Was Satoshi a Cryptographer?
EDIT: (probably) No [1]
[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/satoshi-nakamoto-had-outside-...
EDIT: (probably) No [1]
[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/satoshi-nakamoto-had-outside-...
1. No clear security definition, making it hard to know what counts as a successful attack against the system he proposed. Moreover, Bitcoin requires the honest parties to do more work than the attacker, which would appear backwards to most cryptographers and further complicates efforts to precisely define the security goal.
2. No mention of the mountain of previous research on cryptographic payments. He makes claims that "all" previous systems require an intermediary for each transaction, which is not true (see: offline+transferable ecash does not, but this is not mentioned anywhere). This is not just a stylistic issue; the whitepaper has a bibliography, it simply failed to mention anything that a cryptographer would have considered related work. When Satoshi announced his idea to the cryptography mailing list a great deal of confusion ensued because the cryptographers on the list were familiar with the previous research and assumed this was in some way related.
3. Specifying algorithms and data structures with C++ code without giving higher level descriptions. This makes it hard to analyze the system because of the various ambiguities of C++ and the unnecessary and often confusing syntax. I would also add the various, entirely arbitrary constants chosen for the system, which seem to have just been chosen at random (given the lack of formal analysis it is unlikely that these are fundamental to security). This is not how cryptographers typically communicate their designs.
I would say Satoshi was an enthusiast/hobbyist who had a passing knowledge of a few cryptographic constructions he read about in books or forums. At best his formal education on the topic was likely an undergrad level course, probably taught by someone whose expertise was applied security rather than cryptography; it is more likely that he had no formal education in cryptography at all.
- Bitcoin (and the remarkably-written whitepaper) does enough things right that it's hard to imagine a single programmer delivering that whole package (writing, math, cryptography, programming). Calling it enthusiast or hobbyist level work really downplays it.
- Great attention to detail, like base58 and the checksum (even Ethereum years later went with hex and no checksum like most people would). Or proving he didn't premine by including the newspaper headline in the genesis block.
- Really good picks of crypto primitives off the beaten path. e.g. at the time, sha-1 was more popular and has since fallen apart, the same with the more popular elliptic curves.
- Even just the script system is interesting to include in a v1 like Bitcoin. You'd expect most of us HNers to just hardcode a pay-to-pub/privkey system, not detour with a script system.
- Obsession with compression. Made his own lil compressed floating point spec. How many people would include their own FP compression to save a few bits in a v1? Especially when it just saves like one byte per block. Usually the sort of programmer who goes down these paths isn't the one shipping software.
- World-class opsec. I mean, c'mon. We're still left to folk-theory and superstitions about who Satoshi could be. Never let his guard down. No one has caught him not using Tor. Even bought his domains with cash in the mail. People doing some of the most illegal things in the world couldn't be bothered to go to half of his measures. It's mind-bending. Text analysis hasn't even found good matches on his writing or programming style. All for a project that was overwhelmingly likely to get zero traction. It's like the project was partially compelled by a time traveler from the future.
- Though there are fuck ups too in Bitcoin, like the sequence number in transaction input. Has no point, an idea that didn't pan out.
It's hard to have a real theory here. Mine is that Satoshi was a pet project that someone with some political capital at NSA or something was able to get funded for a couple years.
Either way, the mysterious origin story is exactly what a project like Bitcoin needs and deserves, I think. It's hard to imagine any other origin being quite as compelling.
but also had known limitations; the 'writing was on the wall' at the time that it would be obsolete 'soon' by most people reasonably up to date on the current state of the art - I wouldn't take this as too much of a 'sign' on its own.
Where is source for that information. Mail can be traced easily I'm pretty sure.
Unless he was found after all and made an offer he couldn’t refuse.
What makes you think Satoshi had any background in cryptography? Everything about the Bitcoin whitepaper and even the design of Bitcoin itself says otherwise.
Yes. That could also be the case. The individual behind 'Satoshi' has probably died.
Not necessarily. Satoshi obviously planned his pseudonymity from the start. The decision to leave the project may very well have been taken long before it was carried out.
Satoshi could be alive and well. Maybe he carried on his work under his real name, as one developer among many, or maybe not. He obviously thought fairness and trust was important enough to value to form for him to prove the non-possbility of backdating the chain (later known as premining). Planned obsolescence for the creator plays well into this scenario.
In hindsight, having no real creator has served Bitcoin well. People would have listened too much to the creator for a decentralized decision process by consensus to form.
I don't think so. I can't disprove your claim, but people aren't very good at that kind of planning and execution. Too many things can go wrong for them to either maintain anonymity or prevent others from maintaining this anonymity.
It comes off as a bad Hollywood movie. I think the person behind Satoshi has died.
>In hindsight, having no real creator has served Bitcoin well.
We'll see. It's too early to tell. One thing's for sure, I see a lot of less places that take bitcoin as currency then I did a few years ago. Also, the community is much more divided, and there are massive structural issues with bitcoin, from technical issues around the protocol itself, to lack of unified vision leading to forks and arguments, to massive amount of illegal behaviour.
>People would have listened too much to the creator for a decentralized decision process by consensus to form.
Is the leadership decentralized though? At the end of the day, someone needs to hold the keys for the code the runs the bitcoin protocol. Ultimately that individual or group has the power to do anything they want with bitcoin.
You must be a new bitcoin user. Before Craig Wright came into the scene, has anyone heard of Kleiman? Legit question. What evidence is there of Dave? Dave wasn't even around then, zero evidence exists outside of CSW's claims.
And btw who heard of Jeff Bezos before Amazon? Nobody.
You can not judge somebody just by looking at their past. People change and evolve.
> He was getting interviewed by US TV stations so he had some reputation in the security industry. The field is pretty vast. This is like saying because I've made websites, I can somehow fix your laptop. (I probably could but I couldn't come up with a solution fast and well thought out.) Satoshi was clearly meticulous about this, if you've read enough of their posts, it's clear as day.
> And btw who heard of Jeff Bezos before Amazon? Nobody. A lot of top talent is in hedge funds. So, I'm sure many people were looking. It is fair to say I choose a weak logical argument but the point is still valid (hopefully the added clarity to my intent pushes us deeper into our actual points).
> You can not judge somebody just by looking at their past. People change and evolve. Sure, this applies if we're trying to gauge someone's character but this doesn't apply in the expertise required to be Satoshi. Terry Tao (expert mathematician) isn't going to just randomly come up with the next bulletproof SHA function. It's out of his scope. Bitcoin is out of the scope of Kleiman's skillset. I have seen zero evidence to the contrary, other than a false narrative (perpetuated by 'news') that him and CSW created Bitcoin. Even the court has thrown out numerous dated evidence [1,2].
Being a computer forensics specialist doesn't easily port to creating a blend of PGP, Hashcash, eCash, bitgold, etc. Satoshi was an expert at this stuff. What evidence shows that Kleiman did anything? Even in the Kleiman/CSW court cases, there isn't evidence that's been produced by either party. That's the court of law. Please don't avoid this point, no evidence exists to tie Kleiman even to the ideas of digital cash. I haven't seen any and I looked into it heavily, maintaining an open mind. I got no dog in the fight, just a sizable curiosity to this mysterious character.
[1] - https://decrypt.co/21995/us-judge-throws-out-craig-wrights-l... [2] - http://blockchaingrade.org/experts-dissect-craig-wrights-sat...
First reference in Bitcoin Whitepaper is "W. Dai, b-money". But Satoshi never heard of it, Adam Back suggested to Satoshi to read it and he decided to reference it in Bitcoin Whitepaper.
"I suggested Satoshi should look into B-Money, which he didn’t seem to know about at that time, and this is how I think B-Money was added to the paper."[1]
Satoshi said to Wei Dai "I was very interested to read your b-money page. I’m getting ready to release a paper that expands on your ideas into a complete working system. Adam Back (hashcash.org) noticed the similarities and pointed me to your site."[2]
Satoshi seemed to be very good C++ programmer who had interests in electronic cash and cryptography but not a cryptographer.
Look and hear what Gavin said in his presentation:
https://youtu.be/rQ3e1Pzu7iI?t=766
[1]https://cointelegraph.com/news/adam-back-on-satoshi-emails-p...
[2]https://nakamotostudies.org/emails/satoshi-and-wei-dai-corre...
Please understand that many people talked with Satoshi through email as well. Those emails are mostly private. When someone points to an authority, the entire argument is a straw-man, even with someone very relevant to the discussion.
> Satoshi seemed to be very good C++ programmer who had interests in electronic cash and cryptography but not a cryptographer.
What physical circumstantial evidence exists that is shows Kleiman was good at anything you've described or was even interested in these during 2008 or earlier (heck, I can't find anything prior to 2013)? What about any interest into any digital cash/gold attempts?
The argument you're giving is fairly persistent in the crypto community. I'm not entirely sure why, except intellectual laziness. The irony here is 'proof of authority' argument...is an absolute contradiction to what bitcoin's primary function is (trustless 3rd party system). Why are people lifting up a 3rd party and not the code/evidence? An opinion (no matter how relevant) isn't what we're looking for, we are looking for evidence. Did scientific reasoning leave everyone?
(edited for grammar)
The salient part of my argument is that the individual behind the 'Satoshi' persona has most likely died in early 2010s. I have no idea if either Kleiman or Finney (or both or others) were Satoshi, but both fit the profile of Satoshi, and both have died in that time-frame. If not them, then it would be some individual or individuals like them. If you are sure it couldn't have been Kleiman, I won't argue and I will defer to you.
I have followed Craig Wright's claims and he does strike me as a bullshitter (for one thing, he promised 'irrefutable' proof and never delivered). So I'm OK with writing his claims off as a total fabrication. I could also see him trying to take credit for the work of the deceased person behind Satoshi IF he was somehow connected to early bitcoin development and knew who Satoshi was.
I won't spoil things, but what a man Paul Le Roux is.... SUrprised there aren't 10 documentaries & films on Netflix about him.
My guess is he's a single individual whose real identity has never been publicly suggested as a serious Satoshi suspect.
I do a lot of Wikipedia reading about strange folk in this world.
I had not yet come across this dude.
Wiki page is quite the interesting read. Thanks for making me aware of him.
I did my research as a historian would do so I started from the basics and the first clue was Satoshi used perfect British English so most likely he is not American like some people imply. And why an American would link to British daily national newspaper cover like Satoshi did in Genesis Block?[1][2]
[1]https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block
[2] https://www.okex.com/academy/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/thet...
https://hackingdistributed.com/2016/05/04/logical-fallacies-...
It’s Adam Back. Watch this video and you’ll likely be convinced.