Hal Finney Was Not Satoshi Nakamoto
blog.lopp.net
blog.lopp.net
Bitcoin's supply schedule, in which half of all Bitcoin is mined in the first four years, guaranteed a Bitcoin wealth concentration on the early miners, especially considering how few there were. At long intervals, Satoshi would be the only one, mining on his laptop.
A truly altruistic system would not confer such a huge advantage on early miners, for example by fixing the block reward. Then each generation would be able to mine the same amount of bitcoin, instead of each next generation getting 32x less than the current one. Such a steady supply would also make Bitcoin much less the vehicle for speculation that it has turned into.
Of course, then the supply wouldn't have a finite cap, it would be limited by time only. Still, that would already make it very different from fiat, with the yearly supply inflation rate going down steadily toward 0 (known as being dis-inflationary). Eventually, the supply rate would more or less balance the inevitable coin loss rate [1].
[1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...
You really need to get someone rich in order for the meme to spread. This is the only way. People have a natural tendency to not be interested in currencies. Thinking about currencies makes their head ache. It needs to be really rewarding. On the other hand, there was no precedent and it was really risky. Most people were throwing away bitcoin at the start, and they just wanted it to spread.
In Bitcoin the security depends on the price of the currency. If the price doesn't pick up, the network won't be secure enough. It has to be rewarding, it has to spread as an idea, it has to be secure. The more secure it is, the more plausible it is to succeed, and so forth.
Most people don't really understand the disinflationary model as you explained, although I agree that in theory it is better and more elegant way to distribute coins. However, I think that if Bitcoin had chosen this model, it wouldn't have taken off. This model has too high inflation for too long, and the meme and security would have died off.
If the inflation is too high for too long, the meme won't spread, and the price will stay very low or nearly zero. Then a single miner will mine all coins and no one buys them, or only a single rich dude buys them. So in the end the coins won't get distributed as widely / fairly and the project will fail.
I think that Bitcoin succeeded in it's distribution as fairly as possible. I don't think that this can be replicated. It's impossible to create a new cryptocurrency where someone won't scoop them all off cheaply in the start, and that's why the creators typically own most of the coins, which will eventually doom the project. The infinite disinflationary model might be the only way to succeed in distributing a completely new currency, because no one wants to invest in it. But it has to have some other properties in order to spread widely.
And take the fame. He also, as I mentioned before, may have been a candidate for the Noble prize in economics. https://www.newsbtc.com/news/bitcoin/bitcoin-creator-satoshi....
I take it as a given, he is dead. He would be a candidate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Kleiman
Bitcoin never claimed to be and is not altruistic. And the same can be said about almost all investments, you need information early, you need to judge the information correctly, and you need to move in. Same with bitcoin.
If bitcoins had constant or decreasing value through time then people would be more willing to trade them. This is why deflation is so economically dangerous.
It did encourage mining, but that doesn’t driving long term adoption and has nearly purely negative consequences.
The ideal long term strategy for adoption would have mining to provide a consistent reward in real terms over a long timeframe, low costs and high transaction volumes, and for unused accounts to be charged a small fee. Bitcoin failed all of those which is why it’s never had significant adoption as a currency.
Yet there is no more successful digital currency on the planet. If you think you can make one with "better" rules please go ahead!
> This is why deflation is so economically dangerous.
The idea that inflation and constant spending are the only thing that makes an economy work is faith-based, and bitcoin was intentionally not started that way. So far I'd say it has worked quite well.
Back when people used precious metals for currency many different economies would all be tied to the same shifts in value. I don’t know all the details but there’s real world support for significant deflation being detrimental not just theory.
That said trivial levels of deflation aren’t harmful, but bitcoin had very extreme deflation.
> I don’t know all the details but there’s real world support for significant deflation being detrimental not just theory.
The problem is that the "real world support" is usually taken from fiat money economies that are entirely built on inflation, and for historical examples there usually was an economic crisis at the same time that was accompanied by deflation. It's hardly conclusive.
> an economic crisis at the time
In non fiat currencies you also get deflation from economic growth. Where you can study the effect is when the growth occurs outside of a given economy. Again, outside of my expertise it’s just something I have read.
That's fine though - if you have something that holds value you can move it into whatever currency exists when you need to do that.
For example, if you say that bitcoin has 7 tps and even with lightning will take decades to onboard everyone, it will become a store of value that you are supposed to buy and hold for long term. But if you point out how bitcoin has crazy volatility, it may become a currency that you don’t hold, just use to transact.
People whip up whatever they need it to be to make an argument. Sometimes we call it a currency because we can use it to buy things, other times its an investment. To reliably fit in either of those buckets is exclusive. To be a currency you need to be a store of value that is not fluctuation a lot, this means its a terrible investment vehicle.
It can be seen as an investment by those who bet on a rise in demand for sovereign value, and can be seen as a currency by those who doubt the ability of fiat value to continue indefinitely.
And while there are indeed large currency markets, it is not very common on a population basis due to it being very much a speculators game requiring massive amounts of leverage for the average net worth.
This is like calling the web “new” in 2005-2008 (depending on chosen start date).
The “new” excuses ran out a decade ago.
Bitcoin only makes one relevant promise: There will only be 21 million. And that means that the people who are born poor get a chance at building wealth by not having the government constantly reduce the value of their money. Bitcoin is an escape from the system that keeps people poor.
https://www.reddit.com/r/grincoin/comments/kgsetd/grin_monet...
Hopefully it's not as bad since there's no early adopter advantage and I don't expect to profit at all. I just want peer to peer electronic cash!
Because btc is only pseudoanonymous, letting you observe and maybe link transaction sources and recipients, it gives SOME insight into the global movements of funds which were previously totally opaque and untraceable, such as cash, gold, and offshore instruments where there might be NONE.
So for a small investment of a few cryptographic experts' time, a state actor has new insights into political opponents, tax dodges, arms and contraband sales. The amount of insights scales with crypto's adoption and is always greater than the opaque instruments.
The $10,000 limit in the USA was established in 1970, I guarantee it won’t be adjusted for inflation.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4273988-hamas-just-learn...
https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/mone...
I don’t own any yet but I don’t think it’s ever going away.
bitcoin spot declined from all time highs.
but to point out your stocks, $AMC and $GME and many other pandemic era stocks have declined way more than 50% from all time highs.
there were questions of whether bitcoin would be of interest or attract capital outside of a zero interest rate environment, and its surpassed all expectations on that front.
The timelines also fit with Le Roux going into custody when Satoshi dissappeared.
Also with 100Ms in USD sitting in laundry baskets around his apartment, Le Roux would not have needed to worry about BTC until it was too late.
I had someone reply that Satoshi and Le Roux coding styles were too different: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33127079
What if Len forgot, when he took his own life, that he was the only one with the private key to the Satoshi wallet? Even if he wasn’t the only or even primary author that could explain that wallet being dead.
Silly takeaway from a serious article but...after seeing the code snippets in TFA, this is something I will begin doing. It looks like it makes it much easier to differentiate debug code from "the real thing".
There's another reason. Because there's no entity controlling bitcoin, the SEC doesn't consider it a security, unlike all other cryptocurrencies.
> “Everything other than bitcoin,” Gensler told me, “you can find a website, you can find a group of entrepreneurs, they might set up their legal entities in a tax haven offshore, they might have a foundation, they might lawyer it up to try to arbitrage and make it hard jurisdictionally or so forth.” In other words, there are people behind these cryptocurrencies using a variety of complex and legally opaque mechanisms, but at the most basic level, they are trying to promote their tokens and entice investors. (Bitcoin, because of its unique history and creation story, is fundamentally different from other crypto projects in this respect.)
> “They might drop their tokens overseas at first and contend or pretend that it’s going to take six months before they come back to the U.S.,” he continued. “But at the core,” he argued, “these tokens are securities because there’s a group in the middle and the public is anticipating profits based on that group.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/gary-gensler-on-meet... (https://archive.ph/EzNmO)
Got it.
Or maybe law enforcement already did, and Satoshi is either quite more secretive, them, or dead.
I was surprised how hard that was for people to understand, last decade.
We should just have a compilation of ignorant things that important people said about Bitcoin 10 years ago.
Even nocoiners are alot more enlightened in their conversations now. Enlightened as in the goal post moved, but at least it moved.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361456322_Satoshi_N...
Maybe Paul Le Roux is Satoshi.
I get that you can't cash out 5% of any market in one go, without tanking prices. But you can do it gradually.
Mark Zuckerberg sells Meta shares, Bezoes sells Amazon shares, Gates sold a large portion of Microsoft.
The BTC market is big enough to support satoshi selling his coins.
Hell the ETF market alone could absorb all his coins.
I have yet to see anyone show how satoshi selling a single coin would crash the market. He has about 2 days worth of liquidity in a relatively mature market. That's not much volume at all.
That's quite unlike a large shareholder of a company who could sell shares but chooses not to, and whose assets would be passed to someone else upon death.
But maybe Satoshi has substantial other Bitcoin, not associated with the pseudonym, so they don't want to take any chances?
Bitcoin, and other crypto in general even more with higher concentration of early owners, will always be precarious because of this concentration. Whoever has control of the early issued coins, holds a leverage that is dangerous and has extortion properties.
Satoshi owns 5% of bitcoin. Other crypto coins are more concentrated and more problematic. This isn't like a large institutional investor in a public stock, this is a large percentage of all currency.
The rug pull was set from the beginning.
Based on what? The search space is large enough that if you used the smallest amount of energy possible to check keys, all the energy in the known universe would still give you an astronomically small chance of success.
Are you suggesting as processing/compute increases, encryption doesn't get weaker from previous algorithms? 40-bit SSL certificates, Triple-DES encryption and MD5 + SHA-1 hashing would like a word. AES-256 could outlast the universe but that is based on our current knowledge, and sometimes encryption systems have doors, not only in the algorithm but the tooling that does the encrypting... the creators of bitcoin tools they used for keys may also be a weak link or even had doors they put in themselves as a failsafe, humans tend to do that due to game theory.
Encryption is a balance of compute/processing for encryption and decryption, too intense and the system is computationally too heavy. So with that, over time all encryption will be able to be broken at some point following, as history has show so far.
Even if that holds, the chance that someone finds the keys or tracks them down, might be faster and most likely will happen as time goes on.
The point being mainly that too much concentration in any financial system is a time bomb.
This doesn't make sense. I was talking about what it takes to brute force a single key.
but eventually over time compute does break encryption and keys made with those algos are no longer "secure".
This is not true. You are misunderstanding the orders of magnitude differences in modern encryption from some weak schemes of the past.
Are you suggesting as processing/compute increases, encryption doesn't get weaker from previous algorithms?
I don't think you understand what it means to need an entire universe of energy with the smallest unit of energy for computation and still have an astronomically small chance or brute forcing the keys.
The fact that some of the first algorithms used for unrelated purposes were weak has nothing to do with what you are claiming. Your logic is basically "some encryption from 40 years ago was weak, therefore all encryption is weak."
Encryption is a balance of compute/processing for encryption and decryption, too intense and the system is computationally too heavy.
The encryption and decryption speed is not a factor here.
So with that, over time all encryption will be able to be broken at some point following, as history has show so far.
This is completely wrong. You are extrapolating off of something isn't a pattern in the first place. No one thought triple DES would last forever. This is like someone saying 'we moved on from 32 bits of RAM addresses so we will eventually move off of 64 bit and 128 bit to 256 bits'. Orders of magnitude don't work that way. 32 bits gives you 4 gigabytes, 64 bits gives you 18 exabytes and 128 bits is enough to give an address to every bit of data ever created.
Your comment seems more like someone reading headlines and news articles instead of actually understanding what they are claiming.
If you have some insight to the tool that created the key you could, lots of systems have doors by design, typically by creators or regulation for export.
My main point though was that these keys will probably be found in the future. If they aren't broken then actually found, and that much concentration is too much. It creates a rug pull for an entire currency ecosystem. Other crypto coins are even worse in this aspect.
> You are misunderstanding the orders of magnitude differences in modern encryption from some weak schemes of the past.
You are basing this on modern tech. Making the same mistakes of people of the past. Right now I said AES-256 would take longer than the universe in existence, I get the orders of magnitude. I just think people base these ideas off of the present, not the future.
> "some encryption from 40 years ago was weak, therefore all encryption is weak."
Do you believe in 40 years we won't have advancements that may make this statement look silly? Right now they are secure, we don't know what is to come.
That is besides the point though, the keys are dangerous as they are concentration of leverage/power of not just a stock, but a currency...
> You are extrapolating off of something isn't a pattern in the first place. No one thought triple DES would last forever.
You are making the same mistakes of time, you don't know what is to come and the past has shown previous algorithms actually last LESS time than they expected. It does play into it.
Let's simplify this because you are lost in the weeds and resorting to ad hominems.
Do you think it is a good idea that a currency has keys out there, that can be found either directly or with time, that have heavy concentration?
Is concentrated unknown wealth of a currency, the root of all financial systems and power, a good idea?
That's not at all what you said at first. You didn't say the keys would probably be found, you said with quantum computing someone will break the encryption, which is based on nothing. Here it is verbatim:
Eventually with quantum computing or other advancements, someone will break the encryption and potentially swipe the part of Satoshi's coin.
You are basing this on modern tech. Making the same mistakes of people of the past.
You aren't getting this. This isn't a "what if computers are faster in the future" scenario. You aren't going to brute force a search space of this size with all the energy from all the stars in the universe.
You are making the same mistakes of time, you don't know what is to come and the past has shown previous algorithms actually last LESS time than they expected. It does play into it.
No, I actually understand the search space of large key lengths instead of hallucinating a fantasy future. Even when DES was created people debated it being too weak.
You can go back a generation and read articles about cars so big they have their own wood shop, future cities full of flying cars and robot servants. That stuff was all more practical than what you are talking about.
This would not be a conversation if you understood what you are saying.
Let's simplify this because you are lost in the weeds and resorting to ad hominems.
Pointing out that you have huge misunderstandings is not 'ad hominem'.
Do you think it is a good idea that a currency has keys out there, that can be found either directly or with time, that have heavy concentration?
Is concentrated unknown wealth of a currency, the root of all financial systems and power, a good idea?
This has nothing to do with what I'm trying to tell you.
You originally said that "quantum computers will be able to break satoshi's keys" and I'm trying to explain to you why that is naive and uninformed.
The digital signatures that prevent others from spending your bitcoins are based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). The security of elliptic curve cryptography is based on the hardness of the discrete logarithm problem (DLP). A sufficiently powerful quantum computer can use a variant of Shor’s algorithm to solve the DLP in runtime polynomial in the key size (my research indicates O(n^3) in key size more or less), giving you the private key behind a bitcoin wallet in a very tractable amount of time.
Though everything else they are saying about backdoors or design issues are wild speculation, a powerful quantum computer absolutely would allow you to spend anybody’s, including Satoshi Nakamoto’s, bitcoins.
I believe you could scaffold up a system even with a 1-send limit that transparently functions the same as what currently exists since you can issue transactions to multiple parties within a single send, but that largely kills Bitcoin as normally used. All but the most sophisticated users would be required to hand over control of their wallet to actually manage the massive proliferation of addresses needed to act as if you have more than a 1-send limit. But sure, you are technically correct that there exists a very narrow use case which you can probably hijack aggressively enough to salvage the system if you tried hard enough.
> users would be required to hand over control of their wallet to actually manage the massive proliferation of addresses needed
BIP32 solved this in 2012, and is used by basically all self-custodial wallets these days. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawi...
I said "Eventually with quantum computing or other advancements, someone will break the encryption and potentially swipe the part of Satoshi's coin."
As one part of my message. Now read the second, longer part.
Summary: "Whoever has control of the early issued coins, holds a leverage that is dangerous and has extortion properties." Not just for Bitcoin either.
What I was getting as we the concentration part and because of the amount, the desire to find Satoshi's (and other early crypto) keys will be immense whether that comes from technology or physically located.
Those keys are locked in earlier encryption algorithms and will be easier over time, maybe a long time, but still.
The longer the time actually the more concentration it may have depending on many factors but still.
The other concentration problems have also been seen in other areas like hosted wallets and shared mining sites/services. Situations for control of large amounts would be some hosted wallet sites being compromised and collecting keys or even using exploits/holes without the keys then issuing a broad push of many accounts at once, or even slowly.
Concentration in wealth, currently and banking is always a problem. In newer financial markets with less regulation there are always more gaps from many facets to technology to processes and tools.
Then what are those "other advancements"?
People do know. There has been 100 years of cryptography and there are billions at stake. Hand waving and saying 'anything can happen in the future' with no plan, no details, no facts and no evidence is basically tech astrology.
Here's a challenge - find a cryptography expert that agrees with you.
Do you think they'd be biased to answer in a certain way?
Additionally every cryptography expert know the system is only as good as the keys not being found, and that can come from other means not just breaking the algorithm or brute force... it can be how the key was created and what tool was used.
With time all encryption will be broken, we may be gone by then but maybe something comes along that changes the game. History is filled with leaps that were not expected. The early keys will get weaker and weaker over time, that is fact.
In any case, you are focusing on the wrong thing. I was talking about this concerned about the contentration in currency as the problem, not necessarily the encryption/key.
What are you even talking about? You are already accusing a theoretical cryptography expert of being "biased" against you? Do you think that might mean what you're saying isn't rooted in reality?
Additionally every cryptography expert know the system is only as good as the keys not being found,
That isn't what is being talked about here, isn't what I replied to and isn't what your claims were. Now you keep trying to shift the goal posts to something else instead of confronting that what you said before was absurd.
With time all encryption will be broken,
Prove it. Actual experts do not say this. Why do you keep repeating this with zero evidence? Repeating your claims over and over doesn't make them any less ridiculous.
In any case, you are focusing on the wrong thing
No, I'm responding to things you said and you keep trying to distract from them instead of admitting there is no evidence for what you said.
More than anything, I'm fascinated when someone makes an outrageous claim, someone gives them evidence that it is completely false, they give zero evidence that backs it up, yet they dig in, repeat their claim, distract from it and try everything to not just admit they don't actually know what they're saying.
> You are already accusing a theoretical cryptography expert of being "biased" against you?
What are you talking about? Cryptographers would be biased to their field, like yourself, about their system being incapable of being broken. It isn't just about breaking algorithms...
However some are even talking we have to start worrying about advancements by 2030-2040
[When a Quantum Computer Is Able to Break Our Encryption, It Won't Be a Secret](https://www.rand.org/blog/2023/09/when-a-quantum-computer-is...)
"One of the most important quantum computing algorithms, known as Shor's algorithm, would allow a large-scale quantum computer to quickly break essentially all of the encryption systems that are currently used to secure internet traffic against interception"
[The NIST has a "Post-Quantum Cryptography" Project](https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Post-Quantum-Cryptography)
[Waiting for quantum computing](https://techbeacon.com/security/waiting-quantum-computing-wh...)
"Large universal quantum computers could break several popular public-key cryptography (PKC) systems, such as RSA and Diffie-Hellman, but that will not end encryption and privacy as we know it."
"The most widely used PKC systems, including RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and ECDSA, rely on the intractability of integer factorization and discrete log problems. These problems are hard for classical computers to solve, but easy for quantum computers."
"This means that as soon as a large-scale universal quantum computer is built, you will not be able to rely on the security of any scheme based on these problems."
"To quantify the security of cryptosystems, "bits of security" are used. You can think of this as a function of the number of steps needed to crack a system by the most efficient attack. A system with 112 bits of security would take 2112 steps to crack, which would take the best computers available today billions of years. Algorithms approved by NIST provide at least 112 bits of security."
"AES-128 and RSA-2048 both provide adequate security against classical attacks, but not against quantum attacks. Doubling the AES key length to 256 results in an acceptable 128 bits of security, while increasing the RSA key by more than a factor of 7.5 has little effect against quantum attacks."
"When large-scale universal quantum computers are built, you will still be able to securely use symmetric encryption algorithms, but not the systems like RSA and Diffie-Hellman. These PKC systems are widely used today to create digital signatures or to securely transmit symmetric encryption keys."
"Fortunately, there are several families of quantum-resistant PKC systems: Lattice-based, code-based, hash-based, isogeny-based, and multivariate systems. NIST's Report on Post-Quantum Cryptography describes each of these families."
Encryption will still exist with more compute and new systems but it will evolve. That doesn't mean keys of the past will that aren't updated.
> Additionally every cryptography expert know the system is only as good as the keys not being found,
I like how you cut out that sentence to disregard the context...
The rest is "and that can come from other means not just breaking the algorithm or brute force... it can be how the key was created and what tool was used."
> Actual experts do not say this. Why do you keep repeating this with zero evidence?
Again let's get the full quote not the biased selective clip you made for you context "With time all encryption will be broken, we may be gone by then but maybe something comes along that changes the game. History is filled with leaps that were not expected. The early keys will get weaker and weaker over time, that is fact."
If you have a problem with that statement you have a problem.
I gave examples you brushed off. You can agree to disagree but historically most crypto either is broken or has trapdoors for export even, so you don't need to break the algorithms, you might just need info on the tools. Try using any non approved encryption algorithm for communicating with defense/military, you'll get a visit from the FBI.
> More than anything, I'm fascinated when someone makes an outrageous claim, someone gives them evidence that it is completely false, they give zero evidence that backs it up, yet they dig in, repeat their claim, distract from it and try everything to not just admit they don't actually know what they're saying.
I am fascinated as well when someone entirely disregards the point of the post and tries to tell others they know everything. I even said it might take longer than lifetimes or the universe even to break the algorithms, yet you still can't get past that point. Quite fascinating indeed.
> No, I'm responding to things you said and you keep trying to distract from them instead of admitting there is no evidence for what you said.
No I already alluded to the time situation, it doesn't matter much in the main point of my comment.
The concentration of currency in digital currencies is a problem and makes people that own that leveragable or too powerful.
The longer it takes to find/break the keys the more the value will be worth potentially...
Yes that is my entire point. You just laser focused in on cryptographic algorithms and not all the things around it. The first sentence of my first comment was a bit salacious but a lead in to the dangers of concentration in currency, and the power people have, or want to take, of the early owners.
Yes I do believe cryptographers know that not all tools and keys will stand the test of time, especially keys made in 2008... just as cyber security people know even with the best security there is always dependency holes, social engineering, and tools that can be trojan horses.
The point was, of my comment, not shifting goal posts, the concentration in digital currency is a problem and is an even bigger problem with large swaths of it in keys out there floating around, either found physically or other means.
You seem a bit combative, you are starting in with the selective context clipping so let's just agree to disagree on the rest. You have been successful in completely derailing the main point... if that was your goal, Good job!
Instead of deferring to experts who spend huge amounts of time researching how to weaken cryptography you claim they all must be biased and ignore your conclusion (based on nothing) that all cryptography will be broken in the future by computers that don't exist (that you also don't know anything about).
This is conspiracy level thinking.
Bitcoin's encryption is elliptical curve. It was chosen specifically because of all the stuff you copied and pasted. That has been known for multiple decades. Researchers have entire academic careers based around writing papers and going to conferences trying to find the smallest theoretical weaknesses in any algorithm out there.
Stop trying to deflect and let go of the conspiracy theories of trying to make your conclusion first and then hallucinate rationalizations.
Nice job distracting from the OP even about concentration and early owners of Bitcoin.
> Bitcoin's encryption is elliptical curve.
Did you just learn this? The point is processing power at quantum level already starts to threaten some of the encryption methods and early keys are definitely at risk over time. Additionally there is motive to find holes in early tools that someone could unlock all that lost bitcoin... over time.
Did you ignore everything like this?
"AES-128 and RSA-2048 both provide adequate security against classical attacks, but not against quantum attacks. Doubling the AES key length to 256 results in an acceptable 128 bits of security, while increasing the RSA key by more than a factor of 7.5 has little effect against quantum attacks."
Since you are so singular focused, combative, and black and white on this. Since you don't adhere to future probabilities over time and unknowns, you seem like you fully think today's encryption will never be broken by advancements in decades or longer, as cryptographers fear could happen which I just shared with you, even programs at NIST regarding research on this.
Let's get you on record...
Do you think encryption methods today will hold up over time 100%?
Do you think early bitcoin keys from 2008 will never be broken (disregarding tools and being found which is more likely)?
See if you can contain yourself to what topic you wanted to talk about and double down on your take, answer the questions.
That wasn't even the point but let's get this for future generations to giggle at.
This is a classic playbook of people who keep claiming something with no evidence. They try to divert to something else and they try the "I don't like how you're saying it" move.
Pointing out that you have no idea what you're talking about is not ad hominem. Ad hominem would be something irrelevant to the topic like "you're fat so you don't know about cryptography".
The point is processing power at quantum level already starts to threaten some of the encryption methods and early keys are definitely at risk over time
You have grossly misunderstood (again). Quantum computers haven't threatened anything new.
AES was first proposed 26 years ago and has never been broken. Quantum computers only reduce the theoretical key lengths. This has been known for multiple decades and is why key lengths have been increased. Again, it has never been cracked, 256 bit keys have been used just for a theoretical time decades or centuries in the future with no clear path to get there.
Bitcoin's private key length is 256 bits.
https://cryptobook.nakov.com/asymmetric-key-ciphers/elliptic...
There is zero evidence to back up what you are saying. There are no cryptography experts that agree with what you're saying. It is just you making something up.
If you have any evidence at all, go ahead and link it.
You are very focused on "winning" rather than the topic of concentration in currencies in the digital space, whether those keys are found, solved or some future system or hole is able to break them.
Good debate but I feel you were debating and shadowboxing yourself mostly, some side point that I guess you "won". I answered all your questions and provided sources on them to back them up. You still refuse to acknowledge.
Can the keys be broken now? No. Will they? According to you... NEVER!
Since you still won't answer these questions for our future observers, I take it you think they will never be broken.
Let's get you on record...
Do you think encryption methods today will hold up over time 100%? According to you YES!
Do you think early bitcoin keys from 2008 will never be broken (disregarding tools and being found which is more likely)? According to you YES!
Ok, glad to get you on record. I work on probabilities and that we don't know all parts, is there a probability that these keys will one day be broken, YES. A high probability, with lots of time, YES. Even higher if the values of these early coins/keys are multiples of what they are today, YES.
We can agree to disagree on this point without you going into ad hominems again on some side point. Where there is loot and prizes, some will be very motivated to find a way to get at those keys, either finding them, finding holes in tools used to make the keys or with lots of time, break the algorithms or brute force them.
I work in games and no matter how well you hide things, players will find the holes. It is actually quite amazing when you see it. Never underestimate the human with tools and intel/tracks. I am sure you will misinterpret this but it is true.
Again, this is you repeating your claim. Repeating your claim isn't evidence. You haven't given any numbers, explanations, information from expert cryptographers or any external links at all.
Do you understand what evidence is?
Answer these, let's get you on record:
Do you think encryption methods today will hold up over time 100%?
Do you think early bitcoin keys from 2008 will never be broken (disregarding tools and being found which is more likely)?
Do you understand what diversion from the point is?
Do you think Satoshi is Nick Szabo?
You won't eventhough these are very easy YES/NO questions.
C'mon, put your money where your mouth is.
There is no evidence that it won't. If you have some, link it.
I'm fascinated that you don't seem to understand what evidence is.
Glad you could go on record and show you are an absolutist not a probabilist. Even cryptography itself is probabilistic. There are no absolutes in time except change.
You also skipped these two questions:
- Do you understand what diversion from the point is?
- Do you think Satoshi is Nick Szabo?
We are so far deep in this distraction that we have run out of room to reply without it being a line of vertical text.
Let's agree to disagree. I'll let you have the last word on this diversion.
We're at the heart of it now. You don't understand evidence and don't care. This is the same type of thinking that flat earth people have. There is no evidence of that either.
When what you believe is not based on any evidence at all and only emotions, that's called religion, not anything that exists in reality.
Here are people that understand trying to explain it.
https://old.reddit.com/r/cryptography/comments/13kl9ds/how_m...
https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bc0ojp/e...
What else do you believe that has no evidence for it and huge evidence against it? Big foot? Lockness monster? Aliens? Santa Clause? If you don't care about evidence anything is on the table, just make up what you want to be true.
I knew you wouldn't answer. You fail to even acknowledge evidence, what do you know about it? Nothing. How do you think evidence comes about? Just shows up one day? It takes people researching it and events to happen. Your hypothesis is not even attempting to start to see evidence, never be an investigator with that vibe.
Our discussion on your diversion is done, I know where you stand.
- You like crypto consolidation, you won't even attempt to answer that one.
- You are diverting from the point so far it is laughable now.
- Nick Szabo thanks you.
Admit you are an absolutist not a probabalist. Absolutism to no change is more religious than probability. You sure do preach absolutism.
You never gave any and you admitted that. That's why it's flat earth level thinking. When flat earthers gain understanding they are no longer flat earthers.
How do you think evidence comes about?
I linked you multiple discussions of people explaining why what you said is wrong, why don't you address those?
It's the same thing again:
Link any evidence that modern 256 bit encryption will be broken. Explain yourself. You haven't done anything except for repeating yourself and getting upset. You haven't given a single link.
Do you think people show up to court and just say that someone is guilty over and over or do you think they show information to explain why something is likely to be true.
All these replies and you haven't given a shred of evidence, do you realize this? Yes or no?
I'm wondering if as the guy gets old if he'll set up a charitable foundation with the main lot.
There are multiple monitors (human and programmed) awaiting even a single Satoshi transaction from these addresses [1 "satoshi" == 1E-8 BTC]
Occam's Razor, as the author enjoyed using, would suggest that someone knowingly creating a rival to a hegemonic currency system would need plausible deniability as to who they are and what they are doing. Having a partner in crime would not be inconceivable and they wouldn't need to be Satoshi.
"Hal used tabs while Satoshi used spaces (this is a massive never-ending debate between developers)
Hal preferred his debug statements not to be indented while Satoshi’s maintained indentation with surrounding code
Hal made comments with block style multi-line markers while Satoshi preferred to create many single-line comments with double slashes
Hal used snake_case for his function names while Satoshi used camelCase
There are probably far more differences that are more subtle, but these jumped out from just a few minutes of eyeballing the codebases."
These are irrelevant. Someone of Hal's intelligence and skill who was a decades long cypherpunk would understand the importance of obfuscating ones own styles. Lastly, I find it interesting that the Silicon Valley elite did the ice bucket challenge 2 weeks before Hal died.
Sorry, I don't get this. Please elaborate.
And what is the significance of that? What does it prove, or indicate even?
In each case, I doubt that it really is hard to figure out who they are.
Maybe it is the way the press and social media work. You get as many clicks for a wild theory as you get for a properly researched opinion.
As for Satoshi Nakamoto: The most obvious candidate seems to be Adam Back. His invention of proof of work, his biography, character, writing style and role as the CEO of the company behind the main wallet software all point to him. Also, his current communication "Bitcoin looks like something that was discovered rather than invented". That's something a creator typically says about a particularly great piece of work they did. Are there any arguments why he might not be the inventor of Bitcoin?
Adam Back is obviously not Satoshi.
His level of writing or thinking is not even close to the level of Satoshi.
When asked what people should pay with when fees were high and Lightning Network wasn't complete, he seriously suggested people should just use tabs:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DHc81OL_hk4&feature=youtu.be&t...
This and other brainfarts... No way that he's Satoshi and people need to stop suggesting it.
And he also dismissed Bitcoin initially.
Why is this a "brainfart"? It does not seem like a horrible recommendation to me, especially for someone who needed a solution "today" in 2017.
"Use another cryptocurrency" would be a much better recommendation that would solve the problem much better than tabs.
The reason why Bitcoin stopped working well was because Adam Back and others were actively sabotaging it's ability to cope with demand, and instead pushing people towards other solutions.
Those solutions were nowhere near ready, so the best Adam could come up with (except admitting they were wrong) was Tabs.
So yeah, instead of a brainfart it could just be malicious behavior.
But his answer begins by explaining lightning.
Back early on forsaw that lightning is the way forward and not larger blocks. Which is another indication to me, that he is indeed Nakamoto.
It was a great insight very much in line with Nakamoto's thinking. Nakamoto who forsaw so many things early on like the need for a script instead of just transaction data on the chain.
I think we have enough real history at this point to dismiss the notion that "lightning is the way forward" in an absolute, concrete and not theoretical way.
If a mempool clears, that just means there is limited demand to use the chain, even for free.
> It can be phased in, like: if (blocknumber > 115000) maxblocksize = largerlimit It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don’t have it are already obsolete.
Given that lightning still has shit UX without relying on third parties should be proof enough that it was and still is a terrible idea to rely on for Bitcoins usability.
UX is a problem throughout all crypto. No matter which coin, no matter L1 or L2. It's all still like the internet before the 90s.
From a revolutionary new form of money, to suggesting people should develop their own app for tabs...
So I guess part of the reason is that people love the mystery so much, as long as the suspect doesn't come out and say "yes it's me" then they'll just hang on to the mystery. To be honest even if Gunningham said "I am Banksy" I suspect people would still say "but is he really? Nobody knows!"
Uncovering their identity is just vandalism.
I remember reading an interview with Ozzy Osbourne who said he refused to work with Buckethead because it spooked him that BH always kept a mask on, even when they talked in private.
With Satoshi and Banksy it's not so hard to figure out but given that they both want anonymity, informed people tend not to say. Meanwhile random idiots post all sorts of stuff, some right, some wrong.
Which is useless for recovering Satoshi's private key, as that requires solving the Discrete Logarithm Problem for Elliptic Curves.
But even the amount of energy used in all Bitcoin mining falls short of the energy needed to solve a single instance of DLP using the best-known methods, by a factor greater than a billion billion.
But this is MORE LIKELY than you brute-forcing the private key to a known public key.
----
Also, for technical accuracy... it's not just SHA-256 keys that drive bitcoin network. One of the reasons to "never re-use the same receiving address" is that different algos are used for a new-key-never-sent VS re-used-key . You are technically making the process "easier" by re-using the same private key to push a transaction.
----
<3 from your least favorite infamous bitcoin node operator
what happens if "satoshi" gets desperate for quick cash?
idk this seems to be a major financial risk for bitcoiners, not altruism...
Absolutely.
My reply was directed towards bitcoin as a technology. The market volatility but more important the constant manipulators and bad actors really have a negative impact in people's lifes.
But most often we see this happening to people that are invested in crypto but not users of it. Because they keep their money on exchanges, they are not taking advantage to the security and self sovereignty that comes with crypto. There is no evidence that bitcoin will die or wouldn't recover from market dumps.
However there's plenty examples of exchanges going under or stealing people's assets forever.
That said, there's probably a nontrivial amount of processing power currently being used to crack that wallet / find the secret key.
A theory is that Satoshi themselves lost access to their own wallet, so if there is activity, it may mean someone got the private key.
Anyway yeah, it is a huge risk, and it's proven by the billions scammed from people when new coins were created and the creators themselves held onto a lot of the coins themselves to sell when the hype cycle is trending upwards.
price dips have happened over these movements. the rumor mill is pretty cyclical. the price dips have had less and less magnitude over the years, as there are so many computing bullish and bearish forces in bitcoin now. headlines today that move bitcoin up 1% would have crashed bitcoin 35% a decade ago.
bitcoin has a lot more liquidity now, or in some periods of time has a lot more liquidity than now. a large sell can be absorbed. people's confidence in the bitcoin concept doesn't really shake just because someone selling ... runs out of things to sell.
many large bitcoin holders don't want govbucks, or state currency. they can do so much with their bitcoin, mostly earning yield by depositing it into something yield producing in the crypto economy, investing in other projects, supporting causes they believe in. it isn't important to them if a team or merchants gets govbucks somewhere down the line or immediately.
Although very unlikely that anyone will ever crack those keys it is possible that the keys are found by someone or Satoshi himself spends it.
The bitcoin core maximalists should focus on fixing their block including moving to PoS instead of pissing on all other coins constantly.
POW fixed a problem POS does not solve, it is an entirely decentralized, trustless system. It is not possible to move to POS, the only coins who can do that are coins that are not decentralized and trustless to begin with.
Nick Szabo has been potentially mentioned as Satoshi for sometime [1] due to him working on decentralized currencies since 1998 with Bit Gold [2]. 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.
He uses his initials for his Pseudonyms (N.S)
Nakamoto Satoshi = Bitcoin
Nicholas Saberhagen = Monero
Bit Gold was maybe to test out interest, then when the real one was made it would be more anonymous. If you think about it, bitcoin being anonymous is a feature as it makes it seem less centralized eventhough Satoshi owns a large chunk of it. Today companies or individuals will control a large chunk of other coins/platforms and it feels more centralized or even autocratic. At any time those big fish could wreak havoc. Satoshi seems more hands off. 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 [5][6]. 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 [7]. 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/Nick_Szabo#Bit_gold
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/12/28/elon-...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Szabo#Satoshi_Nakamoto_sp...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist...
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Possible_iden...
Satoshi was also interested in smart contracts. In fact, there was early work in the Bitcoin code base where satoshi had designed an entire online market system. I've never seen the code for this myself or what features it had. But to me this is so far ahead of everyone else and solidifies much of what would be built on top of blockchain systems that it's scary. So Satoshi builds the groundwork for practically the next 10 years worth of complex, technical discussions. Satoshi even knew that time-locked transactions would be useful so it was part of Bitcoin too.