
“Death of Satoshi Nakamoto” [pdf] - pope_nope
https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630-3.pdf
======
johnwheeler
Section 1 is so strange I'm at a loss for words.

"...in the style of the massive wall of water resembling a menacing
prolongation of Mount Fuji as depicted in The Great Wave off Kanagawa"

the fuck?

Section 2 defends BTC from being a Ponzi scheme. The public doesn't worry it's
a Ponzi scheme so much as an instance of Tulip Mania.

Section 3 says that since Bitcoin is prone to getting ripped off, it needs to
be insured. The SEC would of course argue that since it's prone to getting
ripped off, it SHOULDN'T be insured.

Section 4 is just horse shit no one at the SEC is going to understand, let
alone read. FUD.

Section 5 is a basic conclusion.

~~~
harryjo
Sounds a lot like gold, then, $43/gram for elemental nothing. OK, it's
something, but not nearly justifing its price relative to other metals, except
the shared delusion that underlies all currency.

~~~
johnwheeler
You're right. They're both speculative in nature. I'd argue against gold as an
investment for that reason. Think I'm crazy? Get educated.

Compare gold to the DJIA since 1900.

[http://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-
prices-100-y...](http://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-
prices-100-year-chart)

[http://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-
historica...](http://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historical-
chart)

And don't go comparing Bitcoin to gold in any event. It doesn't have the
history behind it, and there are too many instances of investment fads that
die hard.

~~~
rz2k
Incidentally, the value that grew, and that you would have extracted in
dividends, is not reflected in the share price. Also, the DJIA is weighted by
the share price rather than the market capitalization of each component.
(Really, it is that absurd as an index!)

Anyway I agree with your point that while the economy has surged over the past
116 years, gold has been tradeable for an ever-decreasing share of economic
output or share of the available real assets, and has been far outpaced by how
a conservative portfolio of equities would have performed over the same
period.

------
guyzmo
Anybody wondered whether the real Satoshi actually had a hard drive crash or
something like that, and actually lost access to his wallet and PGP key?

Then making it impossible for him to claim his bitcoins or prove that he's the
real Satoshi, thus will never claim to be Satoshi?

Sometimes, the most simple yet stupid explanation can be real

~~~
martindevans
Didn't he post a signed message denying that he was Dorian Nakamoto (proving
he still has access to his keys), Or was that one a fake?

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
Pretty sure satoshi never signed anything.

------
nstj
Note that all 5 of the letters written to the SEC in response to the proposal
can be found here [0]

[0]: [https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-
batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx20163...](https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-
batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630.shtml)

~~~
davidgerard
The one to read is from Jorge Stolfi, professor of computer science and
knowledgeable cryptocurrency critic:

[https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-
batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx20163...](https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-
batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630-2.htm)

~~~
aminok
The individual spent years smearing cryptocurrency, insisting it had no
future, was a ponzi, etc, because he was/is ideologically opposed to its
undermining of authoritarian government control. He has publicly said he
thinks a "totally free" society would be a "nightmare". It was his ideological
disposition to authoritarianism that motivated his anti-Bitcoin writings. He
attacked Bitcoin for the purpose of making a failure outcome for it more
likely. His letter to the SEC is a perfect example of that.

~~~
Isomatik
This is the SEC, their entire reason for existing is to regulate transactions
between USD and the rest of the world. If you want to transact on the
blockchain directly, you are absolutely free to do so, but if you want a
situation where law enforcement backs you up when something goes wrong, the US
govt has been pretty clear that they are not interested in recognizing
transactions as legally enforcable if they can't know where the money's coming
from or where it's going for about 15 years now.

------
Uptrenda
Centralized Bitcoin security effectively amounts to preying that you never get
hacked because if you do -- there is still no way to limit what can be done
with your private keys (and this is true regardless of whether the key is
stored inside a hardware module or not.) The document here correctly notes
that their security model amounts to little more than security through
obscurity and further points out that their multi-sig signing is still at risk
of collusion, mishandling of keys, blackmail, theft, and any number of
unforeseen things.

With no concrete way to prevent a hack and no insurance if one were to happen
-- I can only see this ending badly -- and quite frankly, given how little
thought they've put into security I'm quite alarmed. Effectively, everything
they've put forward to protect these Bitcoins has been known to be inadequate
since 2012. We've seen that multi-sig was introduced and it still didn't help.
We've also seen that multi-sig and hardware modules haven't been enough to
prevent every inside job, hack, or scam.

In my view the only concrete way to handle Bitcoins as an exchange is to
extend Bitcoin to allow coins to be locked up into a special clearing phase.
You would have it so that coins could be spent after N confirmations but
before then they could be transfered to a fail-safe address. This isn't my
idea but its a simplification of what Emin Gün Sirer proposed with his Bitcoin
vault idea (though I did think of something similar in the past.)

Because honestly, you can never, ever rely on fully preventing these hacks as
the basis for a solid security model. Hacks. Are. Going. To. Happen.
Regardless of how many walls you decide to build. Thus, the only effective
security model for doing high-risk crypto-finance is to do something that
offers us a plan B when they do. And that's what Bitcoin vaults are for --
they allow us to cancel / revoke coins during a clearing phase without
breaking Bitcoins irrevocable nature (since you only treat coins as final
after +6~ confirmations after the clearing phase.)

The simple truth of the matter is -- Bitcoin in its current form is inadequate
for services like centralized exchanges (as evidence by numerous hacks) and
the only reason why people continue to do business under this scenario is for
opportunistic profit. If any of these companies really gave a shit about
security there is absolutely no way they would continue to run a financial
service with NO WAY to cancel fraudulent transactions. I consider this a
pretty basic corner-stone of modern banking and as long as it can't be done in
Bitcoin, EVERY wallet, Bitcoin exchange, and store that's handling Bitcoins is
just waiting to be fucked.

~~~
vertex-four
> We've seen that multi-sig was introduced and it still didn't help.

Only because nobody actually uses it, I think? Or have I missed out on
something in the Bitcoin community since I left it?

~~~
zwily
Well, Bitfinex used it, but in a very stupid way.

------
soufron
How much coke was used to write this? O_o

~~~
davidgerard
I read the Bitcoin subs on Reddit and occasionally contemplate a Buzzfeed
quiz: "Can you match the Reddit comment to the darknet research chemical it
was written on?"

This is probably my favourite. Yeah, people who just want to buy drugs are
definitely going to follow eleven screens of directions in detail:
[https://np.reddit.com/r/AlphaBay/comments/3t9e79/a_full_mult...](https://np.reddit.com/r/AlphaBay/comments/3t9e79/a_full_multisignature_tutorial_for_alphabay/)

