
Bit gold (2005) - Tycho
http://unenumerated.blogspot.co.uk/2005/12/bit-gold.html
======
frisco
I personally like the theory that Satoshi is Nick Szabo and Hal Finney, with
maybe one other. Nick Szabo was way ahead of the curve on the design of a
proof-of-work based cryptocurrency. When Dan Kaminsky looked at the Bitcoin
source early on, he reported that "entire classes of bugs are missing" [1] and
that it was almost "preternaturally sound" [2] and Hal Finney is one of the
the few people realistically capable of producing that kind of code. Hal
Finney was the recipient of the first Bitcoin transaction, and was active on
the mailing list that Bitcoin was announced through. Further, a few months
before the Bitcoin paper announcement, Nick Szabo put out a request for
collaborators to try and prototype out the proof-of-work currency system he'd
been thinking about [3], and he and Hal Finney were known to get in touch
around that time.

I hope the identity of Satoshi is never confirmed. If it's them, good for
them! If not, it doesn't matter!

[1]
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34458.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34458.0)

[2] [http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/lets-cut-through-the-
bi...](http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/lets-cut-through-the-bitcoin-
hype/)

[3] [http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-
markets.ht...](http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-
markets.html#3741843833998921269)

~~~
nawitus
I'm betting on Satoshi being Wei Dai.

My clues:

a) He lives in London. Satoshi's mining has been timezoned to indicate that he
probably lived in the UK. The genesis block had a quote from The Times
("chancellor on brink of second bailout").

b) Wei is an expert C++ programmer, and the bitcoin client was written in C++

c) Wei created cryptopp, a C++ cryptographic library, so he definitely knew
how to implement cryptographic features in C++. The bitcoin client heavily
used the cryptopp library. The code seems similar too.

d) Wei Dai published 'b-money' system in 1998

e) 'British formatting in his written work implies Nakamoto is of British
origin. However, he also sometimes used American spelling, which may indicate
that he was intentionally trying (but failed) to mask his writing style, or
that he is more than one person. ' \- Bitcoin wiki

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
>Satoshi's mining has been timezoned to indicate that he probably lived in the
UK.

It's possible that 'Satoshi' deliberately scheduled things to give the
appearance of living somewhere else.

~~~
gojomo
And lots of computer people working on systems designed to span timezones
prefer to just use GMT everywhere from the beginning. (My short foray into GPU
mining used rigs on GMT, and all VMs or cloud systems for my web projects
always exclusively use GMT.)

------
bushido
This is one of the greater reasons why so many are convinced that Nick Szabo
is in fact Satoshi Nakamoto.

I'm personally undecided/don't have an opinion yet, one things for sure Nick
Szabo must be bummed if he is not Satoshi Nakamoto.

------
bachback
See this discussion about bitcoin, including the comment section:

[http://unenumerated.blogspot.de/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-
ye...](http://unenumerated.blogspot.de/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-
long.html)

------
jv22222
FAQ on bitcoin FUD - [http://justinvincent.com/page/2172/bitcoin-fear-
uncertainty-...](http://justinvincent.com/page/2172/bitcoin-fear-uncertainty-
doubt) \- Hope it's helpful :)

~~~
the_hangman
> Bitcoin deals with this issue by having 8 decimal places. The higher the
> Bitcoin value rises, the smaller the decimal transaction size will become.
> Each decimal place has a name, with the smallest unit being 1 Satoshi. If 1
> Bitcoin was worth as much as one million dollars 1 Satoshi would still only
> be worth 1 USD cent. In other words, there is no need to print new currency,
> we can simply use smaller units of Bitcoin.

This explanation glosses over what I've always thought was the main problem
with deflationary currency. Why would I want to use Bitcoins (or any other
deflationary asset, for that matter) as a currency instead of an investment?
It just doesn't make sense to the customer.

You wouldn't sell land that you own just to purchase basic necessities unless
you had no other choice. In the same way, I'm not sure it will ever be a
rational decision to buy something with Bitcoins unless you had no other
choice of currency to use. I'm not an economist so I could be misunderstanding
the nature of deflationary assets, but doesn't that imply that Bitcoins should
be used only as an investment vehicle or to purchase things which other
currencies can't (or shouldn't) be used?

~~~
gigq
By the same logic why wouldn't you use all the extra cash you have to buy
bitcoins? If you frame it that way then the answer is obvious, there is no
guarantee the value will continue to rise so you will use it to purchase when
you think it's over priced (I bought a TV and new camera when the price was
over 1k).

The volatility actually ends up being a good thing in this regard because
sometimes you are better off purchasing other goods with bitcoin, sometimes
you are better off holding.

If the value eventually balances out and is truly deflationary against
inflation then I don't think people are going to lose sleep over selling
bitcoins that are going up 3% each year the same way they don't worry about
taking money out of a savings account to buy something they don't really need.

~~~
tptacek
That's easy to answer. You wouldn't convert your dollars to bitcoins because
bitcoin will only appreciate in value if it becomes an important instrument of
commerce; it has no other value even in theory. If you believe the
deflationary attribute of bitcoin will cause it to be hoarded instead of used
as a tool of commerce, you also believe that hoarding bitcoin is irrational,
because the system is eventually going to collapse.

It doesn't take any insight about bitcoin to arrive at that conclusion
("deflationary currencies are unusable, therefore don't bother hoarding
bitcoin"); it's just logic.

~~~
3pt14159
For certain transactions you MUST use Bitcoin. Bad currency generally drives
out good, but if the good is the only way you can anonymously buy dildos in
Saudi Arabia, then it is the only currency. Furthermore, bad currency drives
out good generally when they hold the same _face_ value. Otherwise there is a
free float of exchange.

Also, for people living in "weird" countries, like Angola, there is often no
way for them to buy things online since payment processors flag them as
suspicious transactions.

~~~
tptacek
To "Alpha Black Lotus Depository Certificates" I hereby add "Saudi Arabian
Dildo Vouchers" as a synonym for cryptocurrency.

------
adrianwaj
Startup.com (2001)

Bit gold (blog post, 2005)

The Social Network (2010)

The Cryptocurrency (2014) ... it staggers the mind at what the plotlines could
be and the characters incolved. Some rags to riches to rags story meets its
opposite. Maybe a 2015 release would yield more possiblities... the greater
awakening of cryptocurrency is about putting money into perspective, and
finding some equality in it all: it's not about replacing one paper elite with
another (who could end up the same people anyway.) I think this was SM's
intention to begin with: new technical structures, creating new economic
structures, creating new social stuctures... the characters that realize this
earn or retain their money (or fame) in the film.

------
jzwinck
I like this quote from Nick in 1999
([http://szabo.best.vwh.net/intrapoly.html](http://szabo.best.vwh.net/intrapoly.html)
\- linked from TFA as "obscure"):

> spammers may be able to defeat compute-cost postage by using custom chips
> optimized for computing the particular puzzle function.

This presaged the ASIC miners that so quickly came to dominate Bitcoin. It's
almost wonder that new types of coins are being mined without (semi) custom
chips at all; perhaps only because FPGA development tools have improved much
slower than software in general.

------
applecore
Nick Szabo ≡ Satoshi Nakamoto?

~~~
alexmat
I like how the initials are inverted. Cute.

~~~
dnautics
well in japanese that would be Nakamoto Satoshi

~~~
almosnow
this

------
MacsHeadroom
The Internet Archive says this was first posted in May 2013, not 2005 or 2008.

[https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://unenumerated.blogspot.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://unenumerated.blogspot.co.uk/2005/12/bit-
gold.html)

What's the deal?

~~~
Sprint
That's not what IA does. It says this is the first copy of that URL they have
archived.

Blogspot does some beyond idiotic redirection to locale TLDs which fucks up
all kinds of stuff. See
[https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://unenumerated.blogspot.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-
gold.html)

------
blasphemous
This is fairly convincing for me:

[https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/satoshi-
nakam...](https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/satoshi-nakamoto-is-
probably-nick-szabo/#%21)

~~~
gwern
No. It's completely smoke and mirrors and the method he _claims_ to have done
cannot deliver reliable answers. He refuses to approve any comments at all
which are critical of him or his blog post, and has not corrected factual
mistakes in it. For my detailed rebuttal, see
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ruluz/satoshi_naka...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ruluz/satoshi_nakamoto_is_probably_nick_szabo/cdr2vgu)

------
bachback
Has someone the refutation of Szabo that he is not Szabo? haven't been able to
find the comments of Szabo and Dai.

------
muyuu
What's up with the witch hunt?

If someone wants to remain private, why don't we just leave him alone?

~~~
diab0lic
Is it really a witch hunt? People are just fascinated with the enigma that is
Satoshi. He's (they've?) done something amazing in many people's eyes but has
avoided taking credit for it -- in an arena where people are often seeking
credit and fame (financial, if you'd call it that).

It reminds me a lot of Isildur1 in the online poker scene a few years ago.
This guy played an insane style at the highest stakes, went millionaire to
busto more times than I can count on my hand, and completely hid his identity
-- all in an industry where people nearly always seek fame. People suspected
he was Victor Blom (along with a few others) but I'm not sure if they were
more fascinated because of what he did or that he did it while hiding behind
an online identity.

This situation bears many similarities, so its no surprise people are very
interested for no other reason than that he's made an effort to be an enigma.

~~~
0x0
Never heard about the poker guy before, but I looked it up and it seems it was
confirmed first-hand: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Blom#cite_note-
starsblog...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Blom#cite_note-starsblog-1)

------
chuinard
Nick was guessed to be Satoshi weeks ago. Has he not made a statement on this?

------
rokhayakebe
Ask HN: What backs the value of a Bitcoin? Isn't Bitcoin the only currency
which is in fact backed by Nothing valuable?

Paper money imo is backed by regional Economy or iow labor + what labor can
buy/buys/saves.

~~~
Tycho
I think what 'backs' a currency is secondary. The primary factor is 'how
readily will people accept as payment.' Backing a currency with a physical
asset or with government authority have been the traditoinal means of
achieving this - but maybe there are other ways.

People often point out that citizens can pay their taxes in dollars, so they
are happy to accept them as payments. You cannot of course pay taxes in
Bitcoin but interestingly there's been a virus going about recently that
basically takes user data hostage and demands a ransom payment in Bitcoin. So
there you have a sizeable base of economic actors who need to acquire Bitcoin
to settle their ransoms.

~~~
rokhayakebe
My problem is not just what backs Bitcoin, but what backs its value. Nothing.

Money is backed by goods and services already created + other real things like
consumption, etc... Then we had a need to create money to easily exchange
between these things.

Bitcoin on the other hand already comes with a random value of $650.00 usd
with no good, no services previously created, no VALUE. It's just one giant
gamble, in my view.

Again, I am sure I am wrong, but I have yet to read anything that convinces
me.

EDIT: Actually it is not one giant gamble. That was the wrong analogy. Bitcoin
is more like a card trading game where the players get cards for making them
or solving a problem related to the game. So yes, you can later take those
cards and sell them, but it really becomes the last fool game.

~~~
shitgoose
I know what 'backed by gold is', but what the hell is 'backed by goods'? USD
is backed by taxes (try to pay taxes not in USD) - yes, I can see that, but
backed by goods?

Money is a token, a debt unit that passed on down the chain in exchange for
product. Many things can and did serve as such token: gold, bank note, cowry
shells. Their only 'value' is that they all are scarce resources (well, in
case of bank notes less and less so) and socially accepted as a measure of
debt. So can be bitcoin. In many ways bitcoin is much better money then
others.

~~~
rokhayakebe
'Backed by goods.'

I make a tea pot. You own a goose. That is our economy. The money in economy
should never go beyond the value of that goose + the tea pot. Now add the
hours you work, the hours I work etc. The economy grows, but not beyond what
has been produced. Now let's say you want to buy a home but the money is not
there, then the government knowing that the value will exist, they push FUTURE
money out in the system and indirectly lend it to the guy who is going to
build the house. The economy grows, but this is more like forecasted revenue.
You see E.V.E.R.Y. single dollar in this economy can be traced back to some
good or service.

~~~
shitgoose
If 'backed by goods' == 'can be tracked to something that this money unit has
been exchanged for' \- OK, I understand that. Now, why is this definition not
applicable to bitcoin? BTC also can be exchanged for goods and can be traced
back to some good or service (with great precision thanks to the public block
chain).

By the way, normally it is not government, but banks (private corporations)
who 'push FUTURE money' into the system in a form of credit. Same can happen
in BTC economy.

I still fail to see how BTC is fundamentally different from any other
currency.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Shitgoose,

You create something. I create something. We create money to exchange these
things.

You don't create money. Give it a value. Trade it. Raise its value. Then after
3 years, ask people to BUY that and use it to trade other things.

Bitcoin is nothing like money. Bitcoin is a card trading game and the card
have a value now. Saying a bitcoin is like money or currency is like saying a
car is like money/currency.

------
heydenberk
Should be captioned (2008)

~~~
oscilloscope
It was first published in 2005 according to the URL and comment permalinks.

~~~
infruset
References all the way to 1998 can be found over the internet these days..

~~~
Gravityloss
But can they be trusted? How much do google and archive.org control?

