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Wired Thinks It Knows Who Satoshi Nakamoto Is (wired.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In a lengthy exposé, Wired lays out its case that Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto is actually Australian businessman Craig Wright. As evidence, Wired cites leaked communications and posts on Wright's blog from 2008 and 2009 establishing a connection between him and the launch of Bitcoin. Wright is also known to have amassed a significant Bitcoin fortune early on. Wired tried to contact Wright and got some perplexing responses, and they admit that it could all be a (long and extremely elaborate) hoax. But hours after publishing, Gizmodo followed up with the results of their own investigation, which came to the conclusion that Satoshi is a pseudonym for two men: Wright and Dave Kleiman, a computer forensics expert who died in 2013. After questioning (read: harassment) from both publications, Wright seems to have withdrawn from public comment. Regardless, both articles are quite detailed, and it will be interesting to see if the leaked documents turn out to be accurate.
really... what does it matter who "invented" bitcoin?
I do. BTC is gaining a lot of traction as the defacto digital currency standard, and we have no idea who's behind it. Bitcoin is a solid design and has survived a lot of scrutiny so far, but imagine what would happen if we found out that the design was introduced by, say, the NSA.
That would be irrelevant. Who created the Bitcoin system, be it a Satoshi or an NSA, is at best a historical piece of information. Bitcoin is an open design and its code open source, free to be analyzed by anyone who has an interest. It is not controlled by its creator.
No, no we don't.
A debit card is NOT currency. Nor is it universally accepted. And it is tied to a single currency.
I've lived and worked in multiple countries, have bank accounts in multiple countries, and have savings and investments in multiple currencies.
When travelling currency conversion fees are annoying. Even when using a debit card or credit card.
It's all a huge pain in the ass. A real pain in the ass. I can't wait for a single universal internet currency you can use everywhere and we can rid of bank fees, foreign exchange transaction fees, and other bullcrap. It's getting better but very far from ideal.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Then don't use Bitcoins if you don't accept the risk. It's super easy.
What risk? There is little risk in using bitcoins. Convert USD/EUR/etc to BTC, transfer BTC, convert BTC to USD/EUR/etc. *Use* does not have to involve risk.
Holding bitcoins does involve risk, just like holding any other speculatively priced asset. However many users of bitcoins do not hold them. For example merchants accepting bitcoins for payment. They contract with 3rd party payment processors to do real-time "currency conversion" for BTC pricing (so products and services only need to be priced by merchants in USD/EUR/etc), payment processing and delivering the originally specified USD/EUR/etc to merchants. Merchants never see or touch a bitcoin despite the buyer making payment using bitcoin.
It's actually pretty much the exact opposite of fiat. Fiat means the authority declared it to be so. The government says their dollar is valid to satisfy any and all debts, and that dollars MUST be used to pay taxes, which a majority of people have to pay. In other words, you need dollars because the government ordered that you do, and they will put you in prison unless you get some dollars to pay them with. That's what a fiat is - an order, a declaration by the ruling authority.
Bitcoin is pretty much the opposite- noone requires that you use it. It's price is purely based on the hope that tomorrow someone else might buy it from you, who in turn wants it for the same reason- they hope that later someone else might be willing to pay them for it, that the ponzi will continue and someone else will treat it as valuable.
As you mentioned, neither is backed by gold. The dollar is backed by two things. As I mentioned, it's backed by guaranteed demand due to taxes - people WILL want your dollars, because they have to have dollars in order to pay their taxes. Secondly, it is backed by the US government bomd rating (credit score) which the government must maintain because they survive on debt. If the govt devalued the currency beyond expected inflation rate, that would be constructive default on their debt, which is denominated in dollars. If they did that, no-one would lend them money anymore and they'd be unable to function.
So those are the two major things backing the dollar - the fact that people will need dollars to pay taxes, and government's need to protect their ability to continue borrowing.
At 1:30pm today, Australian Police raided the home of Craig Wright.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/bitcoin-founder-craig-wrights-home-raided-by-australian-police
FWIW, if you're sitting on a big pile of bitcoins, the best thing to do would be to sell them slowly. If I were the inventor, I would:
- Remain steadfastly anonymous (unlike anyone else who creates a major new technology.) Using a pseudonym doesn't hurt. (Hey, it works for me here.)
- Mint myself a big pile at first
- Sell them slowly so as not to devalue them or draw too much attention to myself.
IIRC, Spain once had a problem where they had acquired a big pile of gold from the New World and they thought they were rich. Then, they learned that they weren't as rich as they thought because a sudden increase in the supply of any currency inevitably devalues it.
The primary selling point of gold as a currency is that it can't be created, it can only be mined at ever-increasing cost - much like Bitcoin. The sudden increase of supply from the New World was an anomalous exception to that rule. I'm sure the Bitcoin folks won't make the same mistake.
Ya, and he got fucking raided as a result! http://www.rawstory.com/2015/1...
Hmm... I can kind of, sort of, see tax information being private for individuals. Back in 2008 or so, someone doxxed me, partially, and that resulted in someone posting my tax information online. It kind of felt intrusive and sucked to have it made public. I did the only "rational" thing that I could think of and that was just to accept it and move on. Sure, they got to see that I'd donated a bunch of money and had made a few dollars but it wasn't too bad. I'd made the mistake of mentioning the parent company that bought my company and, sure enough, that information was enough to get them started.
It was just felt intrusive. I know it's public information and all that but, really, it just seemed excessive. The forum's dead but I'm sure the stuff is cached somewhere. It might not seem like much and, really, so they learned I give money to Red Cross, ACLU, Heifer International, etc... I did have some negative repercussions. I had people crawling out of the woodwork to email me and asking me to support this cause, that cause, etc. I got hate-mail (I even got some snail mail) for not donating to a few causes. (The urge to name and shame is strong but these weren't "official" things but just zealots.) I'm not entirely sure how they got all of the information but they managed to put enough together and dox me pretty well.
Now, I'm running for office in 2016 and that means I'll be subjected to more scrutiny but that's because I'm electing to do put myself in that position. I'm accepting that I'll be public information (for a very small group of people, it's a rather tiny district) and I'm okay with that. There's a big difference between that and being doxxed and having your tax information posted online. I was already in the process of moving so it wasn't too tough to change some of the information but I ended up closing a few sites, getting rid of some email addresses, and things like that.
So, I guess, I can kind of see keeping tax data private for individuals or I can at least see a reason why we might want to have that discussion as a society. I'd not done anything wrong and I didn't stress over it a whole lot but it sucked. I got some pretty crappy emails, a bunch of begging emails, regular mail, and had to clean up after that but it really felt intrusive. It did show that I paid my taxes, in full, to the letter of the law. It did show that I have some favorite charities. I can imagine that it'd be much worse if I didn't pay my taxes or if I'd been donating to causes that were harmful. I also imagine that it would have been different if I'd stressed out over it and gone on an internet rampage trying to take it all down.
Meh... It's probably cached somewhere. One could probably find it by Googling my SSN. The genie doesn't go back in the bottle. 'Snot much I can do but it still kind of sucks. So, as I said, maybe we can have that discussion but it does presuppose that the government is doing its job and collecting taxes effectively and efficiently.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."