HBO documentary suggests Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is Peter Todd

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-09/hbo-documentary-suggests-bitcoin-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-is-peter-todd

by pat2man • 2 years ago

62 172 2 years ago

bloomberg.com

gnabgib• 2 years ago

Discussions

(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

sigmar• 2 years ago

Peter Todd is downplaying the accusation on Twitter by retweeting and discussing this tweet: https://x.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1843788557925921052

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.

runjake• 2 years ago

If it was Satoshi making a correction, he could’ve just edited his original post because bitcointalk allowed for post edits even back then.

nullc23• 2 years ago

Also, at the time petertodd's account was named 'retep' and didn't have any immediately obvious connection to his identity. If there had been a slipup he could have just abandoned the account and certainly not later had it renamed to his legal name!

IncreasePosts• 2 years ago

I'm honestly surprised that all of the alleged satoshis haven't been kid napped by armed gangs trying to get the billions locked up in the first mined blocks.

nomilk• 2 years ago

Ditto. Even if the probability is 1/100, assuming they have at least $1bn net worth, that's a $10m expected payoff.

Dylan16807• 2 years ago

Expected value doesn't really work for rare events. A 1% chance of $50M and a 1% chance of $2B are barely different to a person.

adastra228• 2 years ago

How do you know they haven't?

andrewflnr3• 2 years ago

"Alleged Satoshis" are generally public, almost by definition. We would notice if they disappeared. We would also notice if the well-known Satoshi-associated wallets had any activity, which would be an unavoidable signal if any such kidnapping succeeded in finding the real one. Not everything is a deep mystery.

fragmede• 2 years ago

These 11 peope were kidnapped for their bitcoin.

https://www.wired.com/story/crypto-home-invasion-crime-ring/

jeremiahbuckley• 2 years ago

Would be a pretty amusing black comedy. They kidnap the potential Satoshi, who is actually Satoshi but they’re not sure. [hijinx added here]. Then in the process of torturing him, they accidentally kill him before he reveals the password. And then it’s confirmed he’s who they wanted.

Terr_• 2 years ago

"Where is the money, Lebowski!? Or should I say Satoshi!"

duxup2• 2 years ago

Most kidnappings seem to involve kidnapping people who do in fact have the resources to pay to some extent.

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…

kadoban• 2 years ago

They don’t seem to occur in a speculative fashion where “maybe this person can pay…”.

For potentially tens of billions of dollars, I'm willing to bet that some criminals would make an exception.

nullc23• 2 years ago

At least one of the Satoshi fakes moves around with a big security detail. For them it's presumably just a cost of their faking business and paid for by the people they're defrauding.

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.

mastazi2• 2 years ago

I was thinking about possible motives for Satoshi to be out of the limelight and now I have a question for those of us who have significant security/signint/encryption experience:

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?

The28thDuck• 2 years ago

What kind of edge does such intel give? Their work (bitcoin) spawned thousands and thousands of people who have taken the foundational technology and made many improvements to it. It seems like trying to figure out who they are incentivizes hobbyists to figure it out rather than state sponsors.

mastazi2• 2 years ago

Yeah good point, they probably don't care.

sciencesama• 2 years ago

Its super easy to prove !! Show the sha

adastra228• 2 years ago

Absolutely insane.

(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.

Mistletoe• 2 years ago

HBO’s theory relies on a message from Peter Todd claiming to be the ‘world’s leading expert on how to sacrifice your bitcoins’

I just can't imagine the real Satoshi saying something this stupid.

adastra228• 2 years ago

Also they didn't bother to ask Peter the story behind this? There is a story regarding an entirely different pot of coins.

petertodd5• 2 years ago

That quote actually comes from an early technical conversation I was having about proof-of-sacrifice. Specifically, a conversation lamenting the fact that we kept on inventing neat tricks faster than we could actually use them - by "world's leading expert" I was making fun of the fact that I was technically the world's leading expert in something relatively simple and obvious to Bitcoin experts... yet even I hadn't actually put the technique into practice in a production application.

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...

staplers• 2 years ago

It's incredibly dangerous of these "journalists". Putting targets on people's back as well as possibly being slander.

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.

neilv2• 2 years ago

It's incredibly dangerous of these "journalists". Putting targets on people's back [...] The actual leading candidate is [named other individual/family target]

Am I misunderstanding something, or do you want to edit that?

monero-xmr• 2 years ago

It's definitely Hal Finney. The fact that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto lived a few minutes away from him, and Hal was a marathon runner who could have easily seen his mailbox, and also that Satoshi disappeared when Hal's ALS became overwhelming, is all the evidence you need.

paulpauper3• 2 years ago

it's not any of them

mvdtnz• 2 years ago

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.

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.

voltaireodactyl• 2 years ago

By this measure, one would be compelled to start with the banks. Which is not to say I’m opposed in theory, just that I hope such sentiments are applied equally.

scarab92• 2 years ago

Just another reminder that journalists aren’t experts in any domain other than journalism.

Stop looking to them for credible analysis.

tommiegannert• 2 years ago

Journalists are supposed to know that (since they are journalism experts,) and use domain experts for their analysis.

petertodd5• 2 years ago

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.

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...

benterix2• 2 years ago

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?

midmagico6• 2 years ago

The massive amount of additional logic and thought about Satoshi from OG'ers (e.g. |}ruid etc) that have come out in response to this terrible effort, IMO is partly the purpose of the doco.

alchemist1e915• 2 years ago

No good comes from speculation over the identity of Satoshi.

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.

ryandvm• 2 years ago

The obvious answer is Satoshi Nakamoto is functionally dead.

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.

astrange3• 2 years ago

lost the wallet and wishes he were dead

At least it's a good tax write-off. (Well… $3000 a year for life in the US iirc.)

shepherdjerred2• 2 years ago

What’s stopping me from claiming I had this (or any other) wallet and getting the write off?

fny• 2 years ago

The $70 billion is not gone. He would need to sell his Bitcoin to others to amass $70 billion. Whatever impact $70B dollars could have is already happening: the difference is that it’s not his impact.

real_satoshi• 2 years ago

Much like Elon Musk couldn't liquidate his stocks and wind up a billionaire, my bitcoin is nowhere nearly worth $70B. I won't tell you my estimate, but I will say that it's quite modest by comparison.

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.

astrange3• 2 years ago

I still think it's Paul Le Roux, on the basis that this would be the funniest outcome.

paulgb• 2 years ago

It would also be pretty funny if it was actually Craig Wright but he lost his private key.

nullc23• 2 years ago

only possible if he had a never disclosed frontal lobotomy. the guy is a technical idiot.

yboris• 2 years ago

Headline: ‘I am not Satoshi Nakamoto’: Subject of HBO documentary denies he invented bitcoin

https://lite.cnn.com/2024/10/08/investing/satoshi-nakamoto-i...

startupsfail• 2 years ago

Is there anything positive at all in the Crypto industry?

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.

mlyle• 2 years ago

Simplified movement of value across international borders, avoiding excessive exchange fees.

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.

throw161024• 2 years ago

For me, it's the ability to send money to or receive money from anyone, anywhere, without the government's or bank approval.

cypherpunks01• 2 years ago

I think the most positive benefits are people using it to protect themselves in countries under authoritarian rule and/or economic collapse. Low-fee remittances are a lesser but still very positive use-case. There are genuine large benefits to people in these situations.

See also: Why I'm less than infinitely hostile to crypto

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-im-less-than-infinitely...

tucnak• 2 years ago

If it weren't for crypto, zero-knowledge technology would have been lame

r7213• 2 years ago

Quite interesting interview in this piece:

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.

ErikAugust• 2 years ago

A mockumentary on crypto would be much more interesting at this point.

ethbr1• 2 years ago

Cryptocracy

esafak• 2 years ago

This coin goes up to 11.

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

Oof polymarket betters rekt

par• 2 years ago

Pretty sure the guy who goes around saying "I am Satoshi" is not, in fact, Satoshi.

hprotagonist• 2 years ago

I said to him, ‘What disguise will hide me from the world? What can I find more respectable than bishops and majors?’ He looked at me with his large but indecipherable face. ‘You want a safe disguise, do you? You want a dress which will guarantee you harmless; a dress in which no one would ever look for a bomb?’ I nodded. He suddenly lifted his lion’s voice. ‘Why, then, dress up as an anarchist, you fool!’ he roared so that the room shook. ‘Nobody will ever expect you to do anything dangerous then.’ And he turned his broad back on me without another word. I took his advice, and have never regretted it. I preached blood and murder to those women day and night, and—by God!—they would let me wheel their perambulators.”

dools• 2 years ago

I reckon it's James Simon (now deceased) from Rennaisance, heading up a team.

jeanlucas• 2 years ago

I hope this do not hurt Peter.

whimsicalism3• 2 years ago

imo it's pretty obvious that he was Hal Finney, potentially with collaborators, and no amount of scripted emails, etc. disproves it for me

reducesuffering4• 2 years ago

It sounds like you know Hal was running a marathon while Satoshi was emailing. Did you also know their stylometry doesn't match?

WalterBright3• 2 years ago

It's not definitive proof.

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.

WalterBright3• 2 years ago

My money is on Hal, too. He was in the dorm room next to mine. I've never met an actual genius before or since. Bitcoin is just the thing he would invent.

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.

nullc23• 2 years ago

Hey, it would be a kindness to Hal's family to not promote this theory. They've been subject to threats and extortion over it.

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.

pa7ch• 2 years ago

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.10257v14

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.

whimsicalism3• 2 years ago

I think it is likely the 2014 message was actually Satoshi and there really is no evidence to the contrary. It rules out Len or at least Len as the exclusive creator

paulpauper3• 2 years ago

some other person not listed

mike_hearn3• 2 years ago

Reasons why it probably wasn't Hal Finney.

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.

nullc23• 2 years ago

Hi Mike. Please provide the complete enclosing headers of the email in question, along with their DKIM signature. The header trace will help dispel any allegations that the messages were delayed for technical reasons or were otherwise corrupted.

broknbottle• 2 years ago

Nah it's not Peter Todd. It's actually Red Herring.

https://scoobydoo.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Herring

neilv2• 2 years ago

If an HBO show suggested that I was the Bitcoin creator, I would be wealthy... from owning HBO, after my team of lawyers (who accepted the suit on contingency) was done with them.

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.

jawiggins3• 2 years ago

Just finished watching the doc on HBO.

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.

nullc23• 2 years ago

The forum is/was public, so there is no reason to create an account until you're planning to post something or send a private message.

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.

px43• 2 years ago

Oh hey Greg :-D Did you watch the movie yet? Was fun.

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.

kyledrake6• 2 years ago

It's hard not to be a little coy when you helped build something that usually takes an empire to build with some bad code and a few hundred loosely affiliated weirdos on the internet. I still don't think most laypeople (or honestly most people in the "crypto" space) really understand the significance of what was invented with Bitcoin.

jawiggins3• 2 years ago

Just finished watching the doc on HBO.

The key piece of evidence seems to be this comment from Peter Todd: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2181.msg28739#msg287...

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.

petertodd5• 2 years ago

Peter makes it just after joining the form, so he is unlikely to have detailed knowledge of bitcoin.

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.

jawiggins3• 2 years ago

Cool to get a reply from you directly, thanks!

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.

alchemist1e915• 2 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29728339

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”.

cachvico• 2 years ago

So basically you're saying that the 3 day gap between your first post and your demonstrated understanding is actually reasonable, assuming you spent those 3 days immersed in understanding the code & design at play.

midmagico6• 2 years ago

The fact that the inputs, outputs, and fee of a transaction must add up isn't exactly "detailed knowledge" :)

They don't have to! (re: txid 5d80a29be1609db91658b401f85921a86ab4755969729b65257651bb9fd2c10d)

kyledrake6• 2 years ago

I spent quite a bit of time with Peter Todd in the very early Bitcoin days. I really enjoyed our conversations back then, I have no idea what he is up to now. My gut feeling is that he is probably not Satoshi Nakamoto. Adam Back is a far more likely suspect, particularly for his British english, which Satoshi wrote in.

bbunix• 2 years ago

Canadian English isn't that far off, especially in a lot of the spelling...

philsquared_2• 2 years ago

+1 to Adam Back. 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)

kyledrake6• 2 years ago

Indeed there's really nothing positive to be had from coming out as Satoshi at this point regardless of who it is. Criminals and governments will be falling over each other to try to get their take.

trog• 2 years ago

It veers quickly into conspiracy theory territory but I have long thought a nation state is a likely candidate for creator. You can kinda pick from several, all equally free from and evidence, and come up with narratives around why they might have done such a thing.

philsquared_2• 2 years ago

It is Adam Back.

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)

olalonde8• 2 years ago

Clearly not him. He initially dismissed Bitcoin and jumped on the bandwagon when it started making headlines due to its fast rising price. Plus, Adam Back seeks fame, he would happily claim to be Satoshi if it was really him. He was even criticized early on for seeming to take too much credit for Bitcoin[0].

My guess is that it's someone who was not particularly well-known prior to Bitcoin.

[0] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=225463.0

olalonde8• 2 years ago

For more serious research on who Satoshi might be: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.10257

Bengalilol2• 2 years ago

Wow. That was an interesting read. The approach was uplifting. Thanks for sharing!

xOSBERTx3• 2 years ago

I've been in crypto since March of 2013 and Satoshi is not known. The so called DOC was a money grab.

xOSBERTx3• 2 years ago

Satoshi Nakamoto is defined as: Any DEV that participated in Bitcoins 1st year of development.

Leave it at that.

commafun2• 2 years ago

why people are finding satoshi ?

commafun2• 2 years ago

Why people want to find satoshi ?

Bengalilol2• 2 years ago

Because he wrote everyone he wasn't important and asked everyone to focus on the main objective which was his creation. Seriously: IDK I am all puzzled. Looks like a start of a religion (^^).

amai2• 2 years ago

"The Father: Adam Back

The Son: Peter Todd

The Holy Ghost: Greg Maxwell"

https://x.com/CullenHoback/status/1843884010013102314

midmagico6• 2 years ago

man that guy is an idiot

joeyagreco• 2 years ago

Todd reportedly denied he was the bitcoin creator: "Of course I'm not Satoshi," he said.

kyledrake6• 2 years ago

The genesis block has a message from a relatively obscure British newspaper in it (The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks). Not something I would expect a frontier Canadian in their 20s to be sourcing from.

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.

nullc23• 2 years ago

The Times is not an obscure paper, but if you'd like some fodder: the headline Satoshi used is from the print edition rather than the online edition which was different.

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.

HBO documentary suggests Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is Peter Todd

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