rich people who think time is going to end as AI takes over and technological progress accelerates to a singularity.

We are living in a cyberpunk novel.

tlrobinson2• 7 years ago

If so that means the creator of the first true cryptocurrency is currently frozen in liquid nitrogen awaiting potential revival in the future

Perhaps with the private key for ~1 million Bitcoin locked in his brain. An excellent incentive to revive him.

darkpuma• 7 years ago

Every time I read one of these theories it sounds pretty convincing. This one too. Yet they can't all be right.

chvid• 7 years ago

Why all this silliness? Everyone knows it was made by the grumpy Aussie man.

tim333• 7 years ago

Unlikely.

jtms• 7 years ago

It was clearly a joke - he means the opposite of what was said, but thanks for spelling out the obvious

avs7332• 7 years ago

So sincere question...does this matter? What is added to the social value of bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general?

I'm not asking to just dismiss it...just why we are perpetually having/focusing on this discussion is intriguing to me

TomVDB• 7 years ago

At the very least, this story matters just the way general human interest stories matter, as entertainment.

gtirloni• 7 years ago

It matters as much as the new royal baby. People have a fixation with these things.

avs7332• 7 years ago

So that was my initial (curmudgeonly) reaction but I posted my question with an open mind and the responses have honestly changed my perspective.

jimbob452• 7 years ago

He would reach mythical status if he were found to have upended both the cryptographic industry and financial industry as well as run a multi-continental crime empire.

vkou2• 7 years ago

if he were found to have upended both the cryptographic industry and financial industry

How exactly has he up-ended the financial industry?

None of the differences in how 99.9% of the world pays for things, over the past 10 years, have anything to do with BTC.

How has he upended the cryptographic industry? Nobody actually building products, or using cryptography for useful things is basing it off BTC.

BTC created a new financial market, sure. It has not 'upended' industries that solve actual problems.

low_roar1• 7 years ago

It matters for some because whoever Satoshi is, is in control of a whole lot of Bitcoins.

SilasX• 7 years ago

Which have, also interestingly, never been transferred.

gnode• 7 years ago

What is added to the social value of bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general?

Authoritative leadership. Nakamoto filled this role historically, and since becoming absent Bitcoin has faced a scalability crisis, and resulting loss of confidence leading to forks. Arguably this has prevented Bitcoin gaining greater use as a currency and payment system, rather than as an investment.

Founders often serve the role of a steward in open projects, and help give direction to development. Examples are Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall and Richard Stallman.

Cryptocurrencies in particular need a consensus on what is the canonical version of the software, so lack of authority is detrimental.

Lordarminius2• 7 years ago

Authoritative leadership. Nakamoto filled this role historically...

I would argue the exact opposite. Satoshi's anonymity is a boon for Bitcoin. As long as he remains unknown, the project rises and falls on its own merits and market forces and consensus hold sway. We're he to be inserted into the picture, especially at this time, a dangerous dependency and cult of personality could arise. Not even going into the issue of what effect the billions of BTC in his name would have.

diminoten• 7 years ago

I dunno, for my part it's interesting to understand that the person who invented Bitcoin also wrote TrueCrypt.

That's two "hits".

exolymph2• 7 years ago

The article by no means establishes your assertion.

sneak• 7 years ago

I wondered this for most of a decade myself.

It turns out that human beings absolutely depend on narrative stories to understand and relate to the things in their world.

Narratives, of course, have characters. Characters without identity are like an itch that must be scratched, because the narrative is central to integrating the thing the narrative is about (bitcoin) into a normal human being’s life. We are social animals and cannot truly consider the “what” independent of the “who”. (Even the “why” is related to the “who”, because it relates to the motivations of the character in the narrative).

The other bit of wisdom I was able to intuit out of this conclusion is that it is absolutely essential to make sure you are constantly crafting and promulgating your own narrative to everyone you know or who might know or know about you. Humans are so narrative-desperate that they will fill in and manufacture a narrative for you (which may or may not reflect any objective reality whatsoever) if they are not provided one in advance.

Tell your own story, loud and often, otherwise others will invent one and tell it for you.

1121redblackgo• 7 years ago

Nick Szabo

hartator• 7 years ago

Gimlet media released a podcast about him: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/dvhd9k/136-the-found...

His huge interest for gold, programming, encryption, and his global distrust of the state makes me believe he can also have created Bitcoin.

scottlocklin• 7 years ago

He also ran a crazy criminal empire denoted in gold bricks, which seems like a pretty stupid hobby if you invented bitcoin.

It was Hal Finney (and maybe Szabo). It's obvious.

staplers2• 7 years ago

After 7 years in the crypto space, I'm still not convinced of any particular Satoshi theory. That being said, Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, and Paul Le Roux all have decent evidence pointing to them.

mirimir3• 7 years ago

I vaguely recall reading about Bitcoin development in ~darknet forums, during 2010-2012. But only vaguely, and I retained no logs. There were hints, I think, that developers were Australian.

Edit: OK, maybe it was earlier. I did say vaguely.

staplers2• 7 years ago

Bitcoin was created in Jan 2009.. so the "developers" you are thinking of could have begun contributing after Satoshi

user17843• 7 years ago

I think it was a combined persona from Nick and Hal, with Nick doing most of the writing in the forum.

WalterBright• 7 years ago

Hal was in the dorm room next to mine at Caltech. It's just like him to be Satoshi. Hal was a great guy, wicked smart even for Caltech, and his sense of humor fits right in with being the anonymous creator. I have no idea about the other two fellows, but my money's on Hal just because I want it to have been him!

BubRoss3• 7 years ago

There is also the thought that it is more likely the creator is dead than someone who gave up being world famous as well as 20 billion dollars.

RealityVoid• 7 years ago

I read Hal's posts and he did seem like such an amazing person. I was very sad when I read of his illness and death.

mirimir3• 7 years ago

Interesting, I suppose.

But I wonder if Craig Wright does in fact have a bunch of FDE drives that he's trying to crack.

And if they are Le Roux's drives, I wonder what will go down if he ever gets released.

mrkramer3• 7 years ago

He is probably not Satoshi because Bitcoin was meant to be everything opposite of a currency for money laundering hence triple ledger accounting aka blockchain. After all see Bitcoin whitepaper and read carefully each sentence and you will realize it was meant for internet commerce and last thing you want in ecommerce is fraud and money laundering.

On the other hand Craig Wright is the most possible candidate for Satoshi by far. There are too many clues leading to him for example like this one https://seclists.org/basics/2006/Mar/270 or a small detail like word "bloody" which Satoshi used and it is usual for people using British vocab which Craig being Australian uses, I heard it in his presentations. And btw Craig said he was involved in cracking of TrueCrypt with law enforcement that explains why creator of TrueCrypt is mentioned in court documents.

JohnJamesRambo• 7 years ago

Craig Wright is not Satoshi, that is absurd. Research it more and come back to us. If he ever wanted to prove it he could easily do so by moving any of the early coins etc. Instead of his fraudulent signatures added after the fact and all his other shenanigans.

bepvte• 7 years ago

Craig Wright is commonly known as "Faketoshi" in the community due to how much he claims he is Satoshi.

mrkramer3• 7 years ago

By moving Satoshi's coins he is not proving him being Satoshi, he is only proving that he has a private key of Satoshi's wallet. If I steal your Bitcoin wallet's private key and I move your coins does that mean I am you? Probably not. Craig said in of his interviews that he has a bank statement of bitcoin.org domain purchase so I am eager as much as everyone to see the bank statement.

mthoms3• 7 years ago

When Europeans (or others outside the Americas) learn English, they usually learn British English. The use of "bloody" isn't as strong an indicator as you might think.

tptacek• 7 years ago

Evidence:

* Both Le Roux and Satoshi did significant cryptography projects.

* Both Le Roux and Satoshi work in C++.

* Wright claimed in legal filings to have been involved with Le Roux.

* Allegedly, Wright and a friend have built a cluster of computers to crack secrets, which the theory presumes to be the password for a TrueCrypt volume with Le Roux's bitcoin key.

* Le Roux has an alias, "Solotshi", which sounds like Satoshi.

* Le Roux published a short manifesto, long before Bitcoin, that echoes some Bitcoin principles.

* Satoshi disappeared at about the same time Le Roux was really kicking his criminal conspiracy into gear.

* A forum post presaging Bitcoin was posted from the Netherlands, where Le Roux is from.

I mean, judge this stuff for yourself. Independently: a lot of people want this to be true.

CiPHPerCoder3• 7 years ago

I want this to be true so we can stop having stories written about it once and for all.

(I mean, why does it matter? Someone desires privacy, and we as a community are hellbent on depriving them of any... what does that say about our moral character?)

BinaryIdiot• 7 years ago

I want this to be true so we can stop having stories written about it once and for all.

Yup, I'm with you. At this point I don't care what the truth is, it would just be nice for it to be out in the open so the nonsense articles we get every single year stop.

johnnycab2• 7 years ago

(I mean, why does it matter? Someone desires privacy, and we as a community are hellbent on depriving them of any... what does that say about our moral character?)

Are you talking about Paul Le Roux or Craig Wright? Both of them have been actively craving recognition and courting notoriety of their own accord, for differing reasons ─ either due a flaw in their character or empty spots in their souls, probably not related to their genius. Regardless, they are not seeking any kind of redemption or permission from anyone, nor do they have any desire for privacy; although Paul Le Roux is already semi-anonymous due to his status as an asset.

tomelders• 7 years ago

What is your fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery?

lnanek2• 7 years ago

I mean, why does it matter?

It doesn't matter on a personal level to anyone not related, but it's a big deal for the BTC market. If sentencing ends up light, and Satoshi is free in a couple years, that's a huge number of BTC that could be then sold, crashing the market...

trickstra• 7 years ago

Having the "founder" anonymous and silent has been good for Bitcoin. Even if it didn't have any effect on the market (it would) everyone can fantasize and speculate about the motives for Bitcoin's creation, about the next moves, etc. So such founder is a superposition of anyone's idea. If that superposition collapses into one drug cartel boss, that would change many people's view about Bitcoin and it's purpose, legality and of course market price

antonios• 7 years ago

Given his track record one can assume that Craig Wright is lying in just about everything he says. The rest is not evidence; looks more like a list of coincidences.

People have been desperate to find Satoshi. Like you said, a lot of people want this to be true.

DyslexicAtheist3• 7 years ago

what makes me suspicious is that Document 187 got filed not long after the Atavast story made its rounds. So there was some time for this conspiracy to develop.

I really want it to be LeRoux. He would make an awesome Satoshi compared to Craig Wright. But I'm pretty sure the real Satoshi is dead otherwise Wright wouldn't be so noisy with his claims. Wright attracts a lot of attention so I wouldn't be surprised if he hauls himself out of a hotel window in some kind of freak accident (sooner than later).

note to self: Australia's major export in the last years was Julian Assange, Craig Wright, Paul Calder LeRoux and OpenSSL. (slowclap)

chx• 7 years ago

Satoshi disappeared at about the same time Le Roux was really kicking his criminal conspiracy into gear.

Not only that but Le Roux has been in custody since 2012 which is the first credible theory at least I know of about why Satoshi never touched his treasure.

What I don't get why this article blew up now when a month ago https://news.bitcoin.com/satoshi-nakamoto-could-be-criminal-... it was already on bitcoin.com itself.

kevinmchugh2• 7 years ago

I don't think Le Roux ever lived in the Netherlands. He had or has children and an ex-wife who live there, though.

later edit: the word "bitcoin" appears only once in The Mastermind. Ratliff says he was emailed many times by people who believed Le Roux was Satoshi. He spent "countless hours" investigating the claim and found no evidence of any connection.

at-fates-hands• 7 years ago

Atavist did a long multi-part series of articles on him:

https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind

For the sheer amount of crazy stuff he was involved in all the same time, which he was able to manage quite effortlessly, I wouldn't be surprised if it was him. I would also add bitcoin would be perfect way to give him cover for many of the illegal activities he was involved in. It would give him a seamless way to move his money around without raising the eyebrows of authorities in a variety of countries.

Having said that, I can't give any credence to anything Wright says at this point. The amount of disinformation and his overt attempts to ride Satoshi's coattails to fame and fortune have discounted anything he has to say in regards to anything Bitcoin related.

tdcbfdct3• 7 years ago

Both Le Roux and Satoshi did significant cryptography projects

The article says (emphasis mine):

"Le Roux is highly suspected to have been a part of a team of anonymous developers called the “TrueCrypt Team.”"

It also gives the fact that Le Roux has been in jail since 2012 as a possible explanation for why Satisfied Satoshi's Bitcoin fortune has gone untouched, but doesn't attempt to reconcile that with why he was able to make a forum post two years later: https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/07/real-bitcoin-creator-i-am-no...

darawk• 7 years ago

Ya, IMO the big connection is:

- Anonymous creator of significant cryptography project

How many other people like that are there? People that are known to have written important cryptographic software, but chosen to remain anonymous. I'm sure there's a few, but it's a short list.

gwbas1c• 7 years ago

Reads like a conspiracy theory.

That being said, as much merit as the theory has, there's far too much allusion to circumstance to believe this.

Sschellbach• 7 years ago

my conspiratorial reaction to all these conspiracies about paul le roux is that this is propaganda to defame bitcoin by driving a narrative that bitcoin was created by a convicted vicious crime boss and informant. im not buyin

ilaksh• 7 years ago

Well, if I were a movie producer I might consider trying to put that movie out immediately. Before we find out who the actual Satoshi is -- assuming we will ever find out.

Because it just sounds like the type of movie that Hollywood can sell. I mean Hollywood loves to glorify violence, and people already think that Bitcoin is mainly about criminal activity.

However I am hoping that La Roux is not Satoshi, or at least that it is never proven. Because the association with criminal activities detracts from the positive effects that cryptocurrency can have in terms of improving society.

wp3816402• 7 years ago

"Hunting LeRoux" - the book is already being turned into a film by Michael Mann[0]

His story is more than interesting enough for an entire film without the Satoshi connection

[0] https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-evan-ratliff-elaine-s...

rdiddly• 7 years ago

Is it possible the name Paul Le Roux was left unredacted intentionally? I'm not familiar with Wright's case or possible motives; this is just a public service announcement that you should always look with suspicion at all "leaks." For some reason the idea that a piece of info came out inadvertently or accidentally is sufficiently distracting that few people will wonder whether that piece of info is true. Which means a viable strategy for anyone trying to make something look true, is to make it look like it was released accidentally.

I_am_tiberius6• 7 years ago

I don't believe it, at all. I still very sure it's Nicks Szabo. Also if he blocked me on Twitter for no reason:)

7812• 7 years ago

The problem with Szabo is that nobody was able to locate any sort of code written by Szabo - ie, he doesn't seem to know how to program and the first version of Bitcoin is way beyond noob-level - crypto, GUI, distributed networking, ...

I_am_tiberius6• 7 years ago

In the podcast with Tim Ferriss he said he can code in C++.

spookybones• 7 years ago

Interestingly, the photo of his Congo passport shows his date of birth as December 12, 1982. But, the article and Wikipedia states his date of birth as December 12, 1972.

mikeleung• 7 years ago

that's a fake passport, hence the alias 'Solotshi'

ak39• 7 years ago

"The newfound Satoshi candidate is Paul Solotshi Calder Le Roux, a 46-year old former cartel boss, drug smuggler, arms dealer, informant to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and genius programmer."

How do you run a drug cartel, be responsible for gun running, play undercover informant for the DEA and still have time to program in C++ AFTER thinking deeply about the best architecture for crypto-currency through trial and error prototypes and then also have the presence of mind to author a near perfect academic quality paper on the seminal algos?

Keyser Söze! The legend continues with new apocryphal evidence.

tribeofone• 7 years ago

Some people are just orders of magnitude smarter than the rest of us. Look at Kim.com, how was this guy able to run a series of companies, become a multimillionaire and be the #1 rated Call of Duty player in the world? I can hardly manage holding down a job, and coaching my kid's soccer team!

tschwimmer• 7 years ago

this is the first time I've seen Kim Dotcom's name rendered that way. As far as I can tell he usually spells it out.

BubRoss3• 7 years ago

His companies weren't overly clever or technical and could be delegated. This is something that would have to fall on this guy's shoulders alone.

DyslexicAtheist3• 7 years ago

I know Kim because I interviewed with his company "Data Protect" in Munich in person.

He was a hero back then in infosec and kids like me were told by "the Internet elders" that if you want to make it in InfoSec you have to work for Dataprotect ... "because this is a company where the boss flies to work with his helicopter". I was young and easy to impress and this kind of talk was even echoed by fyodor @ insecure.org so it wasn't just idiots like myself who believed it.

When I met him and his other German partner in September 2000 at his swanky office in Nymphenburgerstraße all my alarm bells rang because they had literally cartoon cut-outs of Kim and posters of Kim everywhere plastered around the office.

Kim is a genius in managing his brand but he isn't a hacker, in fact his questions in the interview were so lame that I felt really disappointed. Later it turned out that he hasn't even done the credit card hacks that he used to say he did. Instead he made his money with insider trading and ponzi schemes during the dot-com bubble which was the reason why he did a runner and why German authorities wanted him for so long.

Kim isn't a technology genius, he is just a really good con-man (oh btw his real name is "Kimble Schmitz", which sounds way less cool than Kim Dotcom).

jiveturkey2• 7 years ago

He didn't do all of these things in parallel. Rather, in serial.

betterunix22• 7 years ago

"a near perfect academic quality paper on the seminal algos"

What paper are you referring to? The original Bitcoin whitepaper was poorly written, demonstrated limited background research (including a failure to cite the vast body of previous work on e-cash, which seems pretty obviously relevant), and probably would not have been accepted at even a third-tier conference.

Really, people idolize Satoshi to an absurd degree. There is no reason to think Bitcoin is anything more than a hobby project that, for a combination of reasons, happened to become something big enough for non-tech folks to care about.

robotcookies• 7 years ago

Is it really possible to stay anonymous for this long? Nakamoto bought the bitcoin.org domain at one point - we know this for sure. Surely someone can track how this was paid for? Someone running the forum he posted on has IPs it came from. Even if it was through a VPN, that can be traced by going to the host provider, right?

This person left a long digital trail. How is this not traceable?

SkyMarshal3• 7 years ago

Maybe he used a prepaid card for the domain and a different one for the VPN (which doesn't log), or maybe he did everything through TOR. Not hard to be untraceable for someone capable of inventing Bitcoin.

exolymph2• 7 years ago

Do registrars accept pre-paid Visa "gift cards" and the like? Those were much less restricted circa 2009, right? (I could be wrong, that's just my general impression)

0x4542• 7 years ago

Elaine Shannon wrote the book "Hunting LeRoux" https://www.elaine-shannon.com/works-1 I haven't read it but she has been on reddit discussing why she thinks Paul Le Roux is NOT Satoshi Nakamoto https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/bp3uug/the_unanimous_o...

SkyMarshal3• 7 years ago

Great find.

"In 2009, when bitcoin emerged, he was busy launching multiple ventures As I detailed in Hunting LeRoux, among these were small arms sales, trading in hard drugs, trading in smuggled gold, building a submarine, devising a new missile navigation system for Iran and setting up a new base in Somalia, where he intended to make himself into a white warlord, expanding his arms business into an Amazon-for-arms platform with fortified bases, his own militia, barracks, warehouses for arms, an airstrip, a seaport and so on. Significantly, he discovered oil on the land he controlled but declined to drill it, saying it would take too long to turn a profit."

nickpsecurity• 7 years ago

"saying it would take too long to turn a profit."

If that's true, he'd definitely not want to do an uncertain and long play like Bitcoin. He'd be more likely to do Silk Road or something.

gm3dmo• 7 years ago

In a forum post from 2002, 7 years before Bitcoin was released, somebody posted something that sounds an awful lot like an early idea of Bitcoin ...

The comments in the screenshot claimed to be from 2002 are from gmail.com addresses. Gmail was launched April 2004.

jiveturkey2• 7 years ago

the gmail.com comment is a reply, dated 2014. Later on in the thread, the original post, being replied to, is shown to be from 2002. Necrothread.

the screenshot you're referring to doesn't show any dates.

virtuexru• 7 years ago

This article states that:

"Bitcoin’s initial code had a poker client included."

Does anyone have more information about this? I had no idea this was the case.

emrehan• 7 years ago

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/4405b78d6059e536c369...

_Nat_• 7 years ago

Isn't Satoshi Nakamoto supposed to control >5% of the total Bitcoin supply currently available? But they're inexplicably not tapping into the large amount of wealth that'd seem to be available to them?

It's a bit hard to believe that someone who'd go to such extremes for money as Le Roux would simply choose not to enjoy some payday from the Bitcoin hoard.

UseStrict• 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure he's still in prison, serving time for various convictions.

mike_hearn3• 7 years ago

I was one of the first users of Bitcoin, and one of the earliest developers. I'd like to have a beer with Satoshi some day, so I took a brief look at this. But I'm unconvinced.

One key claim is "they both liked gambling, Bitcoin 0.1 had a poker client in it". Beyond the obvious problem that lots of people like poker, this claim is nonsense. None of the versions of Bitcoin I've ever seen had a poker client in them. It's not even clear what that would mean - you can't implement (mental) poker with Bitcoin Script. And I don't recall Satoshi ever commenting on gambling one way or another.

Another claim is that they both knew C++. Let's assume for a moment that TrueCrypt was written by Paul le Roux (I don't know the backstory). I downloaded the TrueCrypt code and had a look at it.

The TrueCrypt code doesn't share the same rather distinctive coding style Satoshi used. Bitcoin was rare for all kinds of reasons, but one rather obscure reason is that he used a simplified variant of Hungarian notation and only wrote code for Windows. The TrueCrypt code doesn't share this quirk, but it does have a different formatting quirk that I haven't seen before (there's always a space after a function name and the argument list in invocations). Satoshi didn't use that style either. Styles can be pretty distinctive, and I've never seen one that exactly matched Bitcoin's. So it looks to me like these codebases were written by different people.

The other bits of "evidence" are all circumstantial and frequently absurd. The entire thing traces back to Craig Wright, which isn't a good sign.

dwild• 7 years ago

For the poker claims, a quick Google search gave this: https://github.com/trottier/original-bitcoin/blob/master/src...

I don't know if this is the right source code though.

Method-X• 7 years ago

Hey Mike! Are there any known examples of Nick Szabo's code anywhere?

I_am_tiberius6• 7 years ago

I'm hearing about the Hungarian notation story for the first time. Just makes it more evident that it's Nick Szabo.

mike_hearn3• 7 years ago

Why?

wyck• 7 years ago

tl;dr Craig ratted out La Roux and the the icing on the cake is trying to steal La Roux's coins using a front for mining (and school funding, etc)? Ya that's not the full story, La Roux certainly knows about this unless he's in solitary, did anyone ask him;)

New Evidence Suggests Satoshi Nakamoto Is Paul Le Roux

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