| ▲ | raphlinus 16 hours ago |
| I found this article about as compelling as all the other attempts at identifying him. Half of the cypherpunks (I was pretty active) had the same set of interests in public key cryptography, libertarianism, anonymity, criticism of copyright, and predecessor systems like Chaum's ecash; we talked about those in virtually every meeting. The most compelling evidence is Adam Back's body language, as subjectively observed by a reporter who is clearly in love with his own story. The stylometry also struck me as a form of p-hacking—keep re-rolling the methodology until you get the answer you want. It's entirely possible Adam is Satoshi, but in my opinion this article moves us no closer to knowing whether that's true or not. He's been on everybody's top 5 list for years, and this article provides no actual evidence that hasn't been seen before. |
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| ▲ | lumirth 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| What struck me in particular was the fact the reporter noticed that Back had theorized how to evade stylometry. Obviously, if one of the people in question had specifically come up with ways to evade methods, you’d want to re-roll those methods to account for that. That, alongside a number of other tidbits (Back’s activity and inactivity patterns lining up with Satoshi’s appearance and disappearance, his refusal to provide email metadata, his financial incentive to hide his identity as Satoshi under US securities law) makes the case a lot more meaningful than just “likely p-hacking.” |
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| ▲ | Lerc 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >his financial incentive to hide his identity as Satoshi under US securities law I don't think you can attribute this to financial incentive. The actual Satoshi could forfeit 90% of their BTC and still have more than they could know what to do with. At those kinds of levels I can see personal security being a higher consideration. Either way it would give no indication who might be Satoshi because all candidates would have a similar incentive if they were Satoshi, and you are measuring the absence of information. | | |
| ▲ | philistine 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | why does everybody assume that whoever is Satoshi still has access to their wallet? It's absolutely possible whoever is Satoshi has simply lost the key. We're talking new technology where you're running fast and loose. It's absolutely possible, and I'd say a big reason why someone would not want to admit to being Satoshi. I'm Satoshi, but I also lost billions because I messed up a Debian upgrade. | | |
| ▲ | prawn an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Further, no one would believe them, and they'd still endlessly be a target for criminals. No benefit to revealing any information beyond mild dismissals, IMO. | |
| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | CTDOCodebases 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Or what if Satoshi deliberately destroyed their key? The motivations behind Bitcoin were clear. All the wealthy people I know don’t really do it for the money. The money is the gauge or the metric they use to judge how well they are playing the game but what motivates them is the love of the game and their sense of purpose. If someone was to truly believe that Bitcoin was going to be a gold/USD/Eurodollar/swift etc. replacement then their metric of success isn’t money if they got in early. |
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| ▲ | pdntspa 42 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | For that wealth to mean anything he has to withdraw from it, and wouldn't that produce a paper trail? Apologies if its mentioned in TFA, I only got halfway through it... the author's self-indulgence was getting to be a bit much |
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| ▲ | eddiewithzato an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Also Back’s response on X was very telling | |
| ▲ | yieldcrv 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > What struck me in particular was the fact the reporter noticed that Back had theorized how to evade stylometry. there are automated tools for this now that students use routinely so that their papers don't get flagged as AI whether they wrote it or not there would be lots of people that looked this up as it has been discussed a lot on those same mailing lists before being so commonplace |
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| ▲ | apeace 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The body language thing really bothers me. Personally, if someone accuses me of lying, but I am actually telling the truth, I immediately start acting like a liar. It's really embarrassing and hard to explain. I can't believe such a seasoned reporter is leaning so hard on "his face went red." |
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| ▲ | windowliker an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | What's also worth noting is that they were not alone in the room, talking privately. Everything being said could presumably be heard by Back's business associates as well. Some of the questions could well be enough to cause embarrassment or unease on that account. | |
| ▲ | SunshineTheCat 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yea pretty similar idea to a polygraph test which for years was called a "lie detector." In reality, they measure a bunch of things that may indicate lying, but they are just as likely to indicate that a person is nervous or reacting to the fact they're being tested at all. They're typically inadmissible in court these days, however, there is still a pretty solid amount of blind trust in their results. That part of the article gives a similar "lie detecting" hypothesis, just without the machine. | |
| ▲ | vidarh 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In fact, we are incredibly bad at telling lies from the body language of people we don't know well. Pretty much all the "well known" tells are sheer and utter bullshit that at best tells you if a person is stressed. That may or may not mean they are lying, but unless you know that person well enough to know if they have specific tells that correlates with lying for them, your odds are poor. |
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| ▲ | empath75 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I actually think the most compelling evidence is the fact that he was one of the first people to get rich from it, which also explains why he never had to touch his vault of coins. |
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| ▲ | archagon 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Same set of interests? Clearly Raph is Satoshi. |
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