

The Bitcoin Crypto-Currency Mystery Reopened - Sato
http://www.fastcompany.com/1785445/crypto-currency-mystery

======
icebraining
_(...) it begs credulity that someone who has filed patent applications
dealing with cryptography had never head of Bitcoin until I asked about it._

I don't see why; Bitcoin is hardly innovative in cryptographic research (in
fact, that's part of its appeal, since it makes it more trustworthy), and I
don't see why should a cryptography expert necessarily be interested in new
currencies or financial tools.

~~~
gwern
> Bitcoin is hardly innovative in cryptographic research (in fact, that's part
> of its appeal, since it makes it more trustworthy

Nick Szabo disagrees: [http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-
took-y...](http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-
long.html)

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streptomycin
So this guy finds a phrase that's kind of similar in the Bitcoin paper and in
a patent application, then sees that the patent application is about some
unrelated kind of cryptography, and then decides they must be Satoshi? This is
nonsense.

~~~
mehwoot
It was not "kind of similar", it was exactly the same phrase. A phrase that
only occurred 26 times and most of which were quoting the original source.

As someone who has written research papers, and read quite a few by
colleagues, this struck me as significant because people really do have neat,
unique phrases that they like reusing, especially when explaining concepts in
their field.

But yes, it is still circumstantial at best. And the author acknowledges this,
because they weren't going to publish this except as a response to a more
recent article.

~~~
streptomycin
Except it wasn't the same phrase. It's:

"computationally impractical to reverse"

vs

"computationally impractical to reverse-map"

And even if it was exactly the same, there's still a multiple comparisons
problem.

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hieronymusN
Is it me, or does this all start to read like a Neal Stephenson novel?

~~~
sp332
Or William Gibson's recent "Spook Country" trilogy.

~~~
tqgupta
Or Daniel Suarez's "Daemon"

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joelhaasnoot
So this is what we call investigative journalism these days?

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chris_dcosta
I have long been an advocate for a single internet currency, independent of
all governments. Looks like I'm not alone.

It's a hard sell though because so much of our lives are tied into the
currency of the region that we live. How would you pay your rent online? How
would your landlord settle their mortgage repayments?

We tend to believe that the fabric of our society is tied to the currency, and
"real-world" money, even if in reality it no more exists than virtual money.
In fact in the UK there have been a number of Towns who have printed their own
money, and visitors come and buy that currency in preference to the National
Currency for use in the town's shops bars and restaurants.

~~~
gte910h
That is not working very well in Europe right now with the Euro...

------
bpolania
The main problem with bitcoin is that it seems to be more wishful thinking
than a serious currency ruled by macro economic factors. There's not a clear
correspondence about how the wealth is created and the demand for currency,
not to mention that its deflational nature - i.e. its value is always expected
to grow- leave serious questions about who'd you invest it, since its value is
expected to increase in relation to the investment instrument, so why bother
to invest?

I accept that the general idea is not bad, but it'd need to follow some basic
standards in order to be attractive to regular people, you don't have to put
your son college fund in a currency with no central authority and no
convertibility, you can't expect any currency to always perform well so you
need options, in case BitCoin start to lose it's value and there's no way to
convert that money into Dollars or Euros you'll be stuck with a lots of
worthless bits that won't let you buy not even Lehman Bros. junk bonds.

~~~
ianpurton
"its value is always expected to grow"

It's value is down to about $5 from a high of about $30.

The deflation argument is well argued here
[http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/66/will-
deflation...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/66/will-deflation-
destroy-bitcoin)

"no central authority and no convertibility"

Lack of central authority is seen as a benefit to some.

Also Bitcoin is convertible through numerous exchanges and has an options
market <https://www.bitcoinica.com/>

"in case BitCoin start to lose it's value "

Make your mind up, I though it was deflationary ?

I personally see a good future for Bitcoin, it may turn out to be the first of
many crypto currencies. Anyway I've based my startup on it.
<http://strongcoin.com>

~~~
icebraining
_Make your mind up, I though it was deflationary ?_

You're mixing up the concepts. _Inflation_ makes the currency lose value, not
deflation.

~~~
dfox
That's his point exactly. Critics on one hand claim that bitcoin will always
gain value and on the other say that you will suffer loses/not have anything
of value when it loses value. These two arguments seem to be incompatible with
each other.

~~~
icebraining
It's a linear argument: it won't succeed (in part) because it's _designed_ to
be deflationary, so it will fail, so it'll lose its current value.

(Note: it's not _my_ argument, I'm just trying to explain why they aren't
necessarily incompatible)

~~~
csomar
If it fails it's because it has no value. If criminals need it to transfer
funds (and they have quite a business), then it might make BitCoin valuable.
It doesn't matter if there is a limited amount of BitCoins if the end point is
to exchange them.

~~~
icebraining
(Market) value is set by how much people are willing to pay for it, so they do
have value.

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tomotomo
I think there are still plenty of easy avenues to search for the man's (or
team's) identity. It would only be appropriate to crowdfund a pool of bitcoins
for a bounty on discovering Satoshi Nakamoto's identity.

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soapdog
anyone here has some address to a page where we can keep track of bitcoin
related news?

~~~
Estragon
<http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin>

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dreww
"For one, it begs credulity that someone who has filed patent applications
dealing with cryptography had never heard of Bitcoin until I asked about it.
That would be like a journalist claiming he never heard of Twitter."

this is a baseless assertion and essentially the crux of his argument. maybe
real cryptographers don't spend any time thinking about bitcoin because it has
the same relationship as twitter and real journalism.

