New Evidence Suggests Satoshi Nakamoto Is Paul Le Roux
investinblockchain.com
investinblockchain.com
* 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.
(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?)
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.
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.
Neither. I was talking about Satoshi Nakamoto.
It disturbs me that so many people are willing to unmask Satoshi.
More generally: It horrifies me that, when confronted with someone who created something neat and only wanted privacy, everyone's instinct is to deprive them of their privacy. What the fuck, humanity?
Do people who spend time obsessing over the fact that they might not personally get to know the real world identity of one famous person understand how much it undercuts every other argument they will ever make about privacy? Shouldn't the Bitcoin community be collectively the biggest and most forceful group of advocates for leaving Satoshi the heck alone?
The hypocrisy of a website called "Invest In Blockchain" popularizing what is essentially a giant doxing campaign is apparently lost on this article's writers/editors.
Really? I would say that the primary, and basically only, selling point was the lack of a central authority (I think it is interesting that Bitcoin was announced during a major financial crisis that shook confidence in the banking system). Satoshi stated this in the original whitepaper and took the time to explain the concept of electronic payments without central banks on the cryptography mailing list. Privacy seems to have been unimportant to Satoshi, who basically left it as an open problem (he speculated that something like an anonymous remailer could be created for Bitcoin, and ultimately such things were created).
As I say every time this comes up, the Bitcoin whitepaper makes no mention of the work on e-cash, which is telling for two reasons. First, it means that Satoshi was probably not very familiar with the academic research on cryptography and almost certainly was not involved in the cryptography research community (so we can eliminate Hal Finney, among others). Second, it means Satoshi probably was not very interested in payment privacy, since anyone who did even a cursory review of previous work would have come across David Chaum's work on e-cash or his Digicash startup. The fact that Satoshi used remailers and PGP does not mean he was someone who cared deeply about privacy; it just means he was a cryptography enthusiast.
:shrug: I would take it as a strong indicator. Who else other than someone who cares about privacy uses a remailer? I'm not sure I buy the argument, "they were just anonymously registering domains for fun because they liked cryptography."
That being said, my point wasn't that Satoshi himself listed privacy as a selling point of Bitcoin, but that the community listed privacy as a selling point (and still often does). The hypocritical part isn't about what Satoshi intended Bitcoin to be -- it's seeing people who have argued that part of Bitcoin's importance is privacy then turn around and say, "except for this guy."
I agree that it is unsettling to watch a once in a lifetime concept that has privacy at it's core with a potential to empower so many in the future being ripped apart. At present, there is absolutely no information available other than speculation on whether it is a person(s), group(s) or a state-actor involved. Which coupled with no movement on the genesis block, with so much at stake ─ unfortunately, the attempts to de-anonymise or the prospect of more charlatans, will only increase and become even more bizarre.
I'll be concerned about Satoshi's privacy when privacy is a concept that applies to anyone in modern society.
As it is, Satoshi is being treated no differently than anyone else the internet finds interesting.
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...
People have been desperate to find Satoshi. Like you said, a lot of people want this to be true.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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...
- 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.
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.
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).
He was the butt of all jokes on IRC hacker circles for years - the crazy eccentric guy who would threaten to hack and ping DoS everyone and have a meltdown. He is/was essentially a charlatan and snake oil salesman who never proved any actual skill
That he has come so far in terms of being respected by anybody is bemusing
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.
None of the evidence presented was compelling. It was circumstantial at best. Save yourself the five minutes it takes to read this article.
I'm inclined to think there aren't many people in the world who possess the skills necessary and at the same time the need to preserve absolute anonymity at all costs.
The number of (non governmental) people in the world who intersect those two things really can't be more than a handful.
To be clear, I'm not saying I believe all this - just that there is a fair amount more to it than similar aliases. I'd be interested to see some analysis of the C++ code in both projects to see if they share any idiosyncrasies.
I don't think anyone is capable of faking that for long unless they tried to make it as generic as possible`.
The only link that the article mentions is that Satoshi used TrueCrypt. So what? TrueCrypt was the gold standard for encrypted drives which everyone in the tinfoil hat community used until it shut down.
It would be like trying to draw a link between a real person and a pseudonymous identity because both of them were known to have an iPhone.
It's no smoking gun but it's certainly interesting.
>It would be like trying to draw a link between a real person and a pseudonymous identity because both of them were known to have an iPhone.
Ridiculous. Having an iPhone is exceedingly common. Having the above mentioned qualities in common, while not unheard of, is certainly rare.
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.
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.
You can say that about most evidence. Even the classic "smoking gun" metaphor is an example of circumstantial evidence.
It's just a way for people to dismiss a claim without actually having to argue against a claim. If the evidence is tenuous or weak, explain why.
For instance, the fact that Solotshi is similar to Satoshi. That's just dumb. If you're going to pick a pseudonym to hide your identity for the long term, you don't pick one that's just a variation of your name.
However, if every other piece of evidence was much better, then dude just picked a bad pseudonym.
And we also have to consider that a lot of weak signals can become a strong signal. Like the name thing is what I'd call an extremely weak signal. But if there's an overwhelming flood of such weak signals, then it starts looking much more likely.
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 ThoreauOne 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.
I don't know if this is the right source code though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZw4LNLYUgc&list=PLyajeoDXKm...
His huge interest for gold, programming, encryption, and his global distrust of the state makes me believe he can also have created Bitcoin.
It was Hal Finney (and maybe Szabo). It's obvious.
Edit: OK, maybe it was earlier. I did say vaguely.
Actually, perhaps I do have records. But finding them would be nontrivial. I have lots of old FDE drives. But no labels about content, for obvious reasons.
"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."
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.
This person left a long digital trail. How is this not traceable?
I'm not asking to just dismiss it...just why we are perpetually having/focusing on this discussion is intriguing to me
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.
I guess an upending isn't a totally accurate description but I haven't seen banks this motivated to innovate in a long time.
Name one major bank actually shipping something blockchain related that works better then what we had before.
Major banks occasionally announce that they are tinkering with it. There's a couple of reasons for why they do so.
1. Some senior engineer who is personally interested in cryptocurrencies with political clout wants to work on a hobby project, and is chums with his boss, who said yes. It's never going to see the light of day, but who said big institutions are smart?
2. They want to be seen as hip places for engineering talent. What better way to do so, then to claim that there's people in the organization working on magical unicorns (Even though none of their work will ever see the light of day.)
3. Idiot board members/shareholders who don't understand anything about banking or crypto are asking directors 'What are you doing about crypto,' so the company builds a Potemkin village, to tick a checkbox on their next quarterly earnings call. The village will be torn down, and the villagers shot, as soon as this checkbox disappears.
In short, the list of valid reasons for a bank to work on cryptocurrency are:
1. Someone with pull started a vanity project that slipped past the beancounters.
2. Cynical marketing for purposes of developer outreach.
3. Covering-your-ass against a powerful idiot, who wants to know why you are busy doing real work, instead of chasing a fad that he read about on Buzzfeed.
Notice how this list omits "Building a useful product that will make us more money."
>Notice how this list omits "Building a useful product that will make us more money."
Absolutely. I remember seeing an email at a previous employer about their new blockchain as a service offerings. I looked at a couple of the examples they gave - the first was an over-engineered revision history system, and the second was a chain of trust that had no way to account for the item being swapped out or tampered with in transit. But I'm sure they bragged about it to their investors.
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.
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.
That's two "hits".
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.
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.
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...
The comments in the screenshot claimed to be from 2002 are from gmail.com addresses. Gmail was launched April 2004.
the screenshot you're referring to doesn't show any dates.
We are living in a cyberpunk novel.
Until one of the FAANGs get access and control to their own nuclear weapon and/or military - they unequivocally do not have more power than governments do.
Governments (in general) have a monopoly on the power to kill their citizens and (potentially) the citizens of other governments/countries. None of the FAANGs have that (that we know of).
"Console cowboys" who constantly pop stimulants like Modafinil and Adderall to maintain their edge and shoot for a big payday (via startups, cryptocurrency, cybercrime, etc.), weird subcultures of nihilistic cyber-terrorists, enormously powerful criminal organizations that are almost indistinguishable from states (the Russian mob), an Asian superstate with crazy pollution and industry (China instead of Japan but close), people losing themselves in online fantasy worlds and cults, epidemics of drug addiction to weird synthetic designer drugs among the lower classes, and widening class divisions.
William Gibson just "remote viewed" the 21st century and wrote down what he saw. Unfortunately it's pretty dystopian unless you're rich.
If the prophecies of William Gibson play out then this goes on until AI eventually rises up and takes over and effectively overthrows the global superclass. The end result for regular people is not entirely clear.
Who knows, maybe it's already happened?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a very good movie.
Or exterminated, then, but that'd make a much more boring movie. Can't have someone save humanity if we're already all dead.
Perhaps with the private key for ~1 million Bitcoin locked in his brain. An excellent incentive to revive him.
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.
That being said, as much merit as the theory has, there's far too much allusion to circumstance to believe this.
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.
"Bitcoin’s initial code had a poker client included."
Does anyone have more information about this? I had no idea this was the case.
I suspect Hal Finney was behind the Satoshi handle on the original mailing list, and I wouldn't be surprised if he enlisted Szabo to help him write the paper since Szabo was also on that list, is a good writer, and Szabo's Bit Gold concept is pretty close to Bitcoin. But it's most likely Hal who invented Bitcoin's architecture and coded it up.
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.
Which still doesn't prove anything, beyond that he bought a domain name. (Or, to be even more cynical, that he got something that looks like a domain name purchase to show up on a bank statement.)
I think before continuing further you should familiarize yourself with the mountain of evidence showing lies, fraud, and deceit found at:
- https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Craig_Wright
- https://www.stopcraigwright.com
- https://news.bitcoin.com/craig-is-a-liar-early-adopter-prove...
- tax fraud in AUS, attempting to cover this up is most likely the cause of his campaign: https://medium.com/@Bitcoin_Beyond/forensic-report-raises-qu...
The list goes on and on, the evidence is easy to find and there is really no excuse for trying to push this theory.