Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto's official denial of Bitcoin involvement | Hacker News Reader

Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto's official denial of Bitcoin involvement

mobile.twitter.com

97 pointsalanh40 comments

The reporter that originally accused this dude of inventing bitcoin should get fired. 90+% of Newsweek readers will never see this tweet, and the original article is pretty speculative, so I don't know if it'll warrant a retraction. People hungry for bitcoin are probably going to come for Satoshi, and it won't be pretty.

In most countries in Europe, people have a "right of reply," which is the right to respond to printed allegations in the same publication that they were made (and with the same prominence, i.e. on the same page). Does anyone know of similar laws in the US?

Perhaps he doesn't find the whole situation to be pleasant, but as of 6 days ago, he's been donated at least $28,000 (https://blockchain.info/address/1Dorian4RoXcnBv9hnQ4Y2C1an6N...). Hopefully this offsets things.

Can you perhaps explain how he can get these $28,000 in physical dollars?

That's not even getting into an irony of throwing Bitcoins at a person whose life has been just severely discomforted by the very same subject.

The guy collecting the BTC donations has said that he will convert the BTC into actual money then deliver them using commonly accepted methods for payment in the United States. Delivering $X0,000 is not a particularly novel problem in the US economy. There exist many very straightforward ways of solving it.

I wonder about the tax implications of doing that. Seems like it would be pretty tricky if you were to follow the letter of the law.

Andreas M. Antonopoulos, apparently someone respected in the Bitcoin community, stated that he will convert any donations to that address into USD a the end of March and get it to Dorian.

http://redd.it/1ztjmg

Just like anyone else does it? Send to an exchange or service like Coinbase, withdrawal to your bank account.

But it sounds like someone in the community will do it for him.

> irony of throwing Bitcoins at a person whose life has been just severely discomforted by the very same subject.

that's sort of the whole point. The community are apologising on behalf of Newsweek. Not as a publicity stunt, not to convert the guy to bitcoin (he will receive a check in USD), just because it's the right thing to do.

How do you create an address that includes specific text?

Brute force using "vanitygen" or similar tools: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vanitygen

You brute-force create private keys until you have one whose corresponding public key starts with your desired string. A commonly recommended command-line tool to do this is vanitygen. I feel the urge to say "I do not endorse that tool's security." (Though the same goes for Bitcoin generally.)

Your address isn't a public key. It is the formatted hash of a public key.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1...

Thanks for pointing this address out.

But what this guy needs more than money or an apology from Newsweek is a job. Shouldn't "we" hook something up for him?

I called it when the story first broke with a simple question any reporter should've asked themselves:

> There's one thing that doesn't add up: why would such a privacy conscious man use his real name on a project he thought might be illegal? If he was so serious about his privacy, he would not have used his real name in public.

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7353429

The entire situation is a total fuck up.

Double spaces in this statement. Double spaces in the original bitcoin announcements. Ipso facto my friend.

I use double spaces. Maybe I invented bitcoin?

Sparticus.

You're probably being ironic, but for the sake of the readers, I'll point out that most of us in the United States that are older than around 30 years old and learned to type using a formal system (including typing software) use double-spaces.

That's the way we were trained to type. The only thing this proves is that Satoshi was probably not a very young person. I don't think many people believe this anyway (or maybe he just "faked" the double-spaces?).

It was sarcasm.

The joke was a reference back to Goodman's observartion in the original article: "the punctuation in the proposal is also consistent with how Dorian S. Nakamoto writes, with double spaces after periods and other format quirks."

Your comments about prevalence of this technique stand, of course.

"My prospects for gainful employment has been harmed because of Newsweek's article"

"I have retained legal counsel"

Gearing up for a lawsuit, it seems. I'm not a lawyer so I have no idea if it would have merit.

Presumably Newsweek didn't outright fabricate any of his quotes, but they may have misinterpreted them.

Libel laws in this country practically means he has no legal recourse. He would need to prove that Newsweek made the whole thing up, not merely that they misunderstood him.

What about posting pictures of his house? That seems like a huge invasion of privacy to me and it was completely gratuitous IMO.

For better or for worse[1], we have a very strong protections on speech in the US. Although the specifics need to be addressed by his lawyer, in general Dorian needs to prove Newsweek did wrong, and that's a tough hurdle.

[1] I think "for better" but this is showing one of the sadder side effects.

And it's examples like this that show why I think the USA's "right to free speech at the expensive of right to privacy" is bad IMO

People don't sue for libel in the US. They do it in England, where you can secure a libel judgment over practically anything.

"Presumably Newsweek didn't outright fabricate any of his quotes"

You're not familiar with journalists are you. If they can't get anything quotable out of you, even something they can mis-quote, they will just outright make it up.

This book is full of examples of shocking things bloggers/journalists do: http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator...

It's hard to believe unless you see it with your own eyes. I have. They literally make stuff up.

"my prospects for gainful employment have been harmed"

sounds like he's gearing up to sue Newsweek

He should.

I guess, if you can verify that there was communication by from the Satoshi Nakamoto account around the timeframe where he claims to be hospitalised (october 2012 and october 2013), it will be less likely that Dorian has bitcoin involvement.

Satoshi stopped communicating to the public (at least qua Satoshi) back in 2011. So that's not going to happen.

The real Satoshi should have sent out his denial when Dorian was out to lunch with that AP reporter.

> it will be less likely that Dorian has bitcoin involvement

So journalist write some made up story, and it's Dorian who has to prove it's fake? if you think things should work that way,then crappy journalists have won, and that exactly why they feel they can go on publishing crap,because of people thinking the way you do.

What is the source of the image shown in this tweet? Why are we discussing a random image in a random tweet?

https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/445432426970763264

Why is it so hard to find the real Satoshi? Is he using Tor to post messages, send emails?

They did use Tor for all communications. They're not around any more.

Im sure we can find Hal Finney

Reply on news.ycombinator.com