
Nick Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto, the Inventor of Bitcoin - fchollet
http://blog.sethroberts.net/
======
markbao
Just for some background, previous discussion on the referenced article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6828169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6828169)

Gwern's response on Reddit refuting it:
[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)

------
fchollet
The blogger who suggested this hypothesis a few months ago has a new post,
with a stylometric analysis of the writings of some cryptocurrency people:

[http://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/occams-
razor-w...](http://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/occams-razor-who-is-
most-likely-to-be-satoshi-nakamoto/)

(a smaller score mean a closer match. Not sure what scores stand for
precisely).

 _Word length distribution_

    
    
        Diff Nick Szabo / Bitcoin: 0.160
        Diff Wei Dai / Bitcoin: 0.241
        Diff David Chaum / Bitcoin: 0.257
        Diff Adam Back / Bitcoin: 0.337
        Diff Hal Finney / Bitcoin: 0.510
    

_Character frequency distribution_

    
    
        Diff Nick Szabo / Bitcoin: 0.191
        Diff Wei Dai / Bitcoin: 0.208
        Diff David Chaum / Bitcoin: 0.228
        Diff Hal Finney / Bitcoin: 0.284
        Diff Adam Back / Bitcoin: 0.342

~~~
greendestiny
Statistical analyses rely on assumptions of sample independence and random
selection that are pretty hard to justify with something like this. Are all
the articles on the same topic? Are they written for the same audience? Are
the works independent or is there copying and/or inspiration being shared?

------
carsongross
Regardless if he is or if he isn't, his essays are unbelievably good:

[http://szabo.best.vwh.net/](http://szabo.best.vwh.net/)

~~~
markbao
Folks seem to really like [0] his writing. Anything you recommend starting
with?

[0]: See sidebar on his blog:
[http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/](http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/)

~~~
carsongross
I loved this one:

[http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2006/02/irreducible-
complex...](http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2006/02/irreducible-complexity-
of-society.html)

But any random post of his is likely to be intensely interesting, even if you
don't agree with some of his conclusions.

------
gkoberger
Yeah, we've thought for a long time he's probably involved. Along with other
people (he almost definitely didn't write the code); Satoshi likely isn't just
one person.

That being said, what's the point of articles like this? We will never know
unless Satoshi chooses to reveal himself/themselves and proves it with a pgp
key. Which won't happen. Otherwise, it's just idle speculation.

~~~
jonny_eh
The point is that Newsweek is very likely wrong.

------
Aqwis
Link to full post: [http://blog.sethroberts.net/2014/03/11/nick-szabo-is-
satoshi...](http://blog.sethroberts.net/2014/03/11/nick-szabo-is-satoshi-
nakamoto-the-inventor-of-bitcoin/)

------
patmcc
>>>"One was her observation that he put two spaces after a period"

Wait, was that actually one the reasons Dorian was labelled as Satoshi?
Because that's true of a huge number of people. Many people who learned on a
typewriter (like my parents), or who were taught touch-typing formally by
those who were (like my wife) still do this. It's hardly rare enough to be any
kind of discriminator.

~~~
dllthomas
_" It's hardly rare enough to be any kind of discriminator."_

Something that's true of 50% of the population under consideration, and which
is uncorrelated with other measures, is still a bit of information.

------
kzrdude
I like that the linked blog has high quality ads: Real book recommendations,
and links to individual books. Instead of brand-spam, a potentially useful
product. Only way it could be better would be to recommend books directly
relevant to the blog post topic.

------
sktrdie
I'm extremely curious in understanding why he wanted to be anonymous when
publishing his idea of Bitcoin. Nobody could possibly have anticipated that
Bitcoin would become _the_ most used crypto-currency today. Many experts from
the cryptography mailing list were quick at discarding his idea from the
beginning, so I can't imagine Satoshi wanting to remain anonymous in case
Bitcoin would become a billion dollar business and people would start going
after him for his money. This is why I believe Satoshi is probably just some
brilliant person who's name is actually Satoshi Nakamoto (not Dorian).

~~~
sentenza
Maybe it is the other way round. He didn't want to damage his professional
reputation which could have happened if important and vocal members of the
crypto community had declared that they thought the project ridiculous.

Just like Carlo Pedersoli renamed himself Bud Spencer so as not to damage his
good reputation as an olympian athlete with his movies.

------
lotsofmangos
_Szabo’s achievement is good news for me because we have a similarity. He was
a law professor. They are not supposed to invent new and useful things._

Not saying he's wrong, but this reeks of confirmation bias.

------
TrainedMonkey
"The clincher, for me, is that he wrote an article about the emergence of
money that is compatible with my theory of human evolution."

Apparently author really wants Nick Szabo to be creator of bitcoin because
they have similar views.

Previous four reasons given are way better compared to reasoning used in
Newsweek article, however it is still nowhere near enough to assert that Nick
Szabo is Satoshi.

------
awt
Why has no one spoken with Nick Szabo?

~~~
Aqueous
They have. He's denied it.

~~~
codezero
Can you give a link to where he's denied it? I haven't seen anything.

~~~
Aqueous
[http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/1](http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/1)

Wired, weirdly, didn't quote his denial. They just said he denied it. On his
blog, he also suggested that Finney or Dai might be Satoshi.

I'm inclined to believe it's him. He's been writing about this topic
passionately for years. Weirdly, though, he was still writing about "Bit Gold"
and Hal Finney's attempt at an implementation in December 2008, after Satoshi
posted the BitCoin whitepaper which is very, very strikingly exactly an
implementation of his concept (with some major improvements, obviously), which
he made no mention of.

He also seems so prolific on his blog - writing post after post of greatly
historically informed academic research - that I just don't know how he would
find the time to implement BitGold.

I also have not seen any of his other programming projects, and so I don't
know whether or not he's a good enough C++ engineer to implement it
successfully.

But of all the people so far he seems to be the best candidate.

~~~
awt
Thanks.

~~~
Aqueous
He discusses fake name use in this post to Cypherpunks List in 1993. He also
mentions "Digicash" in the same thread.

[http://borg.uu3.net/ldetweil/medusa/originals/unpleasant](http://borg.uu3.net/ldetweil/medusa/originals/unpleasant)

"In my limited experience creating Internet pseudonyms, I've been quite
distracted by the continual need to avoid leaving pointers to my True Name
lying around -- excess mail to/from my True Name, shared files, common
peculiarities (eg misspellings in written text), traceable logins, etc. The
penet.fi site explicitly maintains a list of pointers to the original address.
All kinds of security controls -- crypto, access, information, inference --
have to be continually on my mind when using pseudonymous accounts. The
hazards are everywhere. With our current tools it's practically impossible to
maintain an active pseudonym for a long period of time against a sufficiently
determined opponent, and quite a hassle to maintain even a modicum of decent
security. Pointers to info and/or tools to enable the establishment and
maintenance of a net.nym, beyond the standard cypherpunks PGP/remailer fare
with which I'm now familiar, greatly appreciated. Especially nice would be a
list of commercial net providers that allow pseudonymous accounts.""

------
caycep
There's probably some bayesian probability analysis that shows how likely each
candidate is

~~~
nly
A Bayesian approach would likely show how flawed linguistic analysis is. a
false positive rate of say 0.1%, for example, over the 7 or so billion people
who aren't satoshi would be huge

------
kolev
I think, more likely, it's Jed McCaleb. Also, I think a person who so
carefully is trying to conserve his identity and was capable enough to come up
with Bitcoin, will possibly hide his linguistic tracks as well.

~~~
prawn
I'm not so sure about hiding those tracks. Surely creating something big is
challenge enough that you'd put all of your efforts towards mobilising your
early adopters rather than hiding tracks just in case you became successful.

------
AdrianRossouw
man, i don't know if i will ever be comfortable making any kind of judgement
based primarily on stylometric analysis like that.

I could consider it supporting evidence in a mountain of otherwise
overwhelming evidence, but I never anything to base a decision off of.

Are we going to end up having some kind of anonymizer that uses snippets taken
from spam mails to compose emails, like a digital surveillance age mash up of
spam lit and using words cut out from magazines for a ransom note?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_Lit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_Lit)

------
jonny_eh
Both the title and URL of this HN post need to change.

------
waterfowl
What? The guy outs satoshi(supposedly) and then puts a plug in for his
"Shangri-La Diet" as a great advance in health?

------
quchen
> I’m sure it’s <name>

tl;dr: bullshit article

------
auctiontheory
"Those who know don't tell. Those who tell don't know." -Onngh Yanngh

------
Robby2012
No, I am Satoshi

------
kbar13
I am Satoshi

~~~
AdrianRossouw
i am spartacus

