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Bitcoin Inventor Satoshi Nakamoto Outed By Newsweek
DoctorBit writes "According to today's Newsweek article, Satoshi Nakamoto is ... Satoshi Nakamoto — a 64-year-old Japanese-American former defense contractor living with his mother in a modest Temple City, California suburban home. According to the article, 'He is someone with a penchant for collecting model trains and a career shrouded in secrecy, having done classified work for major corporations and the U.S. military.' and 'Nakamoto's family describe him as extremely intelligent, moody and obsessively private, a man of few words who screens his phone calls, anonymizes his emails and, for most of his life, has been preoccupied with the two things for which Bitcoin has now become known: money and secrecy.' The article quotes him as responding when asked about bitcoin, 'I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it, ... It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection.' I imagine that he will now have to move and hire round-the-clock security for his own protection."
Why would he have to move/hire protection? I guess I can see that he might be paranoid enough to think it's necessary, but why would it be actually necessary?
Seriously, they put this guys life in danger. Shame on them.
Kudos to him for not ever trying to get into the limelight about this.
Not sure what repercussions this will have for him and his family as persons, but it's kind of nice to see this sort of stuff can still happen :)
Guess he got taught well by the diverse companies insisting on secrecy!
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
"I imagine that he will now have to move and hire round-the-clock security for his own protection."
Really?
Does Bitcoin work like River City Ransom? If I punch him enough times, will a flood of shiny coins spew from his unconscious body?
a career shrouded in secrecy, having done classified work for major corporations and the U.S. military
So somebody is in charge of Bitcoin? What do they do?
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zzzz
all the silk road gang who never got their stash or their BiteCon back are going to think he's hiding their BiteCon under the pile of unicorn crap in the living room.
dude.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
He fears for his life, eh? And you know this how, because of your telepathy or your in-depth personal interview with him? Personally, I imagine that it's because of your own paranoia leaking into all aspects of life. See how easy it is to fabricate a crap opinion from nothing.
Guess the Privacy Act doesn't apply to individuals.
Best Slashdot Co
No more reason than to hound any of the people on this list, all of whom have provably multiple orders of magnitude more wealth than this guy is even *alleged* to have.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Other billionaires require some kind of impossibly complicated strategy to steal their billions. . .
.).
Hope he takes the necessary precautions, though. . . Crypto-currencies are awesome. He deserves to spend the rest of his days in peace (For a crypto-genius, he could have picked a better pseudonym, though . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I wanna know more about his trains-- does he have a cool layout?
It's pretty spartan, hey got caught up in the trains themselves. Each set of cars is arranged in a very specific sequence that he really gets worked up about, and I've noticed that it takes him longer and longer every time to decide on and add a new car to the end of the train....
> - Also, if he went to a state college and now calls himself a libertarian, I have to call that out.
> That is also a "Silicon Valley" thing.
so a person who uses any state resources which they and their parents before them paid for....this should limit what opinions they are allowed to form later?
I was raised catholic and took first communion, and later came to realize the whole God thing was a sham, am I stuck being Catholic?
Seems like a raw deal to me.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I wonder if the loss of secrecy will affect the price?
He just wanted to be left alone, leave him alone.
This is Satoshi Nakamoto:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9rqm...
and his friend. They create crypto-currencies and attend raves.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
I was raised catholic and took first communion, and later came to realize the whole God thing was a sham, am I stuck being Catholic?
Naw, you're just stuck with the guilt.
Why the FUUUUUUCK does audio randomly start playing on ads on /.
who is the fucking imbecile that thought it would be a good idea to annoy the FUCK out of people.
Fuck you moron, Fuck you moron, FUCK YOU MORON!
Yes i'm mad bro.
Hope is the currency of fools
Because if I can get him alone in a room I can get all of that money with no proof I have it. With banks involved it gets much more difficult to get away with stealing $500 million.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Funny he develops stuff for government, curious!
[ConspirationMode:ON]
You see, perhaps he's working *with* the government to erode the banking system influence on politics.
Create an enemy to control your allies.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
I'm not sure if this is actually the guy, but conspiracy theories will fly about it forever so I don't care if he is or isn't. However playing 'Pretend the government agencies are coming after you.' with a child is enough for me to dismiss the guy as crazy.
Similar personality types?
He holds and estimated 800,000 BTC, assuming he is Satoshi. That's $525 600 000.00 Reason enough?
First, if he has that much and hasn't liquidated a big portion of it then he is an idiot. 800K bitcoins are a good approximation of worthless as bitcoins and only a fool wouldn't diversify. Second, if he actually did try to sell that many he'd crash the market so there is absolutely no way in hell they are worth that much money in dollars. When you hold huge amounts of some asset you move the market when you try to sell. Flood the market with that much supply and the price will plummet.
I don't beleive he is Satoshi. Dorian Nakamoto has three amazon reviews. His english is not good. http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/p...
Because if I can get him alone in a room I can get all of that money with no proof I have it. With banks involved it gets much more difficult to get away with stealing $500 million.
You've have to liquidate it and engage in some pretty serious money laundering through the banks to actually make use of the bitcoins in any meaningful way. Furthermore even if he does have 800K bitcoins he doesn't have $500M. To convert that many bitcoins to dollars would crash the market. When you hold that large a percentage of a market you can't sell without moving the market. The price would plummet if any significant amount was sold so while we can't tell exactly what it is worth you can be sure it is a LOT less than $500M.
What I find impressive and baffling is how people assign value to things that have no value for any purpose other than a means of exchange
I thought you were going to make some pithy remark that the U.S. dollar is little different from Bitcoin in that regard, but perhaps you haven't realizede that yet.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
There's no actual concrete evidence of any of the author's claims, just tons of speculation. Yet it's being treated like it's undeniably true.
That's $525 600 000.00 Reason enough?
Entirely theoretical. If he attempted to get cash for 5% of his holdings, the market price would likely crash, and he would eventually be left with no buyer for the rest.
And they probably have round-the-clock security as a matter of habit. Because that's the lifestyle of the ludicrously filthy rich.
New money don't nessesarily have that sort of experience with being rich and might not yet have security.
It's like, imagine you're a bank robber and you've got two banks in town. One is an old-school bank that has thwarted dozens of bank robbers in the past and routinely. They hire people specifically to worry about bank robbers. On the other side of town, there's this new hip young bank that's getting money thrown at them like mad. They used to just take all the money home with them at the end of the night, but now they've got this new "cold storage" place to put money they're not using at the moment. They're known to be idiotic fools, everything thinks the whole thing is a fly-by-night operation, and they don't even have a safe.
Now which one do you rob?
Also there's a good chance that Satoshi has these bitcoins on a hard-drive in his home. Of course, I'd expect it to be encrypted, but there are probably idiots out there who think they could simply walk in and take his bitcoins. And when you're talking about protecting yourself from criminals, the vast majority of them are idiots.
Well it only takes a few clicks to transfer that 525 Megadollars if you can get him to cough up the key.
the us dollar is backed by "the full faith and credit of the us government"
which means its' ability to confiscate wealth and land and use it to secure its notes, using various federal agencies.
also, to use its' formidable military to battle and perhaps even conquer foreign countries to access resources.
and bitcoin has.....hmmm a distributed blockchain loaded with encrypted data.
yeah...sure the dollar and bitcoin are almost identical.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
>Of course, I'd expect it to be encrypted, but there are probably idiots out there who think they could simply walk in and take his bitcoins.
Since they'd have access to the person with the encryption keys, they wouldn't need much more than a pair of pliers to extract that key from Nakamoto, so I'd say they're pretty much right about being able to walk in and take his bitcoins. He should be VERY concerned about being outed.
I thought the evidence previously presented, that Nicholas Szabo was Satoshi, was plausible, albeit circumstantial. I suspect that this Satoshi Nakamato's involvement with Bitcoin was not as the primary innovator or leader, while the the person(s) who did play those roles prefer for Newsweek (and the rest of the world) to think otherwise.
You all have your pound of flesh, just leave the man alone!
Onda Technology Institute
You intended this to be a metaphor for attacking traditional financial institutions versus attacking Bitcoin exchanges, right?
(It certainly works as a metaphor for that.)
What I find impressive and baffling is how people assign value to things that have no value for any purpose other than a means of exchange.
What I find baffling is how many people grossly underestimate the value of a standard means of exchange.
Newsweek : This man is Satoshi Nakamoto.
Sheriff : "What?" The police officer balks.
Sheriff : "This is the guy who created Bitcoin?
Are we really supposed to believe that a Police Officer would know such geek trivia?
Seems to be a little overly dramatic.
If they thought that 'quiet, eccentric, mathematician brutally murdered in suspected cyber-revenge' would have an ROI greater than the legal exposure, they'd probably kill him themselves just to be first to the body...
I seem to remember seeing a movie about this sort of plot. Was it called Tomorrow Never Dies, by chance?
common means for exchange IS value.
It's a lot easier then trying to trade sheep. And gold has it's own issue; hence we don't use it anymore.
"Bitcoin's value is lack of government involvement "
is it? I can't help but to think back to how horrible people where treated prior to banking regulations.
What do you do when a bank can just rake you money and you have no recourse?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's not true at all.
The dollar has value. It has government backing, it has protection for consumers, it is globally recognized, and pretty stable.
That is more valuable then gold.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The guy is described as a crypto expert and someone who's worked on classified projects. It's not likely that hard drive is in his home somewhere. It's probably in a safe deposit box. Or two.
Smart people know about pliers.
The real inventor was Keyser Soze.
. . . that it was actually the K**h brothers who contracted with the Russian Mafia to invent Bitcoin, and they set Nakomoto up as the fall guy. I'm sure it is totally bogus, in spite of the salaciousness and viral rumor-mongering appeal. Has anyone got any completely unsubstantiated confirmation of this?
Protection from what? Bitcoin is not that big of a deal and I cannot conceive of a reason why anyone would care if he invented it or not other than idle curiosity.
Because [the "real" Satoshi Nakomoto] is known to have about $400M worth of bitcoin, which criminals erroneously think is untraceable.
I very deeply hope that none of the people this man cares about are threatened (or worse) because of this Newsweek story. If Newsweek is wrong but some kidnappers get the wrong idea anyway, then they're doubly screwed.
I can't think of who benefits from this story aside from the author and Newsweek. Before anybody says that he might get some job offers, none of us can presume to know better for him than what he knows to be best for him.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
OP here - the submitted headline used the verb "doxed" rather than "outed". On a separate note, r/bitcoin has been raising some interesting doubts about the correctness of the article: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoi...
I was not aware it was inherently considered unethical journalism to uncover those who wish to remain anonymous. Peeling back anonymity can help shed light on the reasons somebody does what they did. Background, motiviations, current involvement, etc. are certainly newsworthy things to examine.
And why is his life in danger?
I was hoping that it was this guy.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
I'm even more baffled by the simple failure of logic.
The thing can be used as a means of exchange. I can exchange it for things. I value it by why I can exchange it for.
If I have 2 bitcoins, I can trade it for.. what? $1000?. I can trade that cash for decent laptop.
I value 2 bitcoins at "laptop".
You know... today. Who knows if bitcoin will fall apart by next year. A standard means of exchange is good. A stable means of exchange that doesn't have wild volatile swings is better. A stable means of exchange that isn't headed for the crapper because of massive douchebags devaluing it over the years would be ideal. It's a long road to get there.
It's not likely that hard drive is in his home somewhere. It's probably in a safe deposit box
At this point, it's far easier to get a warrant to empty a safe deposit box than it is to search a home. Banking privacy was eliminated by the Patriot Act.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Well, I was going specifically for mtgox.
Seriously, it's "Magic the Gather: Online eXchange." Anyone that was fooled by the rebranding to Mt.Gox deserves to have their money taken.
The other exchanges are hopefully more legit.
"What I find impressive and baffling is how people assign value to things that have no value for any purpose other than a means of exchange"
What this means is that you find economics to be impressive and baffling.
Nothing has any value that people don't assign to it. Everything is just another means of exchange that represents human labor.
You're absolutely right. I didn't mean to imply that BitCoin is any good as a standard means of exchange. My statement would be much better if I clarified that it should be a stable standard.
Hugely disappointed it that is just some old slightly crazy geezer.
It would make a great sci-fi story if it was really a rouge AI that became incredibly powerful by redefining the concept of money in a way that it could create at will. It would create a new empire without anyone realizing that it was not actually human.
Sigh
Satoshi Nakamoto is the tech world's J.D. Salinger.
soros has been a US citizen since 1961. probably longer than you've been alive.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
I am a super intelligent mauve AI, you insensitive...
Reminiscent of this humorous (and insightful) look at cash compared to bitcoin:
http://ledracapital.com/blog/2...
What's amazing to me is that he was hiding in plain sight using his own name.
It's hard to believe that in this day and age that it took so long to find him.
(I'd rather play with trains, too... but then I'm about the same age as he is.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
He lives with his mother... You don't have to hurt him, you only have to hurt her...
Ask yourself, would you trade your mother's life for any amount of money? I know I wouldn't...
If he attempted to get cash for 5% of his holdings, the market price would likely crash
Yeah, but none of the drug gangs demand $10M for a ransom payment. The real SN could get $200K easily enough.
Besides, his keys are more valuable than his cash, to the most violent gangs on the planet.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Dude there are Mclaren MP4s for sale for Bitcoins, people are buying land and mansions with them, you can get takeaways delivered, bars and restaurants accept them, other than gas/water/electric youre basically set. Converting $500M bitcoin to cash is MASSIVELY short sighted.
You could just take them and probably live off them in an extremely luxurious lifestyle, or at the same time you could sell 1 or 2 a day which wouldnt move the market at all giving you both an awesome life style and cold hard cash.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Random thieves have difficulty getting warrants. If he wants to avoid theft and torture at the hands of the US government he would clearly have to move to another country.
KTK= Kidnapped Tortured Killed
The bitcoin creator was smart to try to hide. I'm surprised he didn't do a better job as he seems to understand the myriad concerns of surveillance, secrecy, etc.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I dunno, most of the unstable people I've seen posting on the internet seemed rather hung up about Walmart.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There are posts on Bitcoin Talk demanding Mr Nakamoto carry out signed Bitcoin transactions to prove that he was the currency's originator.
That is irrational demand because he doesn't claim to be.
https://bitcointalk.org/index....
Besides, his keys are more valuable than his cash, to the most violent gangs on the planet.
Is that because of the covert backdoor in the protocol, that grants the private key of the address in the genesis block double spending privileges, and the ability to nuke the blockchain?
Agreed, but SN is unlikely to give up his key passwords without torture, so the random thieves aren't really so much of a risk.
I can't see how he can get out of the country at this point. It's logical to assume that the things he'd need to reconstruct his keys are not in the same jurisdiction as he is.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I find it hard to believe that someone else mined a million coins (6% of the total), lost their private key, and never mentioned it on the internet after they became worth a billion dollars.
"I obtained Nakamoto's email through a company he buys model trains from."
For some reason this quotation from the newsweek article stood out to me.
I know it's standard practice for lots of businesses to sell their email lists
but this came off to me as strange. A reporter calls up looking for a single
customers email address and you just give it to them?
Not a single someone, he's probably mention it. But how about 100,000 individual someones, each of whom mined (on average) 10 or so coins? That's a few thousand bucks these days, not something that would make headlines beyond your Facebook page.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Something doesn't add up. If he used anonymizers even for email, why did he attach his *real name* to the Bitcoin project? Vanity? Or what?
Not a single someone, he's probably mention it. But how about 100,000 individual someones, each of whom mined (on average) 10 or so coins? That's a few thousand bucks these days, not something that would make headlines beyond your Facebook page.
No. I don't think that 100,000 people were mining bitcoins in early 2009. Actually, I'm quite sure of it.
about 100,000 individual someones, each of whom mined (on average) 10 or so coins?
OK, first, you *can not* mine 10 or so bitcoins. There were no mining pools at first, and that is the only way people mine fewer coins.. And that's not really even correct.. Mining pools mine 25 bitcoins these days, and then share them with their members.. What we're talking about is directly mining coins here, which got mine 50 coins at a time for the first four years or so.
Also, IIRC, most of these coins are held by just a few addresses, not spread among 100,000. The entire population of the bitcoin community was probably less than a few thousand people during the first year.. During the first months it was more like 20 or 30.... maybe less..
There's like 40 people there, so who's going to jump him?
OK, seriously though, he's loved in Nebraska. I love Cherry Coke. It's my only vice. I've lived in a lot of places, but never could get Cherry Coke in a soda fountain/McDonald's/whatever.
While in Omaha/Lincoln, I was able to get it everywhere. Because Warren might drive through.
My mom says I'm cool.
I wonder how much (or in what way) "they" paid this guy to pretend to be Satoshi Nakamoto?
The people behind Mt. Gox might kill him just to save their business from bankruptcy. It would nicely cover the bitcoins that they lost. There are many ways to make use of bitcoins without cashing them.
If the answer is "Well his life is in danger because he has lots of money in Bitcoins that can be stolen!" well, then there's another flaw in Bitcoins, or at least in keeping Bitcoins on your own hardware, which is what BTCheads have been advocating since the Mt. Gox 'asploded.
This isn't an issue for a normal rich people, because they don't keep their money in something like paper currency that can be easily stolen. It is in banks. So you break in to their house and kill them... well you don't get any of their money. The bank doesn't say "Oh hey you killed the guy, so by RPG loot rules you get his money!" If that's a concern with Bitcoin because it is like keeping lots of cash on hand, well that's another disadvantage now isn't it?
If he had called himself by some sort of clever pseudonym, that might make sense. But going by your birth name isn't exactly stealthy... name changes are part of public record.
He didn't exactly give press releases as Mr. BitCoin, but that's not the same thing as trying to stay anonymous. Unheralded yes, anonymous, no.
Thanks, that is good factual information to have.
Still, would losing 100 or 200 coins make headlines these days when thousands got lost and stolen in what makes the news (Silkroad, Mt. Gox, etc.) ?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I find it hard to believe that someone else mined a million coins (6% of the total), lost their private key, and never mentioned it on the internet after they became worth a billion dollars.
Who would believe them?
Be seeing you...
Not really. Sheep have value on their own as a source of wool, food, and more sheep. Gold still has usefulness as a metal, granted those uses are a bit less practical. A bitcoin has no use other than a medium of exchange. In that regard, it's not too much different than paper money. The real question is how do we decide what the conversion rate is for one person's labor and/or goods to another person's labor and/or goods. And doesn't that conversion eventually lead to inflation when someone decides that they don't have as much as their neighbor (regardless of how much they produce) and so they demand more for their labor and/or goods which inevitably leads to a cascade of people demanding more which ultimately leaves the first envious person in the same position they started at? So really, the only use bitcoins have is taking away the ability of whoever controls the creation of currency from creating more to give it away for purposes of manipulating other people.
But the other aspect of bitcoins is the mining of them. A lot of people mined bitcoins without paying for the energy needed to run the mining computers if they mined them at their day job. Technically, that's theft. Who ends up paying for the equipment and the energy? I'm not talking about people who set up solar panels to power equipment they bought themselves but people who use other people's equipment and energy to do it. That company needs to pay for that by potentially raising its prices or by laying off workers.
I read a bit of the story the guy didn't want contact, but this Leah McGrath Goodman (a women go figure) has to have a story.
That's not true at all.
The dollar has value. It has government backing, it has protection for consumers, it is globally recognized, and pretty stable.
That is more valuable then gold.
That is more valuable then gold? No it's not.
When the US Government collapses, what is the value of the dollar then? Ya, nothing.
Gold's value doesn't drop when governments do.
Be seeing you...
Someone seen as being very wealthy can be viewed as a target by those that want to quickly secure wealth by means of violence.
Dude there are Mclaren MP4s for sale for Bitcoins
Does the term money laundering mean anything to you? There are only two reasons to sell a car for bitcoins. One is because you are trying to hide the source of funds and the other is because you are speculating. Otherwise doing that is utterly retarded. It makes no financial sense whatsoever for the seller of the car.
, people are buying land and mansions with them, you can get takeaways delivered, bars and restaurants accept them
Right. Show me where that happens. Show me multiple examples of people who are buying large assets in bitcoin and not engaged in money laundering or fraud. If someone is accepting bitcoin to for real estate for real then they are taking an insane amount of financial risk and quite simply there aren't many people out there that are likely to do something that dumb. Furthermore if a bar or other retail business is accepting bitcoins (I'm aware a few are trying) as anything other than a promotional scheme and not charging a hefty transaction premium then they are financially illiterate. It's cute to do a few transactions maybe as a marketing scheme but I assure you that it is not a large portion of their business, at least not if they wish to stay in business.
Converting $500M bitcoin to cash is MASSIVELY short sighted.
First off, again, it ISN'T $500M. That is paper value. It's like people who get a stock option grant and are "worth" millions on paper that they cannot actually get access to. He CANNOT sell them for that much money. It isn't possible. If he tried he would crash the already volatile market. Second, there is NO guarantee that bitcoins will hold the value they currently have into the future and even less guarantee that they will rise in value. Continuing to hold a significant amount of them without diversifying into other assets is quite simply dumb. It's a speculative bubble like tulips or beenie babies or the stock market 15 years ago. If the guy has that many bitcoins and he isn't steadily liquidating them into other assets then he's very likely to experience a significant loss in the not to distant future.
And the Kronar is backed by the full faith of the Icelandic government. And it's utterly worthless. There are plenty more currencies backed by their governments around the world that are similarly worthless and abandoned by its citizens whenever possible. And some of those countries have a military too, before you ask. The Euro is doing quite well against the dollar, and there is no military behind it. The collective trust in a currency is far more important than the government that is backing it.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
You're both right. He has dual citizenship. It's interesting that you were so eager to try to correct the person who spoke of Hungary being "his country." The country of his birth is arguably more "his country" than the other country in which he holds citizenship.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.