So far there have been multiple Satoshi Nakamoto reveals which, of course, never panned out. To their credit Wired is hedging their bets, saying Wright could be a determined hoaxer and even providing some countervailing evidence to their own theory. Good journalism, that.<p>Having said that, I looked over the article and this seems to be the most convincing Satoshi Nakamoto theory thus far. There's no need to jump to any firm conclusions yet though: I'm certain the Internet will conclusively prove or disprove this over the next few days.
Apparently Gizmodo has been investigating this for even longer (!) and has a lot of other evidence for Wright=Satoshi too: <a href="http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-friend-invented-bi-1746958692" rel="nofollow">http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-frie...</a>
Aaaaand the Australian police just raided his house: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/bitcoin-founder-craig-wrights-home-raided-by-australian-police" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/bitcoin-fo...</a>
Also Gizmodo was separately leaked to, it seems, has a bunch of screenshots<p><a href="http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-friend-invented-bi-1746958692" rel="nofollow">http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-frie...</a><p>if it's a hoax, seems like an awfully long and meticulous one.<p>[edit - Dang this fell off front page fast! Thought this one was going to be almost Steve Jobs in terms of having a life of its own]
Worth noting that the main source on this is Gwern (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gwern" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gwern</a>). Gwern, care to comment?
<i>"The PGP key associated with Nakamoto’s email address and references to an upcoming “cryptocurrency paper” and “triple entry accounting” were added sometime after 2013"</i><p>Why is this not at the beginning of the article? That's pretty strong evidence that this is a hoax.
This looks more like a trail of deliberately planted evidence to make us think he's Satoshi.<p>The email/tweet/transcript quotes almost suggest sort of multiple personality disorder where he believes he's Satoshi.
I wonder if Steven Wright has any open source code that we could review.<p>While it seems plausible that he would obfuscate his styleometry, it would be interesting to do a comparison with early Bitcoin.<p>The early Bitcoin code is super awkward.
If someone wants to prove they are Satoshi Nakamoto all they have to do is sign a message with the private keys from the genesis block. Until then it's a little pointless to guess.
He seems obsessed with being Satoshi. And the article itself said he made edits to insert bitcoin related entries into past writings. I'm sure he's a very smart guy but he's also one of the last people I'd think was Satoshi.
Why is it important to know who Satoshi Nakamoto is/was? It seems like all this desire to know the person defeats the point of the pseudo-anonymity here. I assume it's meant to keep people focused on the idea of the crypto-currency and less on any specific ideology SN may espouse. But that's just me.
Motherboard seems to think this is a hoax[1].<p>In sum:<p>* Only one key, the Original Key, is actually known to be associated with Satoshi.<p>* The Wired and Gizmodo Keys that supposedly lead back to Satoshi weren’t previously known to be linked to Satoshi, and their 2008 creation date could have been faked.<p>* Both keys use a longer and less-common key size than the Original Key.<p>* Both keys use a list of cipher-suites that don’t match up to the Original Key, and weren’t added to GPG until 2009.<p>* The Wired key was retroactively added to a 2008 blogpost sometime between 2012 and 2014, as noted in its story.<p>* A core Bitcoin developer who’s been involved from nearly the beginning looked back at 2011 chatlogs referring to “fake” Satoshi keys on keyservers, and found no reference to either the Gizmodo or Wired keys. He thinks that those keys weren’t yet uploaded to the keyserver in 2011.<p>[1] <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-probably-backdated-and-point-to-a-hoax" rel="nofollow">http://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-proba...</a>
Watching the video:<p>"I've got a couple doctorates... I forget what I've actually got these days".<p>It's hard to take seriously someone who is trying this hard not to appear self-aware.
I wish people would respect satoshi's wish of anonymity.<p>Having probably the only concentration of wealth over $100M not guarded by a full security detail, it could very well lead to not only his own harm, but perhaps his family members being kidnapped, etc.<p>That is not even to mention the bilderberg/rothschild/etc. type of people that probably aren't big fans.
Does anybody have access to Craig Steven Wright's papers? Google Scholar only turns up a single patent application (apparently a patent on a registration server -- vaguely related to bitcoin but without the decentralized aspect-- and very ideologically misaligned...)<p>I've seen people want to mysteriously associate themselves with something large before. This could be an example of it.
he is actively deleting himself from the internet; his several blogs (gse in particular as it was posted here a few weeks ago, but there are more), his youtube channel and any reference to him.<p>i doubt this is speculation as the actions definitely show he is trying to hide something (his original writing from analysis). this is also apparent in his replies to wired.<p>also, it sucks that this kind of content is being cleared. i found it interesting and hope it will make it back. please put it back craig.<p>edits:<p>the following quote is quite odd; anyone have any clarity?<p>“About 20 years ago, I was at the launch of Alta Vista. It was the first big commercial search engine. Back in the early '90s… everyone told me how much of a ‘coo-coo’ [crazy] I was for wasting all this money to be part of something that’s a ‘bloody piece of computer code’," said Wright. [1]<p>[1] <a href="http://www.cio.com.au/article/549278/bitcoin_safe_/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cio.com.au/article/549278/bitcoin_safe_/</a>
If Satoshi is Wright, and he really wanted to remain nameless, he almost certainly would not have shown up to the Bitcoin Investor’s Conference. Poor op-sec.<p>That said, the issue with outing him is that he could hold more sway over the direction of BTC than if it were a truly decentralized currency. Not sure this if that's in the best interests of BTC.
I used to follow him Twitter, G+, Blogspot and LinkedIn. Within minutes of the article being published all his accounts have been out (disconnected?). Only LinkedIn is still up.
I came here to say "oh god not again", but then I read it and found out gwern was involved in the investigation. Suddenly it's quite interesting. :)
Gizmodo now chiming in and saying Satoshi was 2 people, but basically confirming the Wired article on Dr. Wright.<p><a href="http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-friend-invented-bi-1746958692" rel="nofollow">http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-frie...</a>
Most of the 'evidence' seems to have been added in 2013, a year when prices hit nearly $1,000 per coin. Maybe it's Mr. Wright, maybe not.<p>But, it's quite credulous to say "Oh, what an unusual and determined person it must to be to think of claiming to be Satoshi in 2013."
Wouldn't it be fun if we could set up a prediction market so that we could all place bets on whether Mr. Wright is or is not an inventor of Bitcoin?
This feels like a really weird story, on one hand I've wanted to know the answer to this forever and on the other hand, this doesn't really seem to be a story at all:)<p>So what does this mean for bitcoin, anything?
I'm really wondering why the author of bitcoin would hide their identity? Don't want the attention? Plenty of innovative people are simply footnotes in history. Or is the true origin of this digital currency a dubious agency, who if revealed would stop people from wanting to use it?
Is it a second try at Amero?
<a href="http://forextrading.about.com/od/forexhistory/a/amero_conspiracy.htm" rel="nofollow">http://forextrading.about.com/od/forexhistory/a/amero_conspi...</a>
Perhaps it's just me, but I find the - repeated - attempted unmasking of a cypherpunk nym adopted with good cause and reason for the creation of a very disruptive technology terribly disrespectful, although perhaps inevitable.<p>"Who is but the form following the function of what, and <i>what</i> I am is a man in a mask." (Well I can see that.) "Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man <i>who</i> he is." [-V, 2005]
The Newsweek one made more sense than this one. Especially him saying he wasn't involved in it any more. Imperfect English wouldn't make me think I worked on a project called Bitcoin, which also doesn't even sound like most tech. He certainly issued a rebuttal but would if it was true or false. Same for the email saying he's not Dorian. Meaningless.<p>So, she might be wrong or right. Who knows. That story wasn't convincing mainly due to how it was presented. I think this guy is onto something about that:<p><a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/03/10/satoshi-why-newsweek-isnt-convincing/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/03/10/satoshi-why...</a><p>So, now we have a new one with leaked emails and blog posts. The writer is wise enough, as Analemma noted, to mention it could be a hoax with some indications of that. It's actually the first thing I think given the two source are both huge red flags, one already has editing, and they center on a sort of egomaniac. An egomaniac who also has financial conflicts of interest and major investments in Bitcoin that might benefit from a false reveal. I'm not buying it until we have good external or first-hand data tying him to Bitcoin like prior work attempted.<p>The trust chain and leveraging Satoshi's stash without directly moving it is good thinking, though. I predicted that in private conversations as a significant possibility. Learned the trick from Wall St where they have all kinds of ways to make money on less money or static assets. Hell, they even make money on non-existent assets lol. A person sitting on a Bitcoin fortune able to prove it without it being published could do a lot of the same stuff.
"comparisons of different archived versions of the three smoking gun posts from Wright’s blog show that he did edit all three—to insert evidence of his bitcoin history. The PGP key associated with Nakamoto’s email address and references to an upcoming “cryptocurrency paper” and “triple entry accounting” were added sometime after 2013."
Craig Wright's home raided by Australian police[0].<p>[0] <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/bitcoin-founder-craig-wrights-home-raided-by-australian-police" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/bitcoin-fo...</a>
<i>"As Wright told the Bitcoin Investor’s conference, he’s applying that second machine towards the mysterious task of 'modeling Bitcoin's scalability'[.]"</i><p>If he is Nakamoto, I wonder if he's using this computing power to test strategies for divesting of the "nine-figure fortune" of coins which is assumed to be controlled by Nakamoto.
I'll believe it when I see something here:
<a href="https://blockchain.info/fr/address/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa?filter=1" rel="nofollow">https://blockchain.info/fr/address/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SL...</a>
They don't seem to have spotted that the second "perplexing" email is a word-for-word quote from Neuromancer. Which is particularly funny given that they managed to figure out the William Gibson reference.<p>I had to explain to my wife why I was laughing so hard.
this twitter account just got deleted <a href="https://twitter.com/dr_craig_wright" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/dr_craig_wright</a>
The NSA has nothing on these wannabe journalists. Good grief, why can't someone's identity remain private even when they make something popular?
I would submit that posting this drivel on HK is unnecessary.<p>I'm all for real Bitcoin news, even about whats-his-face in Japan or interviews with old cypherpunks. Or new forks or new coins or ponzi schemes or silly lost hard drives even.<p>But this article is unfounded clickbait nonsense. Whomever the real SN is has done good security work on their identity and won't be found unless they want to.