Too true. I depend on hacker news for many things, but being secure is not a bet I'd put money on. There are ways of making more provable claims in either direction--unless it's either attested multiple times in the past (so as to be difficult to doctor) or it's cryptographically signed or there's a convincing prosecution, I don't think we'll be confident about it.
I would bet that anyone who is already very geeky and just happens to be called Satoshi Nakamoto has a much higher than normal chance of being a bitcoin early adopter.
If Dorian was a member of the group that eventually birthed Bitcoin, isn't it realistic that he'd be an early adopter, even if the pseudonym wasn't quite his?
I think the most compelling evidence that Dorian is Satoshi is described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7354326
[EDIT: if an eyewitness account is compelling enough for you, this is evidence. it is to me, apparently not to some.]
Dorian (as recognized by the retailer) bought a crepe from one of the first retailers to accept bitcoins, the 1st transaction of the crepe retailer's bitcoin address at 1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3JPUekwoBC for 2.2 bitcoins on July 17 2011, can check the Crepe twitter feed: twitter.com/Ocrepes - "The award for being the first customer who bought crepes for @bitcoins goes to ... anonymous (the winner refused to reveal identity)"
Tracing those addresses/transactions back leads to large volume addresses.
[EDIT: 432,000 coins]
Early on, there were so few people mining that practically everyone had a "large volume". As such, if you pick any arbitrary bitcoin transaction at that time, it's highly likely it will have originated from a large volume source in the recent past.
I think it's more likely a case of mistaken identity; there are many people in this world, and I think that the chance of someone remembering someone from 3 years ago that they saw for half an hour, tops, with sufficient accuracy for a positive ID is much lower than the chance that there are simply two middle aged asian men who look vaguely similar. It's also improbable that "satoshi" would fly across the country for this purchase.
One person's word is certainly not compelling to me.
Even if that account is 100% accurate, it does not link the man who paid with bitcoins to satoshi, but merely to Dorian. The HN link relies on the flawed NewsWeek article to make the further connection from Dorian to Satoshi.
That still does not follow. It proves that he lied about not knowing what bitcoin is and it proves that he had bitcoins. Those two facts do not prove that he is Satoshi. It is not obvious.
Here, I'll give you an alternative explanation:
Dorian was an early bitcoin adopter or otherwise had a small number. When reporters started asking his son if he was Satoshi, he realized that that would damage his reclusive lifestyle if people thought he were Satoshi. He thought that telling the truth, that he knew about bitcoin but wasn't Satoshi, wouldn't be believed so he told a lie to preserve his reclusive lifestyle.
Well, you're just taking that it is not logically imperative that he be Satoshi as a counter argument. I think if all is true that it is a pretty interesting coincidence given that, despite people think here, Bitcoin was not a very common thing for normal people in 2011.
But anyway, this eye witness seems a bit odd for other reasons.
Linking Dorian to Bitcoin at any time proves everything, proves Dorian = Satoshi. If Dorian paid for crepe in July 2011 with Bitcoin, Dorian is lying and Dorian = Satoshi. There was a large Bitcoin Conference in New York at that time, giving good reason to be there. The retailer said she recognized Dorian as the customer. He didn't want his picture taken or name recorded. Good odds to me it was him.
You say "good memory," but there's no evidence of it. The post said "recognized him," though there's a bit of priming (A NEWSWEEK COVER STORY!) to encourage that process along: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7354326
Memory is highly fallible. Eyewitness accounts are highly unreliable even after a shorter period of time than three years. The burden of proof is properly on the Dorian == Satoshi folks.
That is the most spurious logic I have encountered all week. Dorian lying about the specifics of his involvement with bitcoin does not logically imply that he must also be lying about not being Satoshi.
Even if Dorian is lying about knowing what bitcoin is, I think it wouldn't be a proof of Dorian = Satoshi. He might be worried people would dig his personal life more if he acknowledges he knows what bitcoin is.
Its unfortunate you're being marked down by people who don't realize that memorable events create recallable memories.
It's easier to remember the first time you do/experience something. The situation is novel and unique, which creates stronger mental connections that allow for subsequent recall.
If Dorian was the 15th guy to buy something with Bitcoins from the retailer, that would definitely be suspicious. But the first guy to buy something from you with Bitcoin? That's a memorable event. That doesn't mean it happened, but it does mean there's a good chance it actually happened.
Eyewitness accounts are known to be incredibly unreliable and full of bias. I saw a show once when they staged a bank robbery or something like that. Later they showed interviews with witnesses who got every single detail about the suspect wrong (ethnicity, clothes, etc) and details about the robbery wrong. They were asked questions like "did he have a gun?" and they mostly answered "yes" even though he didn't. It was nuts.
In one of her experiments, Loftus demonstrates that false verbal Information can integrate with original memory. Participants were presented with either truthful information or misleading information, and overall it showed that even the false information verbally presented became part of the memory after the participant was asked to recall details. This happens because of one of two reasons. First, it can alter the memory, incorporating the misinformation in with the actual, true memory. Second, the original memory and new information may both reside in memory in turn creating two conflicting ideas that compete in recall.[13]
interesting that you value this testimony so highly, because my weighting of probabilities for 'can a random woman in brooklyn definitively and uniquely identify an elderly japanese man among a line up of elderly japanese men based on a single interaction three years ago' comes down quite heavily on 'no'.
The thing is, if Satoshi Nakamoto actually is any kind of elderly Japanese man in Brooklyn, then it's probably this one. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence (like, for example, his name, his background, etc) that link it to him.
How likely is it that this ISN'T the Satoshi Nakamoto, just another dude with the same name who happened to be an early adopter of the same technology at time when it was very obscure?
Of course this all depends on her story being true or not. But I don't think it depends on how well she would distinguish this Nakamoto from another Nakamoto. If she's telling the truth, high likelihood it's actually him.
My assertion is simply that this woman most likely just cannot tell if the man she saw three years ago is the same man as she saw in NewsWeek today, however much she believes it[0], so the actual information I'm willing to believe in her report is that an old Japanese man was using bitcoins in New York in 2011. If you think that information is the smoking gun that says Dorian must be Satoshi, ok but I don't see it. When you say 'distinguish this Nakomoto from another Nakomoto' it sounds like you think she knew the customers name, which doesn't match my reading of the anecdote.
[0]obviously it's possible it'll turn out she is Japanese/very familiar with Japanese people and therefore probably can tell apart two Japanese men with very little to go on, but I'm working on the assumption that is unlikely for a woman running a crepe shop in new york
It's a desperate attempt to mislead.
[1] Here is Dorian making an in-person bitcoin purchase in July 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7354326