Satoshi leaked his Los Angeles IP address (2016)
whoissatoshi.wordpress.com
whoissatoshi.wordpress.com
The "dox" assumes that only three people were using Bitcoin at the time, and thus one of them must be Satoshi. That's a bad assumption, as Bitcoin was publicly available at that time, and was announced on the public cryptography mailing list, and we know for a fact that a few people tried it out early on.
The IRC initial seeding mechanism was _not_ mandatory to use, let alone full time. So it wouldn't be surprising at all if Satoshi wasn't using it.
"This is not a TOR exit node which implies that this is the IP address used by Satoshi on 2009-01-10 and he was in Van Nuys on this day"
It's not a TOR exit node in 2016, when this article is published. That doesn't tell us anything about 2009.
I think Szabo is the most likely Satoshi candidate. He seems to have disappeared from public view since March, despite being a prolific Twitter [2]. I hope he is doing well, chilling on a beach in a Caribbean island.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29729498
[2]: https://metrics.torproject.org/exonerator.html?ip=68.164.57....
> IP Address: 68.164.57.219
> IP Block: 68.164.57.128 – 68.164.57.255
> Reverse DNS: h-68-164-57-219.lsan.ca.dynamic.megapath.net
> Host: Covad Communications. Van Nuys, CA, USA
> Location: Van Nuys, CA, USA
Could have even been something like Satoshi wasn't on his normal setup at the time and it slipped through. Maybe on vacation or a wireless connection that connected near there. Or the IP lookup was even slightly off and they were in Sherman Oaks or anything really. Sometimes even wireless connections can appear to come from an entirely different state based on the network. The IP could have also been spoofed or temporary.
Covad Communications was the 16th biggest ISP at the time and then "Covad was acquired a by private equity firm, Platinum Equity, in April 2008. In 2010, it was sold to U.S. Venture Partners, which merged Covad, and Speakeasy into MegaPath." [1]
It appears when this IP connected (Jan 2009) it was owned by the private equity firm Platinum Equity [2].
The IP was definitely logged in Los Angeles, beyond that it could be anything.
Bitcoin had been released a few days prior to that log file. So unlikely to be on vacation.
As I mentioned in another comment, the IRC seeding mechanism isn't necessary to use Bitcoin, and it was publicly released at the time, so no reason to assume this is Satoshi.
> Bitcoin had been released a few days prior to that log file. So unlikely to be on vacation.
Vacations are great for after shipping though, after the long slog of a project. Since it was new it would be a good time to escape before all the support requests and more usage increased. Maybe they couldn't stay away from that draw and then got a bit lazy on vacation in terms of opsec. Or maybe not. Good info nonetheless, it is one potential clue or not in the mystery.
No idea if true.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgism-work-is-...
So one multibillion dollar thumb drive is even less when spread out over everything in LA!
Manhattan's land would not be worth 1.7T$ if it were just farmland.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-24/manhattan...
So for me it feels pretty much settled that Satoshi is Szabo.
Elon Musk mentioned Nick Szabo on Lex Fridman's podcast as Szabo was also doing Bit Gold prior and is heavy into crypto and currencies. [3]
> "Obviously I don't know who created bitcoin ... it seems as though Nick Szabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas," said Musk, adding, "he claims not to be Nakamoto ... but he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind it than anyone else."
> Szabo is best known as the inventor of one of bitcoin’s predecessors, Bit Gold, and digital smart contracts—which eventually evolved to become a key part of the ethereum blockchain. Szabo has previously denied he's Satoshi Nakamoto, telling financial author Dominic Frisby in 2014, "I'm afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I'm used to it."
Szabo's full name is Nicholas Szabo [4]. Just seems quite a bit like Satoshi Nakamoto. It feels like there is something there potentially.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_sp...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Bit_gold
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/12/28/elon-...
>> "Obviously I don't know who created bitcoin ... it seems as though Nick Szabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas," said Musk, adding, "he claims not to be Nakamoto ... but he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind it than anyone else."
Why do Elon Musk's speculations have any credibility here? It's not his field, and even in his field he has a track record of making confident public statements that turn out to be wildly wrong.
Actually it's very much his field. Elon Musk was one of the founders of X.com which eventually merged to become PayPal. He was interested in digital currency since the '90s and has been active in the cryptocurrency space as well.
Nick is Satoshi. It pains me to type that out.
We were always supposed to look for Satoshi, never to find him.
He was one of four people listed as founders of X.com, which merged with Confinity, which changed its name to PayPal where he was fired as CEO; PayPal was then purchased by EBay, whereupon Musk took a big payday.
Judging by his involvement with Tesla Motors Inc -- he became chairman and CEO by investing 6.5 million into the existing company; a lawsuit brought by an incorporating founder resulted in an agreement whereby Musk and four others can call themselves founders -- makes me wonder what his contribution to X.com actually was.
Whatever else he may be, he's an extraordinarily good investor.
It seems unlikely to me that someone who previously had no issue being public would suddenly be so secretive, especially given how unlikely it was for Bitcoin to turn out the way it did.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20091129231620/http://sourceforg...
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/06/miami-jury-rules-in-favor-of...
1. It is post factual - it couldn't have been predicted beforehand.
2. Craig Wright would only be attacked by those that believe Craig is Satoshi. That could be a very small subset of those who would want to attack Satoshi.
Another potential reason is the money it would generate and the recognition would attract too much attention. The successful decentralized currency like bitcoin might have been foreseen as a threat to the creator after it takes off and gains in value.
From the wiki on Nick Szabo, he is more 'reclusive' and not wanting to be known. On his blog he mentioned his intent on creating a live version of the currency as Bit Gold was more of a prototype/demo and was never launched. Even the name Bit Gold and bitcoin are very similar as is the name Nicholas Szabo (N.S.) and Satoshi Nakamoto (S.N.) in a few ways. Satoshi Nakamoto always seems like a purposeful shroud of a name, looking for someone by that name is probably not going to find them:
> Nathaniel Popper wrote in The New York Times that "the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo." In 2008, prior to the release of bitcoin, Szabo wrote a comment on his blog about the intent of creating a live version of his hypothetical currency. [1]
Hal Finney was the first to receive 10 bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto [2]. Hal Finney was the next employee after Phil Zimmermann at PGP. So he knew the potential for being pursued by governments for software creations. Hal, who died in 2014 unfortunately, probably knew Satoshi and would have known he was shrouding/anonymous for good reasons as seen in the PGP history just before that and around the same time bit gold was being created.
The very likely people to be Satoshi Nakamoto are Nick Szabo and Hal Finney due to the early interactions and transactions, and potentially Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, but that seems unlikely they would use their real name [3]. Maybe it was all three or someone else entirely, these guys are just around the early days and some of the first transactions. Either that or someone or some group saw the need for decentralized currency from their efforts and then front ran them and made it seem more like them to help shroud themselves.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_sp...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Possible_iden...
2. If Satoshi were from the US, the easiest misdirection would be to pretend to be British. Learning the spelling and grammatical differences is not hard (or maybe test against a British spelling/grammar checker). Making sure you appear to be in a different timezone is basic operational security.
3. I would expect references to be intentional misdirections.
Nigerians, for example, follow this standard and they have 4 times the population of the UK.
And he was active - writing commits and emails - in UK hours, not American hours.
Is it some kind of US nationalism that insists on ignoring all this?
What are some examples of those?
However - his spelling was a bit inconsistent. The "Len Sassaman" theory is interesting - as he was known to write in a somewhat British style (for whatever reason) - but not consistently - and was in the right timezone at the time. Or perhaps Satoshi was a synthesis of multiple different people which would explain a lot of the inconsistency as well.
These coloquialisms are common in Africa/Asia. This is the case for most ex-colonies.
Was he so convinced that Bitcoin would be a killer app and thought he should hide since day 1?
Lot's of szabo references in google in Van Nuys.
Although I suppose he’s but one of many ostensibly smart and decent people who seem to devolve into terrible people after being on Twitter too long with a large following.
In this case, releasing the info on a random spammy looking WP blog.
He uses his initials for his Pseudonyms (N.S)
Nakamoto Satoshi = Bitcoin
Nicolas Saberhagen = Monero
Szabo later went on to improve on the concept with Monero, without the involvement of US Intelligence (obviously, since Monero is very unfriendly for the US Govt). Again, speculation. The only person capable of creating both, is likely Szabo. Monero being a big middle finger to "the team" behind Bitcoin, who still control the keys.
From anonymous remailers and his penchant for anonymously released work back in the mailing lists, to MojoNetwork with Bram. His British spelling, his time zone abroad when working in academia and posting online. His circle. Before he committed suicide due to his neurological issues and loss of passion for life, Satoshi last said
“I’ve moved on to other things and probably won’t be around in the future.”
He kept this secret even from his own wife. Alas, I hate to post this here just like this but it's my belief that it's an open secret. Only those close enough to suspect and know his pathology venture the guess. His wish is to have the work carried on nameless and to speak for itself. He hated notoriety for notoriety sake. I feel disrespectful even posting this, but it was not fucking Nick Szabo.
He never stuck me as into $. But rather, into crypto.
From an outsider’s perspective, both look 100% identical.
so
A) Satoshi has other earnings, in bitcoin, that was held long enough to make Satoshi extremely rich, and sold under their normal known identity. While never needing to associate with the other identity.
B) The private keys to the bitcoin mined in those original blocks were sold for cash over the counter for very large amounts to funds with longer time horizons. Bitcoin can operate in temporarily trusted environments. Bitcoin price has tanked every time very old Bitcoin is transferred onchain, so there is no need to transfer them onchain. We would never know.
its all fruitless to speculate
Even if the value tanks it'll still be a ton of money.
So you’re right and we would never be able to prove that any amount has changed hands or not, only assume that others wouldn't take the risk
Sure, it is a network based on trust. But the whole idea of bitcoin's principle of trust is that you trust the majority of an entire community.
By making a deal with a single party for their wallet credentials you have to trust only the seller. One single party. In a shady deal involving a fortune.
And like I said, who would spend obviously phenomenal amounts on something and then never even touch it? When the buyer could simply move that trust from one party to the community simply by transferring the balance to a new wallet.
Of course the ripples in bitcoin's value would be unprecedented. But the buyer would hold so much of it that one way or another they would be extremely rich.
I'm not really talking about the sharing of keys in general by the way. Just about the thought of Satoshi's genesis wallet keys being sold this way.
Which “weird unknown hardware”. Early in Bitcoin, you could just mine bitcoin with any CPU — you still can.
A.) That’s a possibility.
B.) As someone mentioned already, this doesn’t make sense from a trust and security standpoint. Yet discarding this possibility doesn’t prove that (A) is what really happened.
(Not condoning this, but privacy laws in the US are pretty weak)
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/face-behind-bitcoin-2479...
How do we know it was not a tor exit node in January 2009?
[1] - https://metrics.torproject.org/exonerator.html?ip=68.164.57....
---
I always thought Satoshi Nakamoto was an anagram.
Antonomasias ~ Satoshi Nakamoto
Antonomasias: the substitution of an epithet or title for a proper name (e.g., the Bard for Shakespeare).
So it seems like a play on words, because Satoshi Nakamoto is a real name, and therefore a group might have wanted the creator to have a human name.
>Antonomasias ~ Satoshi Nakamoto
Doesn't work. No H or K, too many N's.
Satosi nanamo
seems like a stretch, unless there’s more that i’m missing.
This is straight up bonkers. Yes: humanity's energy consumption is likely the cause of climate change. But the energy consumed goes into a lot of outputs: shelter, transportation, entertainment, commerce.
You could legitimately regard proof-of-work as an inefficiency whose cost keeps increasing. If proof-of-stake is sufficient, then it's remarkably inefficient. But it produces something useful.
Let's have some sense of perspective [1] about energy consumption before you put bitcoin or proof-of-work as the culprit for Earth's climate problems.
[1] https://www.otherlab.com/blog-posts/us-energy-flow-super-san...
> But it produces something useful.
That is debatable, but even if it does, it does it at a much higher energy cost than the preexisting alternatives.
I figured he learned some lessons from Digital Monetary Trust during late 1990's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Orlin_Grabbe
https://www.hermetic.ch/crypto/kalliste/money1.htm
https://www.hermetic.ch/crypto/kalliste/money2.htm
https://page.math.tu-berlin.de/~kant/teaching/hess/krypto-ws...
His textbook "International financial markets" has some C++ code.
"What forbids us to tell the truth, laughingly?" — Horace, Satires, I.24.
The article also gives the following information:
- HOST DETAILS: H-68-164-57-219.LSANCA54.DYNAMIC.COVAD.NET
- IP Address: 68.164.57.219
The IP address is within a /16 block owned by Megapath, a Los Angeles hosting provider.
I think SN was probably more than one person, and I do think it was built with government involvement. The doxxed Satoshi himself worked as a government contractor I believe.
Fedex is the #1 drug distributor...
Some chain explorer will track 'first seen IP', eg: the first IP that relayed the transaction, but this does not mean the sender. Same deal with blocks -- you can see the IP sent your peer the block, but not the IP that created it, which may or may not be the same. With Dandelion routing, you can mask the sender IP behind multiple other relaying nodes. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0156
You can send BTC to an IP address.
This is not a good thing to do - the documentation even says it "will probably be stolen immediately"
"This feature has been removed from Bitcoin Core as-of v0.8.0[1]." (Feb 2013).
I haven't bought a bitcoin since it went from $20 to $400.
the change in my tumbling accounts are worth more than everything i had bought since then combined.
thanks china!
I also bought then, I continue to buy now. I will buy in the future. Regret every sale, No regrets on every purchase.
A global passive observer could track cleartext transaction hashes and flag the first IP seen broadcasting them. Bitcoin peer-to-peer CAN support Tor for transaction routing. Monero blockchain can use I2P to hide transaction source also.
_Most_ adversaries do not have such visibility over global internet flows.
The people who trying to figure out who Satoshi is and make it public should realize this:
What they're effectively doing is trying to completely destroy someone's life just for them having written a piece of software.
Because then everyone will assume (EDIT: not *know*, see the comments) that the person is insanely rich. And beyond the glorification of being rich everyone forgets what it actually means:
You're a prisoner of your money.
Want to go to a pub and have a beer? Not possible, you might get kidnapped or at least harassed by paparazzi.
Want to go outside for a walk? Same as above.
Want friends? Nope, how are you gonna find them if you cannot go outside? How can you trust anyone? Maybe they just want your money?
Of course, the rich can mingle among each other. But this very much limits your possible circle of social contacts, and there's no law of nature which says that someone like Sathoshi might even want to be friends with Justin Bieber etc., or vice versa.
Hobbies? Only those you can do alone.
Want a girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse? See above.
Also as a bonus a large portion of the public will HATE you, no matter what you do. Just see how much HN hates crypto.
You might get tortured for money, lynched or whatever cruel imagination you can come up with. Enough people know you = anything is possible.
Satoshi apparently wants to be left alone so you should do just that.
They gave you a software for free which spawned a whole industry, they don't deserve to be harassed for that. If you don't like it then don't use it, but don't destroy the developer's life. Nobody forces you to use it - and even if someone did then go harass them, not the developer.
> Keeping the boss safe has cost [Berkshire] an average of US$339,000 a year since 2008, or US$4.4 million in total.
https://amp.scmp.com/magazines/style/luxury/article/3126736/...
However that sum is low. You need 24/7 security people at watch, both guarding him and the home and then also key family members.
It is possible that he prefers a low attention detail, which reduces cost. But we're still easily talking about a mid two digit number for full-time personal.
It is however likely that different aspects are accounted differently (general company estate security etc.)
Include in the equation that Satoshi additionally likely is a person who puts a high value on privacy, given that they ensured to be anonymous up to now.
Also, in the process, they could easily destroy someone else's life through a mistaken identification.
Moreover, all these claims of Satoshi having a lot of money are pretty much just speculation -- all they do is show that some early miner mined a few hundred thousand bitcoin. They don't show that miner is Satoshi, that's just a plausible guess because the people speculating know of few other early Bitcoin users. They also don't show that whomever mined those coins hasn't lost the keys for them.
Any person 'identified' as Satoshi may not actually be Satoshi anyways, people have shown that they're remarkably able to believe utter drivel.
So now imagine all the problems you listed but apply them to someone who isn't actually wealthy because because that early miner wasn't them, they're not Bitcoin's creator, or because the assets had been lost back when they were worth very little. They'd still be subject to all the assumptions and thus threats, but not be able to buy their way out of them to the extent that it's possible to do so-- e.g. they couldn't afford the multi-million dollar a year security.
(Someone might reply to you that if their problem was wealth they didn't want they could always dispose of it, but that just reduces to the problem above: people wouldn't believe they did so it wouldn't solve the problem, it would only remove the best tool they have to ameliorate it)
> They gave you a software for free which spawned a whole industry, they don't deserve to be harassed for that. If you don't like it then don't use it, but don't destroy the developer's life. Nobody forces you to use it
Not just that, the very premise and fundamental design of Bitcoin was to give its creator no particular control or authority over it. So their identity doesn't really matter. The fetishization of the identity of Bitcoin's creator is a stupendous act of missing the entire point.
People shouldn't delude themselves that they're not engaging in a mean and harmful act against someone who never caused them harm. It's gross and creepy. If Satoshi is still alive and wanted to be known, he would be. Not only did he expressly complain about the speculation about his identity when he was around (in the last message he sent before disappearing), his continued silence shows he isn't interested in now.
Bitcoin exists in a space within game theory where everyone is in a constant adversarial relation with everyone else. it’s an explicit design, and that relationship is the only way we really know that the software and cryptography are sound. but you can’t completely isolate the protocol from its surroundings. the adversarial challenge of trying to break the bitcoin protocol is going to leak into the adjacent challenge of trying to de-anonymous the person who explicitly wanted to remain pseudonymous. in a twisted sense, if SN remains pseudonymous under the extreme pressure of thousands trying to de-anonymize him, that’s the only way we can really be sure that anonymization is still possible in the modern age.
Other unwilling human beings aren't appropriate test subjects for your conjectures about security and privacy. If you'd like to test a security hypothesis, offer up yourself or your family for attack-- don't nominate other people.
> i agree with the sentiment, however, it’s wishful thinking.
if you’re trying to persuade me that i shouldn’t use SN as an unwilling test subject, save your breath: i’m not engaged in any effort to de-anonymize him. his project is founded on adversarial mechanics within an extrajudicial (i.e. lawless) space: it’s naive to think those mechanics won’t bleed over from the project to its adjacencies. that’s the point i’m trying to make.
Your comment still could be read as justifying "he was asking for it", or at least "he should have expected it". I'm not sure if that's what you intend, but I don't agree with that.
When Satoshi left Bitcoins were worth essentially nothing (and obviously when it was created). There is no shortage of example 'experts' from back then that were convinced that Bitcoin would always be worth nothing or nearly so. In such a state Bitcoin is just some random obscure open source P2P application (in fact, Wikipedia initially deleted the article on it exactly as such).
To put this another way: is the search for knowledge immoral, if discovering that knowledge will inadvertently harm a person? That's sort of a deep question -- one which doesn't have a definitive answer, but your comment preaches as though it did.
> but his life won't be "destroyed" -- at least not by any reasonable standard. There are plenty of well-known billionaires who are perfectly happy.
1. The person has actively signaled that they do NOT want to be known by trying to stay anonymous. You're acting against their will. It is thus false to assume that they would like it. They have basically told you that they won't.
2. Destruction, in a minimal definition, means changing something so much it is completely different from what it was.
So to prove this is not destructive, name me the aspects of their personal life which will NOT be affected by suddenly the whole planet assuming they are rich.
There are probably none. Everything of their existing life will likely change.
So this is quite destructive isn't it?
And sure, their new life afterwards (if they don't get murdered) might be likeable as well.
But is it your right to replace the whole of someone's life with something different and expect them to like it?
It's a pretty intrusive attitude.
> To put this another way: is the search for knowledge immoral, if discovering that knowledge will inadvertently harm a person?
Yes in this case, because that knowledge is completely worthless for producing any real usable thing. So there is no benefit of the knowledge to value its harm against.
You can read how Bitcoin works in the source code, and deduce all necessary financial decisions from that. No need to know about the developer is needed. Bitcoin is trust-less so they have zero power on what it does. The code is its law.
So overall, what people are seeking is not knowledge but entertainment.
And it is super cruel to hurt someone for entertainment.
He might have a person or two recognize him in a month. Most of them would never approach him.
Bitcoin has amassed a $1T valuation in like what, 10 years?, of existing.
Who knows how popular it will be in another 10 years, 20 years? Could be gone. Or could have replaced the dollar.
If you de-anonymize the person now, they will be affected by that forever, not just now.