
I Am Not Satoshi - citricsquid
http://blog.dustintrammell.com/2013/11/26/i-am-not-satoshi/
======
gjm11
General consensus seems to be that Ron&Shamir's publications on this topic are
extraordinarily weak given how stellar a record Shamir, in particular, has.

The conclusion seems obvious: It's a misdirection. Adi Shamir is Satoshi
Nakamoto.

(Note: No, I do not in fact believe this.)

~~~
theboywho
I think it's important to note that this paper was a research paid by the Citi
foundation, which belongs to Citi Group, a financial services corporation
formed following the merger of banking giant Citicorp and financial
conglomerate Travelers Group.

~~~
mseebach
Why exactly is that important? Because it suggests that Citi is involved in
hiding the identity of Satoshi and that implies their involvement in setting
up Bitcoin?

Or am I missing an angle here?

~~~
rs232
I think the claim made is that the powers that be are actively working against
Bitcoin, here by tarnishing its reputation with sensationalist research.

------
carsongross
Too obvious.

Backwards that's "I hso tasto nmai" which is phonetic late R'lyehian for "Up
yours Bernanke".

C'mon Dustin.

~~~
dalek_cannes
"I Am Not Satoshi" is also an anagram of "I, Homo Satanist".

------
vbuterin
This is not even the first paper by Dorit Ron and Shamir on Bitcoin; they did
an analysis of the transaction graph earlier:
[http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf‎](http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf‎)

And that one too was quite poorly done; from the text, it actually seemed like
they thought that "the blockchain" is a file stored on blockchain.info.
Disappointing from the inventor of Shamir's Secret Sharing and differential
cryptanalysis.

~~~
oakwhiz

      We acquired the complete state of the Bitcoin transaction system [...]
      This required downloading 180,001 separate but linked HTML files [...]
      following the links backwards to the zeroth block [...]
      Each file was parsed in order to extract all the multisender/multireceiver transactions in it, and then the collection of transactions was encoded as a standard database on our local machine.
    

This is definitely a very strange way of retrieving the blockchain for
research purposes. Couldn't they have simply issued RPC calls to the regular
bitcoind client after downloading the blockchain via the built-in peer-to-peer
mechanism?

~~~
carbocation
Yes. In fact, I'm sure (formally, "I suspect") that what you are describing is
exactly how blockchain.info gets its data in the first place.

------
computer
One of the consequences of a public transaction chain is the great potential
for witch hunts. Here's one of the first examples, but it surely won't be the
last.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
That's a positive thing, because it only grows trust between members of
community.

~~~
computer
I don't think so; witch hunts didn't exactly grow trust between people in the
middle ages. Witch hunts grow mob feelings between people against whoever
happens to get crushed by their collective paranoia that day.

~~~
giergirey
Pedant's note: Contrary to popular belief, witch hunts were rare in the Middle
Ages. They took off in popularity during the Renaissance.

~~~
scaphandre
Annoying meta-pedant note: You presumably mean that witch hunts mainly
occurred in puritanical areas, at a time in which the Renaissance was
occurring elsewhere in the world.

------
Aqueous
I think we should look closer at the cryptography mailing list for evidence of
Satoshi's identity. It seems likely that at some point Satoshi posted under
his real name about something unrelated to BitCoin, before he decided to
switch identities to release BitCoin under a pseudonym. I really doubt that
Satoshi would have lurked silently there for many years before suddenly
dropping the BitCoin whitepaper on the list without once contributing under
his own name, perhaps before he was even thinking about BitCoin.

I think someone should do a quantified textual analysis of posts to to derive
some sort of written language fingerprint for each author on the Cryptography
Mailing List. Has anyone been able to derive a unique fingerprint of written
language that accurately predicts the identity of the author? Has an analysis
like this been done and come up empty?

~~~
jamesrom
> a _unique_ fingerprint of written language that _accurately_ predicts the
> identity of the author

These kinds of analysis are usually more "fuzzy" than "unique" and "accurate".
And can be easily fooled if you are trying to remain anonymous. Especially in
the case that Satoshi isn't a single person.

~~~
darkmighty
Agreed, but strong evidence could plausibly be found. Also the style of
writing/spelling errors can sometimes reveal nationality if you're familiar
enough with different languages. I don't think someone would go through that
much work, though.

------
wrongc0ntinent
The paper referenced: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/187227818/Bitcoin-Silk-Road-
Pirate...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/187227818/Bitcoin-Silk-Road-Pirate-
Nakamoto)

------
DigitalSea
I doubt the real identity of Satoshi will ever be revealed. Seriously, if the
claims of Satoshi mining the first 20,000 Bitcoins is true (with a value of
almost one billion), would he seriously want to be publicly known?

I would imagine the FBI amongst other Government organisations and figures
would love nothing more than to pick Satoshi's brain (by force if need be) if
his or her identity were to ever be truly revealed. We won't ever know who the
real Satoshi is.

I can make baseless and factless accusations as to who I think Satoshi is as
well. I think it's Al Gore, he invented the Internet after all.

~~~
saraid216
I think Satoshi is the NSA. This is 99% because it would be the most
entertaining result, and 1% actual reasoning (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6206086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6206086)
).

~~~
sliverstorm
Can we rule out the FBI?

~~~
saraid216
I think so. Bitcoin is too global to be interesting to a domestic agency. It's
more likely to be CIA.

If it's part of a policing effort, then it's obviously part of the UN, which
according to Tim LeHaye, rules over the United States with an iron fist and is
where the shadow government of totally-not-Jews would do exactly this kind of
thing.

The only name I have for that is New World Order.

~~~
sliverstorm
I would believe NSA before CIA. The FBI gets involved in the internet space,
but it doesn't seem like the CIA does all that much.

~~~
saraid216
You're not supposed to think the CIA does much. They're the _actual_ spy
agency; the whole "just a star on the wall at Langley" thing is CIA; you don't
hear about their victories, and if you do, it's a failure of some kind.
Stuxnet, for instance, was almost certainly CIA.

If Bitcoin is a targeted strike against China somehow (not completely
impossible), then the CIA is the likeliest candidate. Otherwise, of the USGov
national agencies, the NSA is most likely.

The FBI doesn't really get anything out of it. The only reason I can think of
for the FBI to do it is for paying off informants anonymously. (And as I've
pointed out before, if anyone's an expert on money laundering, it's the FBI.)

------
stfu
If his statement is true the "research" by Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir seems more
than just accidentally flawed, not to say even highly misleading.

~~~
shubb
Well, he said that the research was funded by Citi bank's 'philanthropic'
foundation. Is he mentioning that to insinuate that a bank is trying to
produce de-anonymizing scare research about Bitcoin, which need not be true so
long as it shakes consumer confidence?

I suspect it's just very easy to get funding for Bitcoin related research
right now because it's a hot topic, but that would be a much more fun
explanation...

~~~
stfu
In theory I would like to assume that especially seasoned academics are more
concerned about their reputation than a few thousand Citi bank dollars.

------
trevorcreech
Here's a scathing breakdown of the paper in question from /r/bitcoin:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1reuwq/vigorous_deb...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1reuwq/vigorous_debate_over_shamirrons_supposedly/)

------
cm2012
I wonder if this person is enormously rich now from BTC, considering how early
he got in. Not that it's any of our business...

~~~
highace
Rich in bitcoins - yes. Rich in USD? Not yet.

~~~
maaku
He had a balance of ~1200 btc on mtgox in March of 2013, during a time when
bitcoin was hovering around $50. Had he sold it all then it would have been a
cool $60k. Had he kept it until now, it would be approximately $1MM (it's
never been below $50 since that time).

Whether that counts as "rich" is a matter of perspective, I guess.

~~~
betterunix
It only counts as "rich" if he can use the money. I suspect that in practice,
such large amounts of Bitcoin money have limited usefulness. It would be hard
to get the actual million dollars his wallet is supposedly worth. There are
still exceedingly few businesses that accept Bitcoin payments. At best, he
could get augment whatever other income he has by selling small amounts of his
Bitcoin money at a time.

~~~
michaelt
According to [1] and [2] I can sell 100 bitcoins for $88,631 or $96,805 at
Bitstamp and Mtgox respectively - or 10,000 bitcoins for $7,155,446 and
$8,797,257

As I understand it those are offers to buy that are on the market right now,
so you could execute the trades instantly.

[1]
[http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/bitstampUSD_depth.html](http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/bitstampUSD_depth.html)
[2]
[http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html](http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html)

~~~
nilved
Yes, but in doing so you increase supply and therefore decrease the price.
When you have a large amount of bitcoins, selling them all means flooding the
market and ultimately selling them at a very low price. The best you can do is
sell a portion every day.

~~~
judk
We are only talking about 1000 in this case. There is enough book depth to
sell 1000.

------
buremba
I don't really understand why Satoshi wants to be hidden. Is it because of the
legal issues or does he want be a hidden super character?

~~~
eof
If you've been paying attention for the last three years, almost everyone
thought the US government would crack down on bitcoin with a vengence, satoshi
very well may have been genuinely fearful of the ramifications of his
software.

It is also possible that satoshi is a group of people and not a person.

Lastly, the idiosyncratic nature of someone who spends their time on crypto
mailing lists and making crypto currency is likely to take privacy seriously
for its own sake.

A better question might be, why would satoshi _want_ to be found out?

~~~
Aqueous
If he is not motivated by anything like ego or credit then - as Charleton
Heston would have said in a lame 50s Bible movie - 'He really is the son of
God.'

------
icambron
For what it's worth, I'm not Satoshi Nakamoto either.

~~~
flurdy
I am Satoshi. And also Spartacus

~~~
vog
I _knew_ it! Thanks for making this clear.

~~~
vog
Not sure why this was downvoted. Was my humor so hard to spot?

~~~
new_test
Many people here don't like to see HN turning into reddit

------
smsm42
Why he calls Satoshi Nakamoto "infamous"? Did he mean "famous" or actually
thinks Satoshi Nakamoto is evil?

~~~
simplemath
in common use, "infamous" has become mostly interchangeable with "famous" or
"notorious" and the negative connotations are somewhat dulled.

------
pyrocat
Hah, I thought it was a reference to this PBF comic at first.
[http://pbfcomics.com/45/](http://pbfcomics.com/45/)

------
vijayboyapati
I wonder, is research like journalism where an academic is morally obliged to
issue a retraction or correction for conclusions shown, conclusively, to be
false?

~~~
eliteraspberrie
If it were published in an academic journal, the journal would publish these
remarks by Dustin Trammell in the next issue. But this "paper" was published
online without peer review, so it's up to Ron and Shamir to do the right
thing.

~~~
ars_technician
Most of the research Shamir does at this point is basically crap like this,
which is why it's on a website instead of in a conference or journal.

~~~
judk
Exposing a weakness in the post-journal open access publishing model. Non peer
reviewed work getting more attention thannpeer reviewed work. At least on
boards like HN, which I guess never respected the academic community as much
as bloggers anyway.

~~~
a_bonobo
Post journal open access publishing _includes_ peer-review; see PLOS ONE,
PeerJ etc.

Similar problems as OP's have been noticed with non "post-journal open access
publishing model". That's generally called "science by press conference" now -
the most famous case was the arsenic life paper, which was published in
Science, a "traditional" journal, and then later retracted after their press
conference before the publication generated a huge buzz (and two later papers
contradicted their findings).

This isn't a problem that's caused by open access or new publishing models.

------
Procrastes
Aim to astonish.

~~~
mhartl
Outed with heresy idea

~~~
mhartl
The downvoter of the parent comment probably didn't notice that it's an
anagram for "I see what you did there".

------
wrongc0ntinent
This is the amazing "Sunday" research paper. It's OK if you stop at the giant
red typo, but you may eventually get the point: "The short path we found
(which is depicted in Figure 6) suggests (but does not prove) the existence of
a surprising link between the two mysterious ﬁgures of the Bitcoin community,
Satoshi Nakamoto and DPR. It is reasonable to assume that all the accounts
described along the top of Figure 6 belong to the same person, but to be on
the safe side we refer to him as a “Founder” rather than as Satoshi Nakamoto.
We are sure that analyzing this ﬁgure will start a very vigorous debate in the
Bitcoin community."

In other words, "we're covering our asses so we don't have to retract, but
we're expert and relevant to this bitcoin thing."

------
didgeoridoo
That's exactly what Satoshi would say...

~~~
Afforess
No, Satoshi would not say anything...

~~~
TrainedMonkey
That would be suspicious, especially in light of such weak paper. Possibly
paper is bait for Satoshi?

~~~
6d0debc071
I'm not sure it's significantly more likely that he'd deny it if it wasn't him
than if it was, so I don't know how it could be bait.

------
nsxwolf
I would just like to make it known that I am also not Satoshi.

~~~
Aqueous
That's exactly what Satoshi would say.

------
dllthomas
_" only Mt. Gox knows who controlled those specific coins after I began
trading them."_

And anyone who knows one of the subsequent addresses those coins touched in
the blockchain. Of course, it also doesn't really _matter_ who they went to.

------
MrZongle2
"I am not Spartacus!"

~~~
caycep
argh you beat me to it

------
gesman
Ron and Shamir were very eager to see what they wanted to see. Some people got
stuck in looking for "ghost under the bed" well beyond their childhood years.

------
jackgavigan
Y'know, with all the snooping they've been doing, I wouldn't be surprised if
the NSA/GCHQ knew Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity.

------
caycep
Isn't this supposed to be "I _am_ Spartacus" or something like that?

------
yeukhon
If I really want to find out who satoshi is I would have lie to all and wait
until the actual Satoshi to come out and call me a liar. Anyway, life goes on
- I do want to find out who Satoshi is really...

------
Tycho
Here's another thing to consider: the NSA and other intelligence agencies have
most likely already figured out who is behind Bitcoin, even if the general
public have not.

What does that mean?

------
atmosx
The next obvious question would be: are you batman? That said, I believe him.
I have a great deal of respect to Shamir but I think he got it a little bit
wrong.

------
pearjuice
Disinformation is key to success. By actively participating in denying his
identity people will become even more skeptical leading to more confusion.

------
NanoWar
OT: Reminded me of this: [http://pbfcomics.com/45/](http://pbfcomics.com/45/)

------
moocowduckquack
So, a global quest for the hidden wise one who lives in the middle. This whole
affair has a solidly mythic feel about it.

------
hernan604
Satoshi is a perl programmer

~~~
jafaku
A perl programmer who uses Windows?

------
rusabd
124.217.253.42 IP: 124.217.253.42 server location: Malaysia ISP: Piradius Net

------
sigzero
Will the real Satoshi please stand up?

------
WhoIsSatoshi
Tips welcome @WhoIsSatoshi

