
Tell HN: Meeting Satoshi  - yuxt
back in 2011 I convinced my wife who ran a small creperie in DUMBO, Brooklyn to start accepting bitcoins. We were one of the first in the world physical location that accepted this new digital currency [1]. In the next couple of month we received a lot of attention, but no one has purchased anything with btc. Then one day, my wife calls me and informs that there is someone who would like to pay with bitcoins. I got excited and asked her to take a picture of the guy because he is the first one and it&#x27;s a historic moment for us. 
He bought 2 crepes and paid using his smartphone and our QR code with btc address. One crepe and a lemonade  was 1 bitcoin at that time :)<p>After he finished his food my wife approached him and asked to take a picture of him for  being the first. He blushed and politely declined citing that bitcoin is an anonymous currency.  He wished us well,  added that bitcoins should already be in our account and left.<p>My wife called me back and revealed that he refused to take a picture. So I asked her to describe him. She portrayed the guy as  a humble polite Japanese man in his 50s. We joked maybe it was Satoshi, but I dismissed the idea. I assumed it was some one from Mt Gox since it was located in Japan.<p>Today I showed the picture of Satoshi in Newsweek to my wife and she recognized him.<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bitcoinbabe.blogspot.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;07&#x2F;bitcoin-sex-drugs-and-baklava-and.html
======
lucb1e
Goddamnit guys. Let him be. Come on. Are we hackers here or are we paparazzi?

I thought Hacker News was a club of quality-valuing people that saw the world
from a hacker's perspective and questioned the status quo. My view is shifting
with every comment posted here.

~~~
Delmania
Hi, newsflash "hackers" are people too, and who doesn't love being in the
spotlight?

~~~
Zikes
Yes, there are people in the world with poor manners and still more people
that have lapses in judgement, but neither is an excuse for dismissing
civility altogether in a community that selects for it.

These people are trying to doxx a man using the excuse that he is a public
figure, as if that strips him of his humanity. It's a positively shameful
behavior, and should not be encouraged or allowed to continue.

------
yuxt
I am not going to reveal any more information that I already have. I respect
his will to stay anonymous. It was just an emotional post without a thought of
provoking a witch-hunt. Satoshi has been an inspiration to me, I apologize for
any inconvenience I might cause.

~~~
GBond
I saw no harm in the post. Thanks for sharing.

IMO, the criticisms are unfounded and just another example of the HN's
community recent penchant to hate on anything and everything.

~~~
smellf
Recent?

------
g4m8i7
All of you asking for the transaction ID are incorrigible. The man clearly
wants privacy. The kind of privacy that you all opine for every time there's
some governmental incursion. Or some startup gets hacked or whatever.

Leave the man be.

~~~
rayiner
If the man wanted privacy, he shouldn't have designed a system that broadcasts
every transaction you make out onto the entire internet.

~~~
lucb1e
Well we haven't exactly found him through this information yet, but disclosing
it after the news of earlier today I think is unethical.

------
mattm
Not that I doubt this story, but human memory is not very reliable. There's
many studies that have been done on this. The fact that your wife would
remember someone from three years ago who she met for 20 minutes is a little
far fetched even if it was a significant meeting.

It also matters how you showed the picture. Depending on how you did it can
influence people to remember incorrectly.

~~~
a_bonobo
Furthermore, it's known that Europeans make errors in recognizing Asian faces.

From 1987:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3627925](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3627925)

Ten European subjects made significantly more errors in recognising Asian
faces than European faces

[http://pss.sagepub.com/content/16/6/440.short](http://pss.sagepub.com/content/16/6/440.short)

Koreans who grew up in Europe recognize Asian faces much worse than Koreans
who grew up in Korea, and Koreans who grew up in Korea make mistakes in
recognizing European faces.

It's called the "Cross-race effect": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-
race_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect)

OP seems to be American so I'd wager that his/her wife is, too.

------
malgorithms
Please don't disclose the transaction. It's a serious decision, at least.

~~~
rayiner
There is no social expectation that store keepers shouldn't talk about famous
people that patronize their establishment. In fact, unless the nature of the
establishment merits sensitivity, the expectation is the exact opposite.

~~~
Zikes
There is a social expectation that an establishment of any kind not publish
their customers' transaction information publicly.

If nothing else, it's in poor taste.

~~~
npizzolato
I'm not familiar with many details of bitcoin, so correct me if this is wrong,
but aren't all bitcoin transactions public for anyone to see?

------
ecto
This is the address for the creperie's wallet:
1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3JPUekwoBC

Blockexplorer:
[https://blockexplorer.com/address/1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3J...](https://blockexplorer.com/address/1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3JPUekwoBC)

Source: [http://o-crepes.com/](http://o-crepes.com/)

~~~
Aqueous
Following the first 'received' transaction all the way back I found this
address that has had 432000 coins sent to it from dozens of addresses on
2011-06-12. A lot of the funds sent from this address were tumbled, so if it
associated with Satoshi then he was using a tumbler pretty early on. It could
also be a MtGox address.

[https://blockexplorer.com/address/1KLahQtqDNAXvrjNyfvgSBtAhw...](https://blockexplorer.com/address/1KLahQtqDNAXvrjNyfvgSBtAhwco5ZxLp4)

~~~
Aqueous
Hmm. It seems possible that this address was a Gox location, since following
the tumbling trail led me to this address:

[https://blockexplorer.com/address/1eHhgW6vquBYhwMPhQ668HPjxT...](https://blockexplorer.com/address/1eHhgW6vquBYhwMPhQ668HPjxTtpvZGPC)

This is the famous "424242" transaction that Mark Kerpeles signed to prove
that he was in control of enough BitCoins to keep Gox solvent in 2011. Perhaps
the first 'received transaction' wasn't actually Satoshi's.

------
Zikes
I think we're at the point now where we need a mod to step in and delete this
entire post.

You guys are literally trying to _doxx_ this man.

~~~
vitd
He's already been doxxed by Newsweek. They even published a picture of his
house with the street address clearly visible.

~~~
Zikes
That's no excuse and you know it.

~~~
gtirloni
You sound like the CIA saying the leaked documents are not public information.

There is no 'doxxing' to be done anymore. Satoshi has been 'doxxed' as much as
anyone can be in real life.

If you are worried about the anonymity of his Bitcoins transactions (and all
other's that could be identified from that), I'm sorry, there is no such thing
as complete anonymity (as the Bitcoin community apparently still has to
learn).

~~~
Zikes
This is not about anonymity. He posted his name in the original Bitcoin white
paper after all.

This is about an individual's right to privacy. His finances and personal life
have just as much right to protection as yours or mine, and just because you
may have the power to disclose that information does not mean you should.

For god's sake, you even cite the leaked documents in your argument. Do you
remember why that's a big deal? Why we're all so upset that the government has
been invading our right to privacy despite our knowing all along that they
have technically had the capability and we only expected they would exercise
proper caution and due process in wielding it?

You're not some internet economics superhero detective, and I don't care what
the impact to the economics of bitcoin would be, that still does not give you
the ethical right to harass Satoshi Nakamoto.

~~~
gtirloni
You missed the point. The magazine has already done as much damage to his
privacy as it`s possible. Destroying this thread accomplishes nothing.

Thus, my next argument that you must be worried about his Bitcoin transactions
(which might not remain anonymous for very long). Which is a valid concern but
impossible given his notoriety now. There are just too many curious people
already digging.

You're implying that, because of my initial argument, I do not care about his
privacy. You're wrong.

Being realistic on the Internet seems to be an thankless task.

------
typisk
Wallet of the store: 1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3JPUekwoBC

source:
[https://twitter.com/Ocrepes/status/83671795693133824](https://twitter.com/Ocrepes/status/83671795693133824)

~~~
diminish
now everyone is tracing a maze of chains to discover the account with
millions...

------
maaku
Can you identify the transaction? We are fairly certain which bitcoins belong
to the real Satoshi Nakamoto.

------
seeingfurther
Your crepes are awfully expensive now. ;-)
[http://o-crepes.com/bitcoin/#](http://o-crepes.com/bitcoin/#)

------
rdlecler37
Do you know which BitCoin it is? This is a collectors piece and you can
probably trace its lineage!

~~~
mnw21cam
Oh yay, a collectors' item. So, some bitcoins may be more valuable than
others!

~~~
samwilliams
This is kind of the idea behind colored coins.

[http://coloredcoins.org/](http://coloredcoins.org/)

------
rmc
No wonder Satoshi wanted to be anonymous. People are already tracing the
transaction and the BitCoin.

Though it might just be a lesson in how "anonymous" bitcoin transactions
actually are.

------
priyakanth024
DO NOT DISCLOSE THE TRANSACTION ID, PLEASE

------
desult
I'm curious because this suggests that Satoshi was maybe at the Bitcoin World
Conference and Expo in New York, which was in August 2011.

------
jpmattia
> _and politely declined citing that bitcoin is an anonymous currency._

I wonder if he still believes that today.

~~~
lucb1e
I wonder about a lot of what he thinks of Bitcoin nowadays and I would love to
hear it from him, but I'm not going to ask for it. He may come forward on his
own, when and if he wants to.

------
SnaKeZ
really fascinating story: now we must ask you the Transaction ID :D

~~~
platz
I love how smiley faces make it easy to spot evil :D

------
Yorn
What cellphone app allowed you to buy and sell Bitcoins in July 2011? I didn't
think QR codes were regularly used till late 2011/early 2012.

~~~
jnbiche
Yeah, there were several floating around at that time, as I recall. For
example, Bitpay started up around that time, and they had a QR-code-enabled
mobile app when they launched.

The first commit of bitcoin-wallet (most popular Android wallet presently) was
March 8, 2011: [https://github.com/schildbach/bitcoin-
wallet](https://github.com/schildbach/bitcoin-wallet)

Here's another from that time: [https://github.com/barmstrong/bitcoin-
android](https://github.com/barmstrong/bitcoin-android)

~~~
Yorn
Thanks. I do remember using that one or one similar in maybe Fall of that
year. I believe the first ones actually downloaded the entire Blockchain which
was maybe a gig or two at the time. The one I had became unwieldy enough that
I eventually just uninstalled it.

------
josephagoss
Remember everyone, if you get the correct transaction ID you will not learn
too much. It's widely known the vast majority of Satoshi's 1,000,000 bitcoin
still sit in their mined blocks. So you might search back to a small set of
addresses probably totalling a few thousand bitcoin but nothing spectacular
like a giant 50,000+ address.

------
gcb0
>Invents a currency that allows all your received and paid values to be
tracked by the entire world.

>Says it's anonymous.

Good luck with that.

~~~
foxhill
> apparently knows nothing about bitcoin and the level of anonymity it
> provides.

> comments on it anyway.

good luck indeed.

------
ufmace
Hey, I tried to go to your place to spend some bitcoins last time I was in
NYC, which was about 6 months ago. It didn't look like your store was in
business anymore, though, and a tweet to a blog post seemed to confirm it. Too
bad, I'd still like to spend some BTC at a brick-and-mortar store.

------
brunnsbe
Oh what a witch-hunt after Satoshi, he wants to be left alone from the public
so please respect it.

------
samfisher83
Eventually the government is going to come after him. If you just happen to be
sitting on 400 million without paying taxes the government is going to be
interested.

~~~
javert
That simply isn't true. As someone else said, taxes are not owed on bitcoin
until you realize your profit by converting them to USD or spending them on
goods.

~~~
danudey
Because really, things don't have value until they're sold. Until then,
there's just assumed value.

He might have $400m worth of bitcoins, but can he actually sell them and get
$400m for them? It would be tricky.

------
out7
Would you be able to give us the Transaction ID for this? :)

------
mathattack
And most of New York wants photos of athletes, musicians and movie stars. :-)

I wonder if his motivation was testing, or to generate some seed business for
it?

------
Sealy
How many bitcoins did he pay at the time? (no need to be exact to the satoshi
if you want to maintain anonymity, i'm just curious)

------
greyman
OP: Your account is interesting, but was it really necessary to confirm the
doxxing?

------
aut0mat0n1c
Hello neighbor. I've eaten your crepes. :D

------
banachtarski
Why does anybody care?

------
Aqueous
Amazing - that you had the foresight to ask for a picture and he had the
foresight to politely decline.

Do you think Satoshi travelled all the way from his home in California to your
creperie in Brooklyn just to try out BitCoin in real life?

------
FT-clox
We need to know the adress he used!

