Absolutely insane.
(1) It's not Peter Todd. Anyone who knows Peter Todd and/or was around in the early days, can clearly tell Satoshi and Peter are not the same person.
(2) No good comes from speculation over the identity of Satoshi. When someone living is named, their life becomes absolute hell and the security risk imposed on them is very real. When someone dead is proposed, that hellish experience is passed to their family and heirs.
(3) It's not Peter Todd.
> No good comes from speculation over the identity of Satoshi. When someone living is named, their life becomes absolute hell and the security risk imposed on them is very real. When someone dead is proposed, that hellish experience is passed to their family and heirs.
Indeed.
Cullen should know better: his previous project was a documentary on the QAnon conspiracies, which have managed to get people hurt due to crazies looking for these conspiracies. Cullen's evidence is hopelessly coincidence based... exactly the kind of shoddy evidence that fuels conspiracies like QAnon.
Personally I suspect he made the accusation against me simply to create media interest. In particular, by making an accusation against someone who wasn't a leading contender, myself. I haven't seen the film yet myself. But friends of mine have, and said that other than the Satoshi nonsense it was a reasonable documentary about Bitcoin. Problem is, it's hard to build interest in that.
Anyway, hopefully this just blows over. But we'll see. I already took some precautions re: security just in case...
> I already took some precautions re: security just in case...
Shouldn't you be able to sue HBO for forcing you to take unnecessary expenses?
It's incredibly dangerous of these "journalists". Putting targets on people's back as well as possibly being slander.
Any bitcoin oldheads know it's not Peter Todd based on tons of behavioral, timestamped, and logistical evidence. The actual leading candidate is Len Sassaman if you look objectively at the evidence.
> It's incredibly dangerous of these "journalists". Putting targets on people's back [...] The actual leading candidate is [named other individual/family target]
Am I misunderstanding something, or do you want to edit that?
That person is already dead, and already widely discussed (including here on HN a few days ago) as a candidate.
The person being dead just means their surviving family and heirs are the target instead. It's irresponsible to finger anyone as Satoshi.
> The person being dead just means their surviving family and heirs are the target instead.
Which logically makes little sense TBH in this case in particular, but yeah thugs might not be particularly reasonable.
It's definitely Hal Finney. The fact that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto lived a few minutes away from him, and Hal was a marathon runner who could have easily seen his mailbox, and also that Satoshi disappeared when Hal's ALS became overwhelming, is all the evidence you need.
It is definitely not Hal Finney. Hal’s wife has been through enough.
Please don't accuse Hal of being Satoshi, these accusations have resulted in his family being threatened and extorted.
Just another reminder that journalists aren’t experts in any domain other than journalism.
Stop looking to them for credible analysis.
Journalists are supposed to know that (since they are journalism experts,) and use domain experts for their analysis.
>HBO’s theory relies on a message from Peter Todd claiming to be the ‘world’s leading expert on how to sacrifice your bitcoins’
I just can't imagine the real Satoshi saying something this stupid.
That quote actually comes from an early technical conversation I was having about proof-of-sacrifice. Specifically, a conversation lamenting the fact that we kept on inventing neat tricks faster than we could actually use them - by "world's leading expert" I was making fun of the fact that I was technically the world's leading expert in something relatively simple and obvious to Bitcoin experts... yet even I hadn't actually put the technique into practice in a production application.
If you freeze-frame the film at the right point and actually read the full conversation, this is obvious. I don't have it handy. But some people posted screenshots on Twitter (which HBO may have taken down via DMCA... they were getting video clips taken down too).
These days some stuff actually uses proof-of-sacrifice in production. The best example I think being Joinmarket: https://github.com/JoinMarket-Org/joinmarket-clientserver/bl...
Also they didn't bother to ask Peter the story behind this? There is a story regarding an entirely different pot of coins.
From CNN story:
>In a statement to CNN, Todd denied that the post was supposed to be written by Satoshi, calling it “a coincidence.”
>“I was simply pointing out a minor correction to what Satoshi wrote,” Todd told CNN in a statement. “Note that the bitcointalk forum has the ability to edit posts, so it doesn’t even make that much sense that Satoshi would follow up with another message rather than just editing the original to correct the mistake.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/08/investing/satoshi-nakamot...
I was talking about the "expert on how to sacrifice your bitcoins" thing.
Ah, I wasn't sure where the quote was from (it's not in the OP article?), so assumed it's from that Bitcointalk post. Apparently it's from some chat log:
>Hoback's theory relies on a chat log message written by Todd in which he claims to be the "world's leading expert on how to sacrifice your bitcoins ... I've done one such sacrifice and I did it by hand," Todd wrote.
>...
>"It's ludicrous," Todd told Hoback, also denying he's John Dillon. "This is going to be very funny when you put this into the documentary and a bunch of bitcoiners watch it."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/10/08/who-i...
> No good comes from speculation over the identity of Satoshi.
As Bitcoin gains market value the issue of Satoshi’s coins is becoming more and more serious.
It’s not wildly understood yet but Bitcoin will go fully dark in the future, how to do this, especially with help of L2 systems, is well known in the deep technical circles.
I think all libertarian capitalists believe money should be private. However Satoshi will eventually be the wealthiest human to ever exist and if that wealth is 100% dark it raises some tricky issues.
> No good comes from speculation over the identity of Satoshi. When someone living is named, their life becomes absolute hell and the security risk imposed on them is very real. When someone dead is proposed, that hellish experience is passed to their family and heirs.
Not a good reason. The person who developed bitcoin is responsible for billions (maybe trillions) of dollars of fraud and crime. They are responsible for a ludicrous amount of waste and carbon output. They should be held to account by the public.
By this measure, one would be compelled to start with the banks. Which is not to say I’m opposed in theory, just that I hope such sentiments are applied equally.
Just finished watching the doc on HBO.
The key piece of evidence seems to be this comment from Peter Todd: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2181.msg28739#msg287...
It stands out to the producers because: 1) Peter makes it just after joining the form, so he is unlikely to have detailed knowledge of bitcoin. 2) He seems to be finishing Satoshi's thought, as though he returned to an earlier post forgetting which account he was signed into. 3) The post happens just before Satoshi disappears and Peter leaves for a few years.
The doc also features many scenes with Peter and Adam Back where their eyes kind of shift around and they laugh awkwardly when asked about certain things. Since the doc it seems that Peter has taken to twitter to say he was mislead about the purpose of the interviews.
I've always kind of thought that Satoshi was probably one person who built it all in isolation, and I never played much attention to theories that Satoshi was actually multiple people. After watching the doc it does seem like Adam and Peter know a good deal more than they are letting on, even if it wasn't them specifically, it seems likely that they have some idea who it was.
> Peter makes it just after joining the form, so he is unlikely to have detailed knowledge of bitcoin.
The fact that the inputs, outputs, and fee of a transaction must add up isn't exactly "detailed knowledge" :) I don't think it took me all that long to figure that out when I first tried understanding how Bitcoin worked.
And frankly, the core of Bitcoin really isn't all that complex! You can have a very good understanding of all the parts after just a few days carefully studying it. Which is exactly what I did: I sat down with the Bitcoin Core codebase and figured out what all the code did. Especially at the time, it really wasn't that big of a codebase.
> After watching the doc it does seem like Adam and Peter know a good deal more than they are letting on, even if it wasn't them specifically, it seems likely that they have some idea who it was.
I can't speak for Adam. But I have no idea who Satoshi is. If anything, I think it could be literally hundreds or even thousands of potential people. Bitcoin is something so simple that you didn't need to be a super-genius to come up with it. You just needed to understand some relatively high-level, basic, cryptography and have a brilliant flash of inspiration. Satoshi was a very competent C++ programmer (it's a myth that his code was bad). But there's lots and lots of very competent C++ programmers out there.
Cool to get a reply from you directly, thanks!
It seems unlikely to me that it could be thousands of people, given the correspondence had with various people it seems likely to me that a few people have information that could lead in the correct direction. But I guess we'll never know.
I think you misunderstood the context of 'thousands' - - "If anything, I think it could be literally hundreds or even thousands of potential people." - - meaning that, literally, thousands of DIFFERENT people, could be considered, as a potential possibility, of being a possible candidate, of being, Satoshi. Simply put :-P Not that 'thousands' of people are Satoshi, like you misunderstood. - anywho -
Exactly.
The world is a big place. It's likely that in 2008 thousands of people had the right skillset to create Bitcoin, any one of which might have done it.
As long as Satoshi wants to stay hidden, we're not going to find them.
Gov/CIA most definitely knows who Satoshi is.
Even if he always used TOR/anonymous IPs, when accessing his @gmx.com account, with the number of sign-in's he had, it must be an absolute certainty, that he want through rogue exit nodes or some other de-anonymization methods we are not aware of, but deployed by gov. agencies.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29728339
Can you prove what you were doing on 2009-01-10?
I find it interesting you have a curious prior interest in that IP leak and your spin on it.
If you are Satoshi then you should think carefully if you have any other OPSEC slip ups and then if you think there might be more … It’s better to confess and handle the issue of your coins.
Your safety should be priority number one.
It’s not bad for Bitcoin or you if it is you. Whomever Satoshi is they gifted the world with something incredible and it’s bigger than them now. The problem is the coins and the uncertainty around the intentions of them.
Destroying the evidence, I’m guessing smashed and/or magnets on drives, that one is Satoshi probably seemed like the best idea at the time. Perhaps burning the coins wasn’t given enough consideration. It means there is a dilemma. What in the game is the best move next?
Investigators who work in the real world have intuitive skills and will find the connections if they exist. Those of us who live in computers and data and math can sometimes underestimate the human pattern finding capabilities. They might be able to see and prove clearly who is Satoshi even if Satoshi thinks well all the data is gone, wiped, they “can’t” prove it, but that doesn’t mean that’s how the rest of society sees “proof” they might be able to “tell”.
The obvious answer is Satoshi Nakamoto is functionally dead.
His wallet would be worth around $70 billion dollars today and he hasn't touched it in over a decade.
Either he is A) dead, B) lost the wallet and wishes he were dead, or C) has achieved such spiritual enlightenment that has no interest in the personal or societal impact that $70 billion dollars could have.
He is not coming back folks, and even if we figure out who he was, that $70 billion is gone.
The $70 billion is not gone. He would need to sell his Bitcoin to others to amass $70 billion. Whatever impact $70B dollars could have is already happening: the difference is that it’s not his impact.
> lost the wallet and wishes he were dead
At least it's a good tax write-off. (Well… $3000 a year for life in the US iirc.)
What’s stopping me from claiming I had this (or any other) wallet and getting the write off?
Audits, same as anything else.
What I mean is how would I prove that I once possessed the key to a wallet?
Much like Elon Musk couldn't liquidate his stocks and wind up a billionaire, my bitcoin is nowhere nearly worth $70B. I won't tell you my estimate, but I will say that it's quite modest by comparison.
Do you think the world really has $70B in cash to blow on bitcoin right now? Big players mine the stuff, they don't buy it.
Peter Todd is downplaying the accusation on Twitter by retweeting and discussing this tweet: https://x.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1843788557925921052
To my reading, the bitcointalk reply only makes sense as a snarky comment (ie Todd isn't Satoshi). and the fact it was 1.5 hours after the Satoshi post also suggests it wasn't the same person making a quick correction.
If it was Satoshi making a correction, he could’ve just edited his original post because bitcointalk allowed for post edits even back then.
Also, at the time petertodd's account was named 'retep' and didn't have any immediately obvious connection to his identity. If there had been a slipup he could have just abandoned the account and certainly not later had it renamed to his legal name!
'retep' for peter backwards? That is kind a lame.
If an HBO show suggested that I was the Bitcoin creator, I would be wealthy... from owning HBO, after my team of lawyers (who accepted the suit on contingency) was done with them.
Then there's Google editorializing a headline at the top of search hits:
> Top stories
> Bitcoin creator's identity revealed in new HBO documentary
Yet none of the headlines they show makes that claim:
> POLITICO.eu - Bitcoin creator is Peter Todd, HBO film says
> Bloomberg - HBO Documentary Suggests Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Peter Todd
> The New York Times - A New Bitcoin Documentary Reopens the Search for Satoshi Nakamoto
> The Crypto Times - Peter Todd Denies He is Satoshi Nakamoto as claimed by HBO...
> The New Yorker - Has Bitcoin's Elusive Creator Finally Been Unmasked?
In general (not just in this case), there should also soon be some huge lawsuits for robo-slander, robo-libel, robo-defamation, robo-reckless-endangerment, etc.
Government is getting a lot more tech-savvy, and "everything's legal, if you claim an AI/algorithm/computer/dog did it" isn't flying anymore.
A mockumentary on crypto would be much more interesting at this point.
Quite interesting interview in this piece:
>CNN sat down with Hoback, prior to Todd’s denial, to discuss why the director is so confident in his theory, whether he’s worried about being sued, and that big dramatic confrontation at the end of the film.
Is there anything positive at all in the Crypto industry?
CO2 emissions, fraud, attacking democracy is on the negative side. What’s on the positive? Why is it still legal?
It feels like Crypto at the systemic level is an open vulnerability not an asset. It’d be nice to have this vulnerability to get fixed.
Simplified movement of value across international borders, avoiding excessive exchange fees.
Mind you, I don't think in its present form it is worth it (POW is intrinsically power-intensive; a lot of things about the banking system that seem like bugs are actually features; etc).
But I think A) value stored in tokens, and B) decentralized ledgers and nonrepudiation are things that are may want to have as core financial services in the future.
For me, it's the ability to send money to or receive money from anyone, anywhere, without the government's or bank approval.
I still think it's Paul Le Roux, on the basis that this would be the funniest outcome.
It would also be pretty funny if it was actually Craig Wright but he lost his private key.
only possible if he had a never disclosed frontal lobotomy. the guy is a technical idiot.
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It is Adam Back.
Who is more likely to build ontop of some obscure code base called "Hash Cash"? Some random people that trolled the same forums or the original creator of it?
Imo this "secret" is known by many people as I have seen so many censorship and misdirection campaigns throughout the years if people mention Adam being the one.
Him being Satoshi also makes bitcoin core seem more legitimate. He can guide his creation without being formally known as satoshi.
It is obvious. Especially if you have ever been a solo dev for an extended period of time (like adam was)
There is a ton more evidence but seems like no one really wants to dig into Adam.
Adam literally stopped updating hash cash and a year later Bitcoin is released... check his website on archive.org.
Its ok. I like that there is still conversation as to who it is. It gives protection to him since there likely wont be anything concrete (if hopefully he was slick enough)
Clearly not him. He initially dismissed Bitcoin and jumped on the bandwagon when it started making headlines due to its fast rising price. Plus, Adam Back seeks fame, he would happily claim to be Satoshi if it was really him. He was even criticized early on for seeming to take too much credit for Bitcoin[0].
My guess is that it's someone who was not particularly well-known prior to Bitcoin.
[0] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=225463.0
I reckon it's James Simon (now deceased) from Rennaisance, heading up a team.
I've been in crypto since March of 2013 and Satoshi is not known. The so called DOC was a money grab.
Satoshi Nakamoto is defined as: Any DEV that participated in Bitcoins 1st year of development.
Leave it at that.
Why people want to find satoshi ?
I hope this do not hurt Peter.
I'm honestly surprised that all of the alleged satoshis haven't been kid napped by armed gangs trying to get the billions locked up in the first mined blocks.
Ditto. Even if the probability is 1/100, assuming they have at least $1bn net worth, that's a $10m expected payoff.
Expected value doesn't really work for rare events. A 1% chance of $50M and a 1% chance of $2B are barely different to a person.
For a person it doesn't matter. But the context here is gangs, and for organizations it could make a difference. $2B can be split many-ways and still have significant money for everyone.
Would be a pretty amusing black comedy. They kidnap the potential Satoshi, who is actually Satoshi but they’re not sure. [hijinx added here]. Then in the process of torturing him, they accidentally kill him before he reveals the password. And then it’s confirmed he’s who they wanted.
"Where is the money, Lebowski!? Or should I say Satoshi!"
Most kidnappings seem to involve kidnapping people who do in fact have the resources to pay to some extent.
They don’t seem to occur in a speculative fashion where “maybe this person can pay…”.
Anyone who knows, knows the coins haven’t been touched in a suspiciously long time, and moving Bitcoin is not always anonymous…
> They don’t seem to occur in a speculative fashion where “maybe this person can pay…”.
For potentially tens of billions of dollars, I'm willing to bet that some criminals would make an exception.
How do you know they haven't?
"Alleged Satoshis" are generally public, almost by definition. We would notice if they disappeared. We would also notice if the well-known Satoshi-associated wallets had any activity, which would be an unavoidable signal if any such kidnapping succeeded in finding the real one. Not everything is a deep mystery.
A lot of old timers in this space have been subject to kidnapping and ransom attacks, some real and some merely threatened, as well as more mundane phone porting and SWAT'ing. These don't make the news.
Then there are the other crypto people who have met grisly ends: Bob Lee and Li Chiming, as well as the suspicious deaths of John Forsyth, Tiantian Kullander, Vyacheslav Taran, and Park Mo. Not candidates for Satoshi, but it goes to show that "outing" potential Satoshis is not a safe thing to do.
They made enough news that you know about them, at least. Anyway, I don't disagree with the last part.
I know about them because I'm one of them. (This is a pseudonymous account, but I've been a bitcoin developer since 2010, and subject to multiple personal attacks. Thankfully no kidnapping or ransom... yet.)
At least one of the Satoshi fakes moves around with a big security detail. For them it's presumably just a cost of their faking business and paid for by the people they're defrauding.
But for someone involuntarily accused that's another matter. A security detail is eye wateringly expensive -- particularly one comprehensive enough to stop kidnappers in general.
imo it's pretty obvious that he was Hal Finney, potentially with collaborators, and no amount of scripted emails, etc. disproves it for me
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.10257v14
This paper makes a pretty good case that the late Len Sassaman was Satoshi. Its a pretty thorough examination regardless if you think it was Len or not and doesn't come to a definitive conclusion.
I think it is likely the 2014 message was actually Satoshi and there really is no evidence to the contrary. It rules out Len or at least Len as the exclusive creator
My money is on Hal, too. He was in the dorm room next to mine. I've never met an actual genius before or since. Bitcoin is just the thing he would invent.
He was interviewed when he could no longer speak. He was asked if he was Satoshi. He just smiled.
It's just the kind of joke Hal would play.
Hey, it would be a kindness to Hal's family to not promote this theory. They've been subject to threats and extortion over it.
To the extent that someone could argue that there is some public interest angle, I think that's only arguable in the case of certainty. Speculation is a dime a dozen. Even if there is a public interest angle in identifying Satoshi, I don't think that extends to idle speculation.
Hal was an amazing guy and I feel privileged for the bit of interaction I had with him, refraining from a fun game of public speculation is a small cost. I'm sure if he's cryonically revived in the far future he'll appreciate the consideration. :)
In general speculation like this risks creating a lot of harm for the targets, especially since brutal cryptocurrency related kidnapping and torture appears to be on the rise.
It's unclear what bitcoin Satoshi might have had access too, but people who aren't Satoshi certainly don't have access to it... and the cost of security against criminal gangs hoping for a billion dollar windfall are unreasonable large even for a wealthy person and are unimaginable for someone of more ordinary means.
It sounds like you know Hal was running a marathon while Satoshi was emailing. Did you also know their stylometry doesn't match?
It's not definitive proof.
Stylometry was known at the time, Hal might have changed his. People have been using computer stylometry for years to rule in or out pretenders to be Shakespeare.
Emails can be sent with a timer.
He would've had to mimic someone else in that early crypto-sphere who does match the stylometry much much better.
That person was also familiar with Hal's PoW implementation (where Hal mentions it was an implementation of this guy's concept) 3 years before the Bitcoin paper, but attempted to obfuscate that fact.
Why don’t you stop being coy and say who you think it is?
they’re saying they think it’s adam back
wow Satoshi discussions are perplexing
There's a reason most people don't mention them, as some of this thread illustrates, sorry.
why people are finding satoshi ?
It veers quickly into conspiracy theory territory but I have long thought a nation state is a likely candidate for creator. You can kinda pick from several, all equally free from and evidence, and come up with narratives around why they might have done such a thing.