Report linking Bitcoin and Silk Road retracted | Hacker News Reader

Report linking Bitcoin and Silk Road retracted

money.cnn.com

87 pointsAqueous20 comments

Great work by those researchers. They linked Satoshi Nakamoto to Silk Road. Except it wasn't Satoshi, it was someone else. And it wasn't Silk Road, it was MtGox. I think their methods could use some improvement.

It's disturbing to think people can cause such a huge ripple and the media will report it up without any skepticism.

As usual, only a fraction of people who read the sensational headline will read the retraction.

The world goes on :(

And that has been always the case which is sadly amplified by lack of longer attention span and willingness to move beyond sensationalism.

Reputation counts for something, and reputations can be damaged. A lot of people trust Adi 'The A in RSA' Shamir, because of what he has done in the past. They have to.

It takes a long time to get the background to understand cryptography, or quantum physics. Although you or I might believe we can find holes in a paper (bad stats etc), you have to accept we are less able to judge the merit of a paper than someone with years of study and experience in that field. So we trust people who have done great things.

Now everyone will remember Shamir both by his past works, and this mistake. Next time his paper will hit the news he will be described as 'the father of RSA, who mistakenly accused someone of inventing bitcoin and being a criminal last year'. News sites will definitely say that - it is a really fun addition to the story.

I think Shamir will regret this paper more than most people who have to make a retraction.

Nitpick: Adi Shamir is "the 'S' in" Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman.

As pointed out, the media faithfully reported the claims of a very well-respected academic. Obviously there will always be mistakes made in the rush to print, and obviously there can be real issues that need to be addressed; but I don't think you can fault "the media" on this one. It was bad research, and it has to be addressed within the scientific community. A journalist isn't ever going to be well equipped to fact-check a crypto paper.

We shouldn't expect journalists to fact-check scientific papers, but if they had waited a whole 48 hours they could have benefited from others' fact checking.

That fact checking should have been done Shamir's peer reviewers before he published.

The paper wasn't published in any kind of academic venue, or peer-reviewed at all. It was just a PDF they posted on the internet.

But the man that federal authorities have arrested and accused of launching Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, is from Austin too. Given the folklore surrounding Bitcoin and Silk Road, get ready for rumors that Trammell is Satoshi hiding in plain sight.

On that basis, I'm going to start a rumor that Bruce Sterling is Satoshi.

edit - But he hasn't written Bitcoin yet. That happens after he accidentally buys H G Wells' time machine in an obscure ebay auction, thinking that he is acquiring an ornate steampunk wardrobe.

I think Sterling moved to Serbia or somewhere. Perhaps that was to throw people off the trail.

After discovering the time machines true purpose, he decides to use it in a get-rich-quick scheme. He goes back to in time planning on buying lots of bitcoins when they were super cheap so that he can sell them in the future for a massive profit (that he can use to pay of the debt he acquired during the purchase of the time machine).

He waits and waits for bitcoins to be invented, but for some reason they don't arrive on schedule. Suddenly it dawns on him, and he knows what he must do...

"After suggesting earlier this week that a link existed between the creators of Silk Road and Bitcoin"

Wait, what? They didn't suggest a link between "the creators of the Silk" Road and "Bitcoin" but with "the creators of the Silk road" and "the creators of Bitcoin"

I see more journalists trying to jump on the Bitcoin train but oh boy...they fail miserably. It's scary when you think this might be the case with all other topics, not just bitcoin.

What you're pointing out is your misunderstanding of the authors intended use of language (I'm not saying it's grammatically correct, but their intention is obvious.)

"a link existed between the creators of Silk Road and Bitcoin" === "a link existed between the creators of Silk Road and the creators of Bitcoin".

The "creators of" phrase applies to both subjects (or subject/object, I get those words confused) --- this is a common grammatical construct regardless of my confusion of the words subject and object --- the application of the phrase to both I mean.

You make a valid point, but how about the title: "Report linking Bitcoin and Silk Road retracted"?

Think back to how news reporters tried explaining the internet when they had never used it and had no idea how it worked.

You wouldn't even today expect a news reader to be able to explain how the internet works even though they probably use it 24/7.

People will write what they think people want to read about, the key is trying to find the articles with proper research.

Seems like every attempt at disturbing Bitcoin ends up reinforcing the strength and the interest in the ecosystem.

Interest, maybe, but I does it really drum up any actual users? I think most people are sort of waiting to see if it'll fail or not.

Someone's bull got a double doze of attention.

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