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Comment by Aqueous | Hacker News Reader

It seems like Wright is attracting more and more (overly credulous) journalists to perform fawning bio pieces on him in lieu of the only evidence that will ever actually conclusively convince anyone. This evidence, unlike the several hundred thousand extraneous words here, also happens to be something that is extraordinarily simple to provide: cryptographically sign a message that we can all verify. He has not provided this single, legitimate proof to the public and worse yet he has provided fake proof that shows a deliberate willingness to deceive. Moreover, he seems to have demonstrated a willingness to exploit journalists' and the general public's lack of understanding about cryptography. This seems diametrically opposed to the spirit of the technology he allegedly gifted to the world - Bitcoin.

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This reads like a comment from someone who didn't read the article. To call this piece fawning? And the author provides plenty of reasons for why Wright might not want to sign a message even if he could, and they're interesting and layered reasons that require going into detail into the warped psychology of a man who appears just crazy enough to be Satoshi and refuse to prove it, and just crazy enough to be willing to pull off an incredible elaborate hoax even knowing that he won't get away with it in the end.

Granted, it's a LOT of reading - over 35,000 words. But why is the top comment on HN (at time of this comment) on an article of this length and breadth one that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the article's actual specific content?

The point of the piece isn't that herein lies the truth -- this is simply the author's experiences (months of them!) laid bare. You could sum it up in this quote from the piece: "The reason poets dislike each other's books is because they seem wrong, false – a kind of lie. 'If you were telling the truth you would be writing the same poems as me.'"

Fair enough - I guess I was tired of being taken for a ride like every other time I've read an article about this obvious con artist. In this case, it still felt like I was being taken for a ride several thousand words into this absurdly long article, so I quit reading. It still seems to me that unless an article about a Satoshi candidate starts with a valid cryptographic signature from one of Satoshi's original keys, it very simply isn't worth reading.

>the author provides plenty of reasons for why Wright might not want to sign a message even if he could, and they're interesting and layered reasons that require going into detail into the warped psychology of a man who appears just crazy enough to be Satoshi and refuse to prove it

The author provides no believable reason why the scammer won't prove it. They're not interesting/layered reasons. He simply regurgitates the delusions of the scammer.

I read the article.

The author is credulous, and clearly had a wordcount to fill.

I'm so saddened by this. The proof would be so simple. They are so clearly being conned. The LRB? Really? I cannot even.

Bitcoin is a technical marvel in a swamp of human fallibility.

> Bitcoin is a technical marvel in a swamp of human fallibility.

I'm going to use that quote.

Be sure to attribute it to "some random person on the internet".

I am waiting for my copy to land in the mail before reading this.

You are correct, LRB is generally not easily fooled into writing puff pieces; O'Hagen is a very sharp writer (check out his masterly analysis of Assange who is much more capable of blowing smoke than Wright).

My prediction is that this will be looked upon more as a an essay about digital con men, and this is why M-K Willmers allowed it to be published.

FWIW, I say Neal Stephenson is Satoshi :)

Hey, it appears you're shadowbanned. I vouched for this comment because I don't see how it violates any rules, and it seems on-topic and useful. I checked your history and every comment you've made over the last several months (at least) is marked dead, which means only people who've enabled the "showdead" option in their profile can read them. It's a shame as most of the ones I saw look fine.

Seymour Hersh has been doing a pretty good snow job on them lately on the Bin Laden thing, (Syria was a little more credible)

This is not a fawning bio piece. If it's too long (it IS very long), skip to Coda, and start reading at "Do you want to know what I think?".

BTW, the author's hypothesis is not half bad. In order to behave the way he did, Wright must have been sure the real Satoshis would not show up and ruin the show. How could he be so sure? Knowing that they are dead would be a pretty good way.

But there would be no need for Satoshi to turn up. Since Wright isn't Satoshi, then Satoshi knows that Wright can't provide cryptographic proof. Since Satoshi likes his anonymity he can safely sit and let Wright claim to be Satoshi with no downside.

That's what Satoshi might have been thinking, if he were alive. I am pointing to what Wright must have been thinking.

What if he's been hired to act out this part in order to draw out the real Satoshi?

Out of ignorance, I struggle to see all of the reasoning for such extreme desire of anonymity that the real Satoshi possesses?

That would depend entirely on who or what "Satoshi" actually is. If it's an altruistic individual, there are many possible reasons. If it's a group or organization, there are many others.

And whoever or whatever "Satoshi" is, there are a variety of reasons that a variety of people and organizations would like to know his identity. There may also be a variety of reasons that other, non-Satoshi entities would like it to remain a secret, depending on what the real story is. I guess most of us will never know.

Thanks, but I badly worded my question. What I mean is, I realize there's speculation, but I don't know enough about Satoshi and bitcoin to know if there's been any indication/information any which way of what the possible reasoning is for such extreme desire of anonymity because the story seems so incomplete to me. From your response it looks like it is still anyone's guess at this point though.

> From your response it looks like it is still anyone's guess at this point though.

You might be right, but you shouldn't judge from my response, because I know very little about Bitcoin and don't typically follow news about it. I would guess that someone out there would have a better idea... :)

He's a con man... we just don't know who he's trying to con. From a confidence game perspective impersonating a recluse like Satoshi is a great choice, in fact a classic choice. Especially after that other fellow was incorrectly identified as Satoshi by national media and Satoshi didn't do anything to correct those claims.

You mean Dorian? Satoshi did correct it. That's how anyone knows he's still alive.

Satoshi did NOT correct it. His P2P foundation account was hacked, just like his gmx email.

His P2P Foundation was hacked afterwards and then locked for good; but P2P Foundation confirmed at the time that as far as they could tell, it was Satoshi.

Was it signed? I was following pretty closely and my version of history also had that as being fake. This is one instance where I would love to be wrong though.

It was not signed, because Satoshi has never signed anything ever. But it was, as far as it's possible to tell, genuine.

As others have said, it's a con. I have a theory that when Satoshi gave up working on bitcoin he discarded his keys out of principle. That way there would be no way for anyone to get access to those first mined coins. It is the only fair approach.

I can't be the only person who has surmised this. So if you are a con man and you also have this idea, what you start doing is pushing the boundaries a bit and testing to see if you get any push back. If not, push farther. You won't get ridiculous press until you publicly say "I am Satoshi" and until that point, you can always back away and say, "Oh it's all just a bad joke. Sorry!"

As soon as you say "I am Satoshi and I have access to these BTC. Lend me money." and you get no argument, you know you are golden. The keys are gone. It's a risk, but a slight one if he had been pushing here and there to try and provoke a response.

The one issue I'm interested in is the PGP signed email stating that the other Satoshi (Dorian) is not the Bitcoin Satoshi. I'd really like to understand what key was used for that. Imagine if that message were actually a fake... it would have made a great test to see if the real Satoshi would respond.

If CSW had no ability to sign real messages then he simply would have left his proof at duping individuals and having them vouch for him. It would have certainly worked well enough to drum up some investors and run off with their money.

So if he had some access to the keys does that make him Satoshi or part of a Satoshi team? Personally I think the real Satoshi was happy to use him and sign some messages for him but baulked at signing public proof. It's pretty similar in outcome to having a trust that cooperated with him and then didn't but much simpler.

The BBC dictated a message to him though, which he signed live (adding his own commentary) so I don't think that theory holds up.

He'd have to have a live link to satoshi is all. I don't buy that he had the actual key and then either forgot or refused to use it for the sake of the 'trust'

> Wright must have been sure the real Satoshis would not show up and ruin the show

The sense I get of Wright, and other fraudsters, is that they gamble on outcomes. If the lie works out, they proceed to the next step. If it fails a truth test he falls back on one of:

1. The person with this information is deceased

2. The information sits with an opaque trust that I can't tell you about

3. I am eccentric and can't deal with this

4. I'll distract you by talking endlessly about something i'm more comfortable with

A further technique is that Wright never tells the complete story, he doesn't fill in the gaps - but rather he sets up the outline and then allows those around him to fill in the pieces.

Re: the specific case of how Wright would deal with the real Satoshi coming out, I think he intentionally built up the story piece by piece so that he could counter this possibility at any time.

We know that Wright began suggesting he was involved in the creation of Bitcoin very early on. He never said he did it alone, and he never told the full story from the outset but rather built it up piecemeal over time and tested the limits of how far he could go.

He would have noticed that the real Satoshi has never conclusively debunked previous Satoshi suspects. Every one of them could be dismissed as (ironically) not being cryptographically strong proof of the real Satoshi.

So if real Satoshi comes out with a comment similar to what happen when Dorian Nakamoto was profiled in Newsweek, Craig could say it's an imposter. Even in the worst case scenario - the real Satoshi comes out, he signs a message that says "Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto" and it is verified Wright still has options of where to go (as he has done)

He can say technically it's correct, that Nakamoto was a team. He can say that his keys were stolen. He can say that someone must have found Kleiman's disk drive.

Or he can do what has been common in this case: nothing, and allow others to make arguments for him based on hints he drops. For example advocates on his behalf could argue that he intentionally sabotaged himself in order to protect himself from legal liability, or because he wants to remove himself from the spotlight, or because he isn't comfortable with taking credit, or for some other reason (this scenario isn't absurd, it has happen with Wright)

Fraudsters always find a way, and more often than not it is other people doing the arguing for them and trying to fit it around the narrative where the assumption is provided by him.

A lot of it works because of confirmation bias, and you end up in a frustrating situation where nothing can be proven or disproven beyond doubt because the story can be molded to suit what is known and unknown.

The Craig Wright myth consumes the gaps in what we know and do not know about the real Satoshi. The myth is built up by people biased to believe it using small pieces of information provided by Wright.

The author does this in the article - he starts off with:

> "he appeared, from the initial evidence, to have a better claim to being Satoshi Nakamoto than anyone else"

and from there it's just a long loop of Wright dropping hints and the author struggling to piece it all together into that narrative

The total disregard that journalists have shown for facts in this saga should be a red flag that they're equally full of it when it comes to reporting on things that we aren't so knowledgeable about.

"They literally know nothing"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/05/...

And for anybody having doubts about Wright:

https://dankaminsky.com/2016/05/03/the-cryptographically-pro...

https://www.nikcub.com/posts/craig-wright-is-not-satoshi-nak...

I lost all faith in the media a long time ago.

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

I remember watching this happen as a teenager via two sources of information: BBSes and the early Internet, and the mainstream media.

The mainstream media told me Weaver was a child abusing neo-Nazi cult leader who was stockpiling weapons to conduct terrorist attacks or overthrow the government or something.

The non-mainstream media told me he was a reclusive survivalist eccentric that may or may not have harbored some white supremacist beliefs (goofy or offensive beliefs are not a crime) who was being taken down dramatically in a frantic attempt by said government officials to cover their rear ends for a botched entrapment attempt.

History proved the former to be all lies and the latter to be largely the truth.

I never really trusted the news again. Stuff like this just proves my teenaged loss of faith was right. Newspapers and TV media are just "some guy's blog."

That is not to say I trust the "alt" media either. It's media too and over time I've seen it become more and more full of crap as money has come into the equation. Now it seems like mostly a sales channel for dodgy "natural" pharmaceuticals and populist political propaganda.

As Mulder would say: "trust no one." :)

The only way to deal with this is to find multiple sources with competing agendas, see how each of them report and frame the news, and read responses to each by their opponents. Frankly, it's exhausting and a huge reason my news consumption has wildly decreased.

I've toyed around with this idea but ultimately it feels like trying to sober up by drinking a wider variety of booze. You're assuming that someone is even trying.

In the end it's just made me an equal opportunity skeptic.

It may be a good time to revisit Kurosawa's Rashomon again. YMMV but it might explain a lot of contradictions we feel about how agenda drives the narrative.

Yea, that's pretty much where I've ended up

I say this every time I read an article approaching my areas of domain knowledge. (And yet I keep reading the articles.) Thankfully we have forums such as this one where more context and clarification and correction can come out.

Can anyone rebuff the argument in the article that if he did do the single legitimate proof, hackers could steal his bitcoins?

Also no word given that if he did prove himself what legal ramifications that opens himself up to with various governments

I think it's referring to the fact that you pay to a hash of a public key, but once you do a singe transaction, the public key becomes known.

I'm not sure how that's a vulnerability, since the leftover balance is paid to a new address, and I was under the impression that early bicoins were paid to public address, and pay-to-hash-of-public-address was added later.

I'd love for someone to enlighten this. (I got out of bitcoin when TradeHill was still running).

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