This article should result in huge court settlements payed by NYTimes to Mr. Szabo. They are literally putting his life and life of his family in danger.
I hope will sue their asses.
I hope will sue their asses.
The world is filled with millionaires and billionaires who are publicly known and yet perfectly safe, even though the vast majority of them don't have security guards or anything like that.
Why do you think things would be different for the creator of Bitcoin? The reality is that very few criminals are of the take-hostages-and-murder type in the first place and murdering or stealing from a semi-famous rich person is a surefire way to get caught, especially when Bitcoins are traceable in a way that cash is not. You might as well break in and steal a Picasso painting from some other millionaire.
There are lots of people who want to remain private and unknown; the best (though not guaranteed) way is to not do anything worthy of the public notice. If you do, you should expect some scrutiny. So while I sympathize with Szabo, I don't feel very sorry for him. He pursued his dream of working on cryptocurrency (whether or not he is Satoshi) and this is a perfectly reasonable and predictable consequence of that dream.
as if.
There are certainly exceptions, for the super-rich and some kinds of celebrities, but it's not very common.
Neither does Szabo. What Bitcoins he has are traceable and they are not just sitting around. The usual imagination is that someone would threat/torture and kill him and his family to get his keys, but that's extremely high profile and risky and works just as well for normally wealthy people. (Send your wife to take out one million dollars cash from the bank or I'll kill your children!)
> Satoshi, whoever he is, does have a large pile of what may be untraceable money though.
How would it be untraceable? Bitcoin, unlike cash, is very traceable.
Szabo's situation is not at all different from anybody else who is wealthy.
I'm sure Szabo will be fine.
People on those lists do sue the papers sometimes, but not usually for having their wealth overestimated - http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/us-britain-saudi-b...