Alleged Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Denies Bitcoin Involvement
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
If there were a reasonable way to settle it for sure, I'd bet a substantial amount of money that this is the bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto. The pieces laid out fit pretty well. I think there's a lot of weird denial going on because people built up this crazy fantasy of an assumed identity, highly advanced mathematician guy and learning the dude's real name is actually Satoshi Nakamoto and he's a pretty regular joe (for a near recluse) is causing a cognitive dissonance.
His skill level is completely different.
"Hi Nilayam,
1. Which wheels have spokes and how many spokes for each wheel? My UK built Pearse's 2-6-4 in 15mm/ft (1/20.3 scale) has all the wheels as solid disc (no spokes) and I'm wondering if this is true on the real prototype's Kitson locomotives of the same class, such as the 4-8-4 shown in your photos.
2. What were the thickness of the tyres? I think the thickness should be 4.5" or 4.75" for a 2ft 6inch gauge track with 5" diam. axles?
If you can get close up photos of the wheels, that'll be great. The L&M's truck wheels were 1 ft 11 inches and the drivers were 2 ft 6 inches I believe.
Dorian Nakamoto USA"
While these differences in writing style aren't conclusive in either direction; it does indicate that he is at least aware of how he conveys information online.
FWIW, my Father in law is a first generation Asian immigrant who is an engineer and for whom English is a second language.
His emails to my wife are like the one above - broken English, poor grammar.
But I've seen some documents that he's written for work - the early stages of patent applications, for instance - and they read like someone else wrote them, even though my FIL is the one who wrote them as they'd yet to have been submitted internally. Proper grammar, more formal prose. There is, every now and then, a phrase or word that seems out of place and not something a natural speaker would say, but the difference between in grammar between work and personal emails is night and day.
Does not make any sense at all.
I see no proof that he is someone who was planning complete anonymity from the start, that seems to me like a bolted on rationalization from people confused by his partial disappearing act.
He never posted any personal information and used an anonymous japanese registration service for the bitcoin.org domain, payment in cash. An unlikely effort for somebody who doesn't care about anonymity.
All we have is a track record of a model train hobbyist Dorian Nakamoto.
Also, how about adding this link to this list:
https://www.national-preservation.com/threads/preserved-bars...
Another Dorian post on trains which is in a lot of ways remarkably similar to the bitcoin guy's writing.
And both "Satoshi" and "Nakamoto" are fairly common japanese name and surname by the way, so I doubt if this one is really the only programmer Satoshi Nakamoto.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are other programmers named Satoshi Nakamoto. McBay is a fairly uncommon name and I'm not even the only programmer named George McBay and the other one (who as far as I know isn't directly related in any way) is from Japan! Small world!
But that aside it isn't just the tech/math background, it is the total picture as laid out in the article. Unless the article is totally fabricated, which I have no reason to believe it is, the case it makes is pretty compelling.
And "journalism" (professional one) usually makes me suspect making up random stuff much more than anything else. They are paid to make scandalous articles, you know.
To be fair, I don't personally claim it is fake. I say it is weird and makes me easily accept someone claiming it is fake.
That said, I don't think the cognitive dissonance is because of some crazy fantasy however. The creator of bitcoin clearly went to some great lengths to avoid people knowing his actual identity. Given this, it seems very odd for them to have used their real name in all communication.
This is the first time I've seen reddit (since it's become a mainstream phenomenon) be more reasonable than hacker news.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zpuer/the_newsweek...
> The pieces laid out fit pretty well.
What pieces? That he's kind of odd, according to his family? (if you were to take my family, which is fairly normal, 1/2 of us think the other 1/2 are odd). Who doesn't have an odd, reclusive uncle or two?
That he made a vague, difficult to interpret statement (and proceeded afterwards to completely deny any connection between himself and bitcoin)?
That he's "libertarian" according to his estranged daughter (though the following quote doesn't sound libertarian at all to me):
> Then Dorian also wrote about “being tired” about another issue: “I’m really tired of having the JACL, et al. requesting or getting $100K to millions in government funds for Japanese American monuments, about the camps or any other issue. Those money should be send on the JA’s practical needs and growth for the new generations. More dollars should be funded for startup businesses, business education, nursing services (yes, forget Keiro with high self salaries) and all they talk about is executive orders, camps, never about the betterment of JAs on their current living conditions or betterment of young ones going out to the world of business, competitions, financial education, etc.
That it was written in Newsweek? Here is an actual quote from the article:
> Of course, there is also the chance "Satoshi Nakamoto" is a pseudonym, but that raises the question why someone who wishes to remain anonymous would choose such a distinctive name.
What a shoddy piece of journalism. The authors of the Federalist Papers (Madison, Hamilton and Jay) used the pseudonym Publius. At least that name is really distinctive, in that no one was actually named that, unlike "Satoshi Nakamoto" seems like a common enough name for (also according to the article) there to be "several" living "Satoshi Nakamotos".
EDIT: I expect to get a lot of up votes now thanks to this :) :
In an exclusive two-hour interview with The Associated Press Dorian S. Nakamoto, 64, said he had never heard of Bitcoin until his son told him he had been contacted by a reporter three weeks ago.
Reached at his home in Temple City, Calif., Nakamoto acknowledged that many of the details in Newsweek's report are correct, including that he once worked for a defense contractor. But he strongly disputes the magazine's assertion that he is "the face behind Bitcoin." http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BITCOIN_FOUNDER_DE...
Creating the bet with Counterpartyǂ.
Step 1. Establishing 'Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto' trustless P2P betting feed
counterpartyd broadcast --help
counterpartyd broadcast --source='SOURCE_ADDRESS' \
--text='[BINARY] Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, by his own admission or indisputable evidence on or before June 21, 2014' \
--value='1' \
--fee-fraction='0.1'
counterpartyd bet --source='SOURCE_ADDRESS' \
--feed-address='FEED_ADDRESS' \
--bet-type='Equal/NotEqual' \
--wager='10' \
--counterwager='10' \
--target-value='1' \
--leverage='5040' \
--deadline='6,21,2014'
For the record I strongly believe Newsweek got it wrong, and that he's the wrong guy.
You base this conclusion on one line of speculation in the article? Did you miss the part where the journalist flew out, went to the person's house and spoke to them to confirm it was really him before running the story? Sounds like excellent journalism to me.
I guess we've reached the point in the argument where you've decided to go Flat Earth Society on us. For the record:
"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
In an exclusive two-hour interview with The Associated Press Dorian S. Nakamoto, 64, said he had never heard of Bitcoin until his son told him he had been contacted by a reporter three weeks ago.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BITCOIN_FOUNDER_DE...
Also, you must not have read the part of the article where the journalist runs through and describes why the other Satoshis are not the Bitcoin Satoshi.
Where is some evidence he even knows how to program?
From the links on Reddit, which are the only pieces of writing that can be confirmed for "Dorian", I see absolutely no similarity with the style of the bitcoin paper. None, at all.
> describes why the other Satoshis are not the Bitcoin Satoshi
Where is this? She says "Dorian" was the only plausible Satoshi, and proceeds to use interviews and the absence of any hard evidence as evidence. It's like a creationist saying "how come there are no fossils of the missing link"?
Here's why it's shoddy journalism:
The process also requires a good amount of math, something at which Nakamoto - and his entire family - excels. The eldest of three brothers who all work in engineering and technical fields,
The only "evidence" that the family "excels" in math is that they work in engineering or technical fields. No papers published, nothing except that a couple of them worked at Hughes aircraft (including Dorian S.).
My mom is actually an engineer at Raytheon and before that Hughes. She had to get national security clearance and her work there can be described similarly. I'm sure many HN users have had to get security clearance. It's not that big a deal. Though my whole family consists of engineers, and even some professors, I would not particularly describe us as "excelling" in math. That is probably true for a lot of HN users as well.
And even if you were to make such a claim, it is in and of itself no evidence that this Satoshi is the Satoshi. On the other hand, if he had been publishing cryptography papers or game theory papers or even CS papers for a while, or even demonstrated any interest at all in cryptography similar to his interest in model trains ..
Not a single post in any programming forum, not a single stackoverflow question, zero online participation in anything related to cryptography or programming.
If we are to believe that the developer of Bitcoin didn't mind using his real name online, what's the explanation for this?
Dorian seems to have fragmented his online activity under a variety of nicknames: so far people've found "ShtenDoji", "schten", "Schten Dohkji", "WagumaBher", and "ssshupring" (and I'm not sure if that's a complete collation of Redditor findings). Most of them have been linked either by him forthrightly mentioning Satoshi, or are variants of others. We could easily have missed years of programming activity. So it's not yet a strong argument from silence.
Might I suggest http://longbets.org/ for this? To make it legal in the US, the money ends up going to a charity of your choice, but it's a great way to put something on the record.
Note: Shameless promotion for something I wrote code for.
Always thought it was a great idea, because I always make predictions and wish I could prove I did so to friends/enemies ;)
* trevor blackwell, yc founder/partner
The worst thing is that this could be a ploy to force the real bitcoin founder to show himself/herself - implicitly their threatening to keep screwing-up random people's lives.
I don't think I know enough either way to make a good bet and I'm not sure that reporter does either.
The only thing here is coincidence, allegation, and innuendo: There's not the slightest hint of proof. This is shitty journalism and shitty investigative rigor. What it comes down to is a name and being smart.
Maybe he is the actual bitcoin Satoshi. But there is not one piece of positive evidence that is the case. Everything is circumstancial to the highest degree. Personally I think the standard of evidence for something this important should be higher.
>"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
I say this because the headline is trying to imply that Newsweek identified the wrong man, and as a result people are on twitter gloating about Newsweek being "wrong." Even if they do end up being wrong, this article and the corresponding video aren't evidence one way or the other.
I find this complaint ridiculous, like there's no possible way a police officer could know such things because otherwise they'd been a l33t h4x0r. Police officers read newspapers in about the same proportion as everyone else.
So I'm pretty sure the name is no longer a tech community secret.
edit: I saw this (separate) tweet almost immediately after submitting, but HN went down when I tried to edit - https://twitter.com/byandreachang/status/441696297964158976. So she is claiming he said "No no no I was never involved." Which would imply that he wasn't telling the truth to either Newsweek or to this reporter, unless you believe Newsweek makes things up.
Nakamoto, when I asked him in elevator why he told Newsweek he used to be involved with #bitcoin: "No no no I was never involved."
Andrea Chang @byandreachang: @cfarivar He denied both.
~ https://twitter.com/byandreachang/status/441696297964158976
Given all this, it's incredible Newsweek ran the original story in the first place.
Interesting discussion under a reply [1] to this question:
> Do you feel like you are able to avoid the reliance on fear-mongering tabloid journalism and human interest that seems to be the focus of cable news sometimes?
[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vy457/were_the_staff_...
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vy457/were_the_staff_...
step 1. Find a scoop that can actually be verified.
step 2. Don't give it away for free on the internet the day before.
The foundation of why the journo thought he was Satoshi was... his birth name (which he actually changed years ago, and that is not a particular rare name). Yeah, no contradictions whatsoever here:
>> "He went to great lengths to protect his anonymity"
>> "He used his real name"
I don't get it, who is angry? This guy could be angry about having his life invaded but where is the emotion coming from here?
It’s hard to assess the actual risk: cartels haven’t necessarily been associated with cryptographers, but Silk Road made a connexion, and home-made submarines have proven a track record of adopting innovation fast and efficiently.
The sliver of risk, no mater how thin, seems not worthy of openly naming the person, as opposed to offering close-up photo and a third party confirmation that the details appear consistent.
Journalists are in the business of finding out information that's useful for an open democratic society in making decisions. If this person might be the genuine Satoshi, then it stands to reason he might offer useful information or a new perspective on Bitcoin or money in general.
Thus I think to not pursue this story as a journalist would be a violation of j-ethics.
It's also the wrong guy by the way.
In the words of Lebowski: It's not wrong, it's being an asshole.
Being an asshole =/= unethical. Make a real argument that it's unethical.
The real reason behind this fear is that some consider Satoshi their hero and icon. Anything, therefore, that he doesn't or wouldn't (if you maintain this isn't the real Satoshi) approve of especially as it relates to himself inspires strong feelings and irrational justifications like "he could be kidnapped and tortured."
Or at least that's the only reason I can imagine this argument keeps coming up. Any other wealthy person could also be kidnapped and tortured. Heck, most wealthy (100m+) people probably have pretty valuable things just laying around their house that are far less traceable than Bitcoins.
Of course, in this case, I hope the bitcoin network would resign itself to coloring those coins, if Satoshi was extorted out of his coins.
I agree there's (hopefully) a good chance his BTC are in cold storage in a safety deposit box, or something. People fail to do that with BTC more often than people fail to put millions of USD in the bank, though.
Actually, I've been wondering if he didn't withdraw from BTC because he was embarrassed about having lost the private keys to his early accounts... :-P Not that I really think that likely, either.
I am, for the poor guy that may or may not be the author of Bitcoin but who, and whose family, is now being watched and constantly approached with questions.
That is quite literally trespassing. They just feel like they can get away with it.
Leave him alone, if he wanted to be found he would have shared it awhile ago.
In short, they feel like they can get away with it because they can legally get away with it.
What if you purposely did not have a mailbox on your home but at the edge of your property (like much of rural America vs suburban) and you had no obvious front-door.
Would a person then be entitled to wander around your property looking for you? I would hope not.
So by having a front-door you are suggesting people are allowed to just walk onto your property, up to the door, anytime they feel like it and harass you?
If no door or you do not answer, how about your back window? Bathroom window?
I'm curious how the logic works.
But in general, if you don't want people to knock on your front door then put up a sign, or a fence, or some other indication that you want to be left alone. you'd better, because if you allow people to trespass on your land without doing anything about it - say they cross your land to go fish in a river that lies just beyond it - then they may develop a right from your failure to challenge them, sometimes known as adverse possession or an easement by prescription. And no matter how vigorously you defend your borders, you can't stop planes flying over unless they're going so low as to be hazardous to you.
Instead I will walk across everyone's property and if the police eventually stop me, I will say I intended to interview the homeowners but changed my mind.
I will occasionally walk up to people's doors and knock on them just to be plausible but since the law cannot read my mind or intent, they have to accept I am a journalist and have free speech rights to walk across anyone's property.
Obviously this is an absurd extreme example but it follows your basic rules. And shows why they fail. You cannot just walk across town, across everyone's property. Yet do it on a small scale to harass a single person and it is okay?
Instead I will walk across everyone's property and if the police eventually stop me, I will say I intended to interview the homeowners but changed my mind.
For example, this might come off as a plausible argument if you walked up a few houses and then turned away, but the plausibility of your argument diminishes in inverse proportion to the number of property lines you cross without acting upon your stated purpose. You seem to think that judges live in some sort of vacuum which renders them incapable of applying common-sense standards or their own experience to the facts of a case. Now, this is arguably the case in some civil law systems - Posner offers an amusing example of a French law which made it illegal to disembark from a stationary train carriage due to a drafting error - but it's a far cry from how our common law system works or has ever worked.
Yet do it on a small scale to harass a single person and it is okay?
Here you're doing something called begging the question - you're assuming your conclusion as a fact. You consider unwanted journalistic attention to an individual to be harassment, and so you ascribe that as a purpose to the journalist. Think about it; the journalist isn't going to someone's house to make their life miserable, but in pursuit of information, which information may (or may not) be an object of legitimate interest. Finding out whether someone is the architect of a multi-billion dollar digital economy seems like an entirely legitimate subject of journalistic inquiry to me.
I encourage you to post what happens when you do this and explain your theory here to a judge. Having seen what happens when somebody tries to outsmart a judge in his own courtroom, I promise it will be memorable.
In the UK, they sort of would. You can wander onto most private property until asked to leave, as long as you do not break anything. Only if you then refuse to leave is there any issue for a court or the police. Of course, if you just wander into someone's house and they attack you as an intruder, then you are not going to get much sympathy, however just the act of trespass is not inherently illegal. Other than in Scotland, where it gets a little more complex, on open ground I think trespass is criminal but defined as breaking camp, so walking around is still fine.
> courts are cautious about handing them out to journalists engage din legitimate news gathering.
I doubt that it it News Worthy to be the 150th person with a TV camera standing at a recently declared news-worthy spot, or that most of those are gathering something that isn’t being recorded.
Mostly? The first amendment...
Free press means the GOVERNMENT cannot restrict their free speech.
First amendment does not mean as an individual you can go harass someone at their home.
And as pointed out, you are wrong about to whom the First Amendment applies to.
Just that some poorly trained journalists and misguided internet armchair pundits choose to interpret it that way.
Hate to be that guy, but... it's "en masse" :) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/en%20masse
"in mass" seems to still make sense though in plain english
What is funny is in the legal dictionary "en masse" is described as "in a mass"
He can deny all he wants, but it'll be impossible to prove that he isn't that guy unless a "real Satoshi" pops up somewhere. Conspiracy theorists on all sides will continue to spin plenty of plausible scenarios both ways. And of course, if he did confirm it, people would still doubt it until there was really solid proof.
But seriously, if this really is the Satoshi Nakamoto and he has been seriously ill with two seperate life threatening illnesses in the recent past, how come none of those bitcoin he supposedly owns have shifted on medical bills?
You aren't the only one, apparently[1]. I am Spartacus.
Everyone would know that an early adopter moved some coins, but the IP address of the Starbucks that his lawyer's tech guy makes the transaction from isn't going to leak much.
but yes you can see the blockchain - it's public.
he also is a loner with no friends.
the real guy also detailed how the best way to store them.
I am going to argue against the most convincing statement: "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
As someone who has engineering background in CS field, he will be aware of the Bitcoin and a peculiar case of having similar name (He is Dorian S Nakamoto). Thus, he will be a bit more interested in it(People with unique name can share that sentiment) and know enough about the Myth of the disappearance of the Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin inventor. We(including him) all know the kind of disturbance we will face if we were identified as mysterious Bitcoin Inventor. There is also a cloud of uncertainty over legality of Bitcoin. I don't think the news about Silk Road with Bitcoin and the FBI issue will help either. For him, he has to be more weary since he shares part of the name. So when this privacy invading journalist come knocking on his door, he pull the Bitcoin inventor act saying that he relegate the task to other to shoo her away thinking it will be over. An easy way out, he might have thought. The fact that he cannot disappear like the Bitcoin inventor did not register in his mind at that time. He could have been pestered by people about Bitcoin before, just like the journalist started asking him about Bitcoin in the middle of model train email exchanges. He is the real Dorian S Nakamoto. He cannot deny his name but he is not a mythical Satoshi Nakamoto. If you were an introvert, how would you react in that situation? You most likely shut up just like he did. Around these assumption the journalist build up the theory that Dorian is the Bitcoin Inventor.
Anyway, I am pissed at the NewsWeek on violating the privacy of individuals(Dorian S Nakamoto and Satoshi Nakamoto) who wants to be left alone.
Or does he have some plan to out himself at some point, and is it just that he hadn't wanted it to happen like this? Hmm. Well this last part is only wild speculation, in my opinion this hunt and questioning of him and his family should stop right now, but I still wonder.
Curiosity killed the cat...
This may well be what he's done in his 2-hour long interview with the AP reporter, an article on which should come out very soon, according to https://twitter.com/JoeBelBruno
But after seeing this story, the reddit stuff, and other comments around the web, this just seems like a lot of complicated drama. I don't see how serious people will take Bitcoin seriously let alone have it bring about a libertarian revolution.
Note that this doesn't mean that I agree that curiosity justifies the current witch hunt, but that's another matter.
No... in the video he denies being presently involved with Bitcoin ("I am not involved in Bitcoin"), he doesn't deny "any involvement".
Even if he <i>is</i> the bitcoin creator, it's now forever going to be tainted with uncertainty since there's absolutely no verifiable proof that he is, only a lot of speculation.