Bitcoin creator is Peter Todd, HBO film says

18 pointsposted 13 hours ago
by tzury

15 Comments

kyledrake

11 hours ago

I spent quite a bit of time with Peter Todd in the very early Bitcoin days. I really enjoyed our conversations back then, I have no idea what he is up to now. My gut feeling is that he is probably not Satoshi Nakamoto. Adam Back is a far more likely suspect, particularly for his British english, which Satoshi wrote in.

philsquared_

9 hours ago

+1 to 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)

kyledrake

6 minutes ago

Indeed there's really nothing positive to be had from coming out as Satoshi at this point regardless of who it is. Criminals and governments will be falling over each other to try to get their take.

bbunix

10 hours ago

Canadian English isn't that far off, especially in a lot of the spelling...

jawiggins

11 hours ago

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 they aren't behind it all, it seems likely that they have some idea who it was.

nullc

9 hours ago

The forum is/was public, so there is no reason to create an account until you're planning to post something or send a private message.

Why is this my first post on bitcoin-dev: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2011... ?

I'm sure you've heard the adage, "It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it."

But online when you're silent you're not thought of as a fool-- you just don't even exist at all. Many of us whose contribution to world is primarily our knowledge and insight often prefer to self-educate to an advanced level on a subject before commenting on it at all.

My first bitcoin-dev post wasn't actually my first public comments on Bitcoin, but I'd read the entire bitcoin code base before ever saying anything about it...

It's not surprising to see Bitcoin developer people emerge from nowhere somewhat well informed, even back then (though to be fair fairly few people really understood txn internals).

I've known Peter and Adam for a very long time. Both have resting smirkface. Petertodd grins like he ate the canary any time he says something even the slightest bit clever. Adam too, now that I say it, though the clever threshold is a bit higher. That combined with talented editing can probably make either of them look guilty of whatever you want, or at least anything that they enjoy talking about.

par

12 hours ago

Pretty sure the guy who goes around saying "I am Satoshi" is not, in fact, Satoshi.

hprotagonist

12 hours ago

I said to him, ‘What disguise will hide me from the world? What can I find more respectable than bishops and majors?’ He looked at me with his large but indecipherable face. ‘You want a safe disguise, do you? You want a dress which will guarantee you harmless; a dress in which no one would ever look for a bomb?’ I nodded. He suddenly lifted his lion’s voice. ‘Why, then, dress up as an anarchist, you fool!’ he roared so that the room shook. ‘Nobody will ever expect you to do anything dangerous then.’ And he turned his broad back on me without another word. I took his advice, and have never regretted it. I preached blood and murder to those women day and night, and—by God!—they would let me wheel their perambulators.”

mastazi

12 hours ago

I was thinking about possible motives for Satoshi to be out of the limelight and now I have a question for those of us who have significant security/signint/encryption experience:

Given the info we have, what are the chances that state actors, such as intelligence agencies, are aware beyond doubt of Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity?

The28thDuck

12 hours ago

What kind of edge does such intel give? Their work (bitcoin) spawned thousands and thousands of people who have taken the foundational technology and made many improvements to it. It seems like trying to figure out who they are incentivizes hobbyists to figure it out rather than state sponsors.

mastazi

12 hours ago

Yeah good point, they probably don't care.

sciencesama

12 hours ago

Its super easy to prove !! Show the sha

yieldcrv

12 hours ago

Oof polymarket betters rekt