Alleged Bitcoin Creator Raided By Australian Authorities (arstechnica.com)

wbr1 writes: As reported yesterday, Wired and Gizmodo think Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto is actually Australian businessman Craig Wright

Now, Craig Wright has been raided by Australian police. Curiously, a statement from the Australian federal police said that the raids were not related to the recent Bitcoin revelation. "The AFP can confirm it has conducted search warrants to assist the Australian Taxation Office at a residence in Gordon and a business premises in Ryde, Sydney. This matter is unrelated to recent media reporting regarding the digital currency bitcoin." Supposedly not related, but interesting nonetheless.

Reuters adds,"At Wright's rented home, a modest brick house in the leafy middle class suburb of Gordon, three police workers wearing white gloves could be seen searching the garage, which contained gym equipment. A man who identified himself as the owner of the house, Garry Hayres, told Reuters that Wright and his family had lived there for a year, and were due to move out on Dec. 22 to move to Britain. Hayres said that Wright had a 'substantial computer system set-up' and had attached a 'three-phase' power system to the back of the house for extra power."

Comments

You'd be raided too

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if the IRS suddenly found out you had four hundred million dollars' worth of undeclared capital gains.

Re:You'd be raided too

[prunus.avium]

Supposedly unrelated. He was already having tax problems before the story broke...at least, that's what the authorities are saying.

Re: You'd be raided too

[TWX]

Kinda makes me wonder about that initial founding block of bitcoins that has never been used, and if this person has necessary information to actually access that block, what the legal issues for that would be for both him and for that initial unused block. Some have cited that block as part of the reason why bitcoin is reasonably stable, but if that block now somehow became Australia's property and if they chose to start spending it, what that would do to the scrip.

Parallel Construction

[Anonymous Coward]

Well either its an ex-employee whose a master hacker... or its a parallel construction thing.

NSA will have grabbed satoshi@vistomail.com emails, the email associated with Satoshi Nakamoto.
It hands the emails to the Aussies (remember the illegal spook surveillance of Kim Dotcom of MegaUpload?).
Now how do you explain how the Aussie police have private emails from a server of an unrelated person who has committed no determinable crime? This Satoshi Nakamoto figure?..... you leak the same emails to Gizmodo and Wired anonymously, and claim you received an anonymous tipoff.

It's likely this part (From Gizmodo):

"The hacker also provided a PDF file of what appears to be an unfinished draft of a legal contract between Wright and Kleiman forming a secret Bitcoin trust in the Seychelles, a notorious tax haven in the Indian Ocean. The contract shows Dave Kleiman in receipt of 1,100,111 bitcoin, to be repaid to Craig Wright on January 1, 2020. Several reports, including an oft-cited technical analysis by Bitcoin expert Sergio Demian Lerner, estimate Satoshi Nakamoto’s legendary Bitcoin fortune at around 1 million BTC — a figure that nearly matches the amount in the Seychelles trust. It also lists five PGP keys — files that are used to establish encrypted lines of communication over email — that will be used to manage the trust. Searching for those keys in a public database reveals that one belongs to Wright, one belongs to Kleiman, and two belong to Satoshi Nakamoto."

Re:Mining

[amicusNYCL]

The potential mining aspect doesn't make much sense. Why would you go to great expense to try and mine bitcoins if you already have over a million of them?

If this is true, I doubt he's mining much of anything. The Wired article contains a video which appears to be from a Bitcoin conference in October of this year where Wright appeared via Skype. He mentions that he currently has a computer in Iceland that is the 15th most powerful supercomputer in the world. He's not using that to mine bitcoins, he's using it to model the scalability of bitcoin. So, he's not going through the great expense to try and mine bitcoins, he's going through the great expense to model the system and see what's ahead. Maybe that is a direct result of the recent debate over the size of blocks. The additional power coming to his home could also be used for modeling, or it could be used for additional research or work unrelated to bitcoin. If this is a man with the kind of resources to set up a major supercomputer in Iceland to take advantage of the cheap electricity, I don't see any reason for him to run additional power to his house in Sydney for the purpose of mining bitcoins. That doesn't make sense. If mining was his goal then he would do it in Iceland, not metro Sydney.