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Comment by dogman144 | Hacker News Reader

I think you’d have to factor in Satoshi’s opsec measures though vs taking them at their word at being bad at Linux, consider SN displayed very capable opsec in other forums.

Len had significant time and topic correlations to many/basically all iirc of the feeder research and projects that clearly fed into BTC. SN also went offline around the time Len passed. Those two factors plus the related details sealed it for me.

Edit - like if I was known to research under Szabo and Finney (iirc) right around the same time BTC launched, was known to advocate to peers to launch controversial open source under pseudonyms, and so on, I’d probably wrap my public persona under “BTC sucks” and my SN persona under “idk linux well,” and so on. Seems an obvious step to take.

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But that just makes your theory unfalsifiable and uninteresting. For every contradiction you can just say "That's what he wanted you to think!"

Right, it obviously spirals into this issue and others like it.

I don't think you can fake being blind to unix style when writing c++. The c++ style that grew out of the windows world is kind of unique.

(Although I personally am both a longtime enthusiast of unix-like OSes and a former MS employee, so I am familiar with both ... But I find that to be kind of rare.)

I use almost same style for both.

>I think you’d have to factor in Satoshi’s opsec measures though

Lying about trivial and mundane stuff is a wildly hard thing to maintain over any period of time and, for long-term opsec, more likely to cause issues than not.

Being "linux capable" or not is mundane and vague enough (as well as applicable to enough people) that there isn't really any gain in lying about it but it adds risk in the case that you slip up in your maintaining of that lie 10 years down the road.

There are much more effective ways to resist being identified, which are also easier to maintain long-term.

Well, a lot of other effective things were done as well as you say.

For me, comes down to that I disagree that the creator of one of the most consequential tech break through that hits at the core of national sovereignty and control didn’t think of a lot of angles to this. Early Cypherpunks, of which SN was certainly one, were a pretty insane/intense crew in these areas.

And to your point about the difficulty of maintaining trivial deceptions long term, well Len passed pretty soon after the initial years.

>didn’t think of a lot of angles to this.

I'm not saying it wasn't thought about. If anything, I'm saying the opposite.

When you think about it long enough, you realize that many of the 'little lies' carry more risk than they are worth. Lying about being "linux capable" falls into that category.

>And to your point about the difficulty of maintaining trivial deceptions long term, well Len passed pretty soon after the initial years.

I was speaking more generally about opsec and lies which aren't worth the trouble and increased risk.

Specific to your comment: If Len knew they would die soon after, there is less incentive to lie about little things like linux capability. If they didn't know they would die soon after, they would care about the long-term opsec.

All interesting points. I think I disagree with the last part due to my original post - nobody knew how this would turn out, but those involved knew projects like this consistently attracted serious State attention.

B/t protect the protocol by trying every possible angle against this sort of “adversary” (which, here in 2024, seems to have worked), versus cutting corners, the comprehensive nature of SN’s opsec seems to imply it’d show up in a lot of small ways like lying about Linux. Analysis of the codebase also had similar findings about attention to detail (“thought of everything” sort of difficulty regarding appsec).

Overall, there’s a good write up on Len as SN worth digging into if the topic is interesting. I also think the ‘11 New Yorker piece got close to the truth.

>versus cutting corners, the comprehensive nature of SN’s opsec seems to imply it’d show up in a lot of small ways like lying about Linux.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself poorly, or if we're maybe just speaking past each other, or I'm not understanding you.

You're saying that not lying about linux capability would be "cutting corners".

I'm saying that not lying (in this specific situation) would be the better opsec, and that anyone serious about opsec against government-level adversaries would not bother lying about such a mundane detail because it is all risk with no benefit to opsec. This concept was taught to me at a previous job where the adversaries were of the same magnitude as governments, and I'm confident that anyone seriously into the opsec/prviacy "scene" would concur.

Satoshi was, obviously, careful about opsec. Therefor I do not think they would lie about such a trivial and vague detail such as saying someone else is more linux capable than they are, because it would be a risk to lie about it compared to not lying.

I presume you won't say, but now I'm wondering about who has similar intelligence capabilities to governments...

Have you considered Le Roux? Someone who had a real motive to create Bitcoin, and who had actually written Windows based crypto software before.

Given his past it's hard to imagine Le Roux sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bitcoins, even from inside a federal prison.

Pretty good incentive to say nothing isn't it?

Not really. He's already in his fifties and faces 20 years in US prison, and then he will probably be deported to the Philippines to spend the rest of his life in prison. I imagine if he had access to billions he would he would be paying mercenaries to bust him out.

You think mercenaries can be bought to 'bust' someone out of an American prison? That is such a ridiculous statement in so so many ways.

ADX Florence? Probably not. Fort Dix? Almost certainly if the price is right. It's more like a glorified summer camp than a prison.

Given his past it is easy to imagine his keys got misplaced while on the run or met with some kind of "unfortunate accident".

I’ve read the various write ups, and iirc the New Yorker piece and who/the group they pointed and a write up on Len seemed to make the most sense. Fun area, been a while since I dug into it.

Very few projects are created truly anonymously. I believe the Bitcoin creator had a real motive to stay anonymous, and a practical use case that was driving him to make Bitcoin eg transferring large amounts of illegitimate wealth internationally and outside of the banking system.

there’s pretty clear documentation on the motivations for why it was made, but I suppose it could be duplicitous and hard to ever verify one way or the other unless SN wallets became active again.

Eh, you could say everyone involved with Bitcoin was 'duplicitous' then because everyone knew the potential criminal use cases from the beginning.

Interestingly, Le Roux added "Solotshi" to his name on his 2008 passport:

https://i.imgur.com/44I9wlL.jpeg

Solotshi/Satoshi.

Gotta love that the embassy stamp is in Comic Sans, it conveys a sense of true professionalism

I know it sounds utterly morbid, but has anyone proposed the conspiracy that Len was "suicided" after his identity was identified by a very shady -- possibly state-backed -- actors . This guy was a walking bag of cash at that point and people have been killed for far less.

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