This is the response from Len's widow, Meredith, the last time a similar article was posted.
"It's a very well-researched and respectful article, but to the best of my knowledge, Len was not Satoshi. Worth reading for the history and the conclusions about mental health, though."
I see this as the only rational response despite what the truth may be - can you imagine what would happen if Meredith acknowledged that Len was Satoshi Nakamoto?
I think it is also possible Len did't tell his wife about Satoshi, or alternatively asked that she never reveal Satoshi's true identity.
Satoshi came out of retirement in March 2014 to state that he was not Dorian Nakamoto, in the wake of a Newsweek article that falsely fingered the latter as Satoshi:
I still think it was Hal Finney, who was in similar cypherpunk circles, created the first PoW system, received the first Bitcoin transaction, lived in the same town as Dorian Nakamoto for 10 years, was diagnosed with ALS about a year before Satoshi disappeared from Bitcoin development, died in August 2014, and was cryopreserved.
> An administrator of the semi-official Bitcoin Talk forum, Michael Marquardt, posted on Monday night that he had received an email from Nakamoto’s old address, “not spoofed in any way”, that made him certain the account was compromised.
> “It seems very likely that either Satoshi’s email account in particular or gmx.com in general was compromised, and the email account is now under the control of someone else,” Marquardt wrote under his username, theymos[1]. “Perhaps satoshin@gmx.com expired and then someone else registered it.”
> Shortly after Marquardt’s post, “Nakamoto” posted on the Ning messageboard, one of the first places the real Nakamoto announced the creation of Bitcoin. Using the same forum account to append a comment to that announcement, the apparent hacker warned Satoshi that his details were for sale.
Hal Finney theory is too convoluted what with him talking to himself, a stark contrast in programming styles between Hal's organized manner and Satoshi's haphazard hacking, and no connection to the genesis block being a headline from UK/Europe and British lingo. A Nakamoto in town is just a common coincidence, there are 2,800 of them in the US.
There is nothing more straightforward and less convoluted than some dude creating a sock puppet account to interact with in order to help launch a product.
Nothing in that PR showed he was a much better developer, he just implemented an optimization he found in a book. Contrary to the medium post, Satoshi's code was fairly clean for a first release. The omission of unit tests just shows the uncertainty Satoshi had about the project (why make tests for something that hasn't found adoption?).
Finney must be considered a candidate, but considering that Sassaman took his own life after declining health, it's possible he may have put in place a succession plan for the ability to speak as Satoshi. Which could be separate from a succession plan for the Satoshi bitcoin hoard.
Being a developer, and following Nick Szabo over the years, I just don't think he's enough of a coder mindset to have created Bitcoin. Maybe he could have made it by teaming up with someone else (Not disparaging Nick Szabo, he's super smart but not a coder at heart)
Seems a bit far-fetched that the guy creating Bitcoin was also building up a global criminal empire. I’m sure Paul is a very talented guy, but there are only so many hours in a day. The article’s author even admits it’s a stretch by the end of the article.
There is reason to disbelieve it. The text analyses that have been done point at Satoshi being an individual.
Beyond that, if it were a group, they could have used someone as a spokesperson, but then you have a conspiracy of Satoshis, which is less possible. People, and especially geeks, like to talk. Someone would have tripped up by now, or moved bitcoin to fiat.
I agree that the group increases the risk of someone talking.
Would having a spokesperson that knew the identity of group members be a significant risk once this amount of money is involved? It would surely motivate serious threats to the spokesperson and their family?
By the time there was media interest in the identity of Satoshi, what would have been the value of their holding? Even then, whoever it is had to have held to their privacy even in advance of Bitcoin being worth incredible amounts of money.
There's a non-zero chance that there's an NSA/IC employee who worked with them. Just based on the 1996 NSA paper "How to Make a Mint" and the potential that a government cryptocurrency is the ultimate solution for the inflation problem. Regulated stablecoins and/or a CBDC is the perfect way to disintermediate the banks from the dollar.
Source: speculation but I was around before bitcoin
The "inflation problem" is not perceived as a problem by hardly anyone (certainly not by a government agency) since central banks around the world have shown that they are very capable of keeping inflation near the intended target. And the idea that the NSA thinks a cryptocurrency would be a solution to such a non-existent problem is even more bizarre.
If it leads to stagflation it might be a real problem, that definitely worries central banks.
Several central banks around the world are working on digital currencies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank_digital_currency).
These would unlock more complex measures than giving people money and hope for the best to activate the economy (people might just save the money). Things like giving money to spend only in certain things, or for a limited time might come into effect then.
China’s CBDC already incorporates limited time balances, which were demonstrated with airdrops that had an expiration date. Flexa has partnered with various crypto projects and traditional business to offer crypto denominated coupons that have an expiration date as well.
I’ll admit I’m bullish on crypto generally, but not like this. It may work for CBDCs, in that it will drive spending over saving to some degree, but I suspect they will be treated like radioactive hot potatoes. What’s to stop someone from selling their CBCD and simply buying a competing stablecoin that isn’t going to expire? Inflation can be both unpredictable and devastating; yet, predictable sudden devastating devaluation via expiration dates is held up as an improvement over the non-CBDC stablecoin status quo?
Besides the points others have made here, iirc Finney explicitly denied it. (Same for Szabo.) He didn't have to -- a Glomar response would be perfectly reasonable whether or not you are Satoshi.
I'd take the explicit answer of someone not known to be a liar as the first piece of evidence to mention, not an "oh by the way" far down in the list.
That's a good data point. Although many people program for both OSs, it at least raises the question of why make a Windows app, if it's not your preferred platform?
Let's say it was Sassaman and that it's true that he was primarily a Unix programmer. If he didn't have any pretenses that it would become an immediate hit, he might have focused on coding in his comfort zone. Presumably the people he interacted with who were most interested were probably also Unix users.
On the other hand, he was Bram Cohen's roommate, and he saw BitTorrent take off as a mainstream product. So it's quite possible he was sensitive to the idea that a Windows program would have more viral ability to pick up users.
In any case, he probably would have assumed that if the system gained even a minimal level of adoption, it would quickly be ported to all platforms.
While I didn't know Len, I've talked to a fair number of people who knew him well (including the person who put that ascii art portrait of him into the blockchain), and none of them have expressed strong agreement with this theory.
All we know for sure about Satoshi is that s/he isn't Craig Wright.
I would highly encourage the article 'The Satoshi Affair' by London Review of Books about the person known as Satoshi Nakamoto and the person who claims to be them. It's a long one, but worth it.
I know he's failed to prove it (embarrassingly), but I feel like it's not implausible that it was him and the late Dave Kleinman together as he claims. The mixing of British and American English and time zone issue then makes sense. Also, that Craig Wright boldly claims to be Satoshi likely means he is involved somehow, as he should otherwise fear that the real Satoshi call him out. It may be that Kleinman was the gear-to-the-metal guy and that's why Wright cannot prove his identity (but is somehow too proud to admit it - he's not entirely right in the head either).
Not everything checks out and everything may not have happened exactly as Wright claims, but I have trouble completely writing him off.
> otherwise fear that the real Satoshi call him out
I mean, this could just be an educated gamble. Satoshi has been unwilling or unable to communicate for many years (with the exception of one highly suspect incident that is very possibly a case of compromised credentials).
> I hesitate to speculate about Satoshi’s identity, given that the discourse has generally ranged from misguided to downright idiotic and unethical. But with Craig Wright fraudulently claiming credit and invoking a copyright claim to take down the Bitcoin whitepaper, it’s important we revisit the topic and recenter the discussion around the Cypherpunks who actually built Bitcoin.
If the author cared about the shenanigans of fraud Craig Wright, a better approach would be to deal with them directly. The only thing that's hard about that is that the false claims are so numerous.
Wright has conjured a tornado of bullshit. In the process, he has built a loyal following. This is the real story, because the Craig Wrights of the world are wising up to the power of the Internet. They're multiplying, spilling out of the woodwork, and overrunning the pantry. People have an insatiable hunger to be lied to with gusto, and the Internet gives them everything they need to satisfy that hunger. All it takes is an unethical person who understands this point and has no qualms about exploiting it. Past a point, the fact checkers just give up.
We've seen several examples now of this phenomenon. But the Internet-savvy Big Liar is on an exponential growth curve.
My money is on Paul Le Roux.. most hackers are too uppity to write windows software. Le Roux was a pragmatist with a real practical need to move dirty money without banks.
I don't know that creating an whole new currency can be considered a "practical solution" to the need of having to move dirty money around. Surely there must be easier ways to achieve that goal and with a higher chance of success as well.
For him an encryption/programming expert it might of been. There were posts back in 2005 about how to design a 'bit gold' and he was already jumping through hoops to launder money to gold bars through hong kong with all kinds of problems. The motivation was there.
Most hackers I know write software for pretty much any other OS because of how much easier it is than writing software for Windows, not because they're uppity. Some may be ideological purists, sure, but I think you'd be very hard pressed to find a hacker that says the developer experience on Windows is easier/nicer/better than the developer experience on Linux or MacOS.
If Microsoft was a person it would be a psychopath: befriend you for economic benefits and crush you when that is the more convenient option.
It's a private company who has actively pursued monopoly by buying its way into the educational system and strongarming any competition in the OEM off the shelf OS market, literally making it damn near impossible to avoid it.
It's goddamn scary how the public sector seems to believe Windows, Word or Excel are the only professional alternatives and are necessary for society to function. Why aren't we writing in LaTeX or R on Linux? Because a very powerful market force has bought the truth and will embrace or extinguish any sane opposition.
Fuck Microsoft and fuck Bill Gates. They are evil.
Yes, but, really, the very pragmatical nature of Le Roux somehow makes me doubt he would have left the initial wallets untouched all these years. He is an interesting character, for sure, but does not seem the kind to not use a big lever at his disposal.
Is there evidence that Le Roux used Bitcoin? Certainly he had a use for it. But the author of the Mastermind looked into this idea and didn't find any evidence for it
I went deep into the PLR rabbit hole because I too believed that PLR could have been Satoshi. The one dagger to the heart of the theory is that PLR lived in the Philippines at the time. If you line up Satoshi’s posting times with PLR’s local time zone, you’d have to assume that PLR was posting from 4-9ish in the Philippines.
Thank you. I’ve been saying this for years. He could very well have been some listserv lurker who followed the prior art, and just went ahead and solved the outstanding problems on his own. There are far more brilliant programmers out there working quietly, than those who are known. Everybody reaches for a name they know because that’s all that’s available to reach for.
Just some lurker of that early mailing list, absorbing knowledge that eventually culminated into the code and paper. The number of unknown great programmers is a lot. What I think is interesting is that it was both code and a paper, not only code. So at least a grad student. And likely someone that starts many projects, because they left after only one year. Something else could have gotten more interesting.
Sure, at least today that is more probable and maybe by now they truly did pass on. The range of possibilities are of course endless. But at that time, if we take their statement literally[1] they just moved on to other things.
Reading this article, I am struck by how BitCoin and crypto currencies had idealistic origins. Contrast that with practical realities of crypto today which seems to be fueling mostly speculation and illegality. It is also an environmental and climate disaster.
Yes. If you Google “satoshi Stylometry” you’ll find a ton. IMO not very fruitful, there is other evidence that is more compelling. If you look around enough it’s easily to get a _pretty good_ idea of who it was, based on things like early interactions with satoshi, neighbors with unusual surnames, etc. but no way to know for sure.
Do you have a particular link? Because simply googling the term, I find a few things that don't even mention Sassaman. But it also seems like they may be preselecting the candidates and applying the analysis to only their works. For whatever reason, Sassaman hasn't been spoken of much as a candidate, and is unclear whether his writings (of which there are many) would have been included.
Because Satoshi's identity and whether or not they were a singular individual or a group of individuals is unknown. It is entirely acceptable, and more often than not probabilistically and politically correct, to use they/them here.
I doubt anyone would be upset at people using he/him when referring to Satoshi, but also along those same lines, it seems strange to be upset at they/them usage for an unknown entity.
The individual used a male name, so it’s reasonable to make that assumption in common speech.
In terms of individual vs group, it seems unlikely that a group would have the discipline to not do anything with billions of dollars or expose the individual with control of the same.
Right. I’ve never experienced dialog or writing where somebody elects a gendered pronoun based on the pseudonymous handle used to reference the antecedent when their gender is either irrelevant, unspecified, or unknown. I’m curious which communities practice this colloquially?
If someone chooses a male pseudonym, is it sensible for everyone to individually decide what pronouns to use? This strikes me as opposed to similar etiquette.
"The singular they emerged by the 14th century,[3] about a century after the plural they. It has been commonly employed in everyday English ever since then and has gained currency in official contexts. Singular they has been criticised since the mid-18th century by prescriptive commentators who considered it an error."
There is nothing woke about this. Trust me I am not a fan of useless woke constructs that exist to signal virtue. I’m sure we agree on that. This is not one of those things. When you are referring to some entity with unknown gender, you use “they” and “their” so as not to lead the reader or the person you're speaking towards any assumptions and just because it’s the clearly correct way to convey the state of affairs to your audience (this matters to pedantic people). To someone who practices this in their own communication, it conveys a real signal that others pick up on. Pseudonyms generally aren’t referred to by the gender of the chosen name/handle but rather act as a proxy for the person who uses them, therefore you wouldn't refer to Satoshi as “he/him” but as the gender of the user of the pseudonym which is unknown, hence they/them. The author, while making the case that Len may be Satoshi, never asserts as much to be true. So I also read the usage of they/them as a reminder that they are presenting an argument/case not declaring fact.
An author on the internet has adopted a writing style that you're clearly uncomfortable with, it's not grounds for disparaging the author.
Your individual politics don't matter here, it is a technology article that happens to use a pronoun for an unknown entity which is entirely acceptable in common parlance. No one is clamoring that he/him is unacceptable, but to disparage people for their choice of expression in writing feels awfully similar to what the anti-woke crowd claim the woke do.
Additionally, plenty of languages use non-gendered pronouns.
You've "made stuff up" about entire languages in your previous reply. I am struggling to find more ways to explain that, in English, it is acceptable to refer to unknown quantities or identities of people with "they" and "them".
"My bank denied my loan application again, I can't believe them!" - Correct - Unknown, amorphous entity, regardless if the rejection was specifically caused by a man or woman or otherwise.
"temp8964 replied to me on HN again, she's quite persistent." - Incorrect - Without knowing who you are, is it still acceptable for me to blindly assert that you must be a woman and doing otherwise is wrong?
It is curious to me that it seems okay to defer to the author's assumption that Satoshi is a singular person, while at the same time denouncing how they refer to that person. You are okay with one uncertain assumption but not another. I think if you are willing to defer to the author here that benefit of the doubt should extend to the rest of their writing.
However, if we assume that Satoshi is a singular person, how do you suggest we refer to pseudonymous individuals whose gender and identity are unknown? Again, is it acceptable that I insist on referring to you as she/her without knowing who you are?
Assuming that it is the chosen, gendered name-on-the-internet that matters, if I were born biologically male but then undergo a sex change procedure and then and adopt a feminine name like Jane Smith in my work, would it be acceptable in your eyes to refer to me as she/her by default? Surely in this case, he/him or they/them would be unacceptable, if I follow your logic correctly.
The norm is follow the gender assumption based on the pseudonym. If the person picked a female name, everyone would happily call the person “she”, as it should be. It has nothing to do with the real person’s gender.
I'm glad to hear you think we should refer to people by their chosen pronouns! Perhaps there's some woke to you after all? ;)
I still would love to hear how you think people should refer to you, especially if you have not asserted your own pronouns. It seems, in reference to you, this is a classic, centuries-old case of singular 'they' being perfectly acceptable.
I don't believe this to be generally true but would believe that you have experienced communities that practice this convention. For the curious, in which communities do you find this to be the norm?
It is not the norm no, as multiple people have pointed out to you. The norm is to use they when uncertain. You’ve been given plenty of examples but persist in your denial. I wonder why you want to police how other people speak and connect this with some bizarre right wing conspiracy (wokeness)?
If you read the replies to your other comments before writing this you would know that “they as singular” has centuries of use (which is besides the point as language is a living thing).
No. The norm is follow the gender assumption based on the pseudonym. If the person picked a female name, everyone would happily call the person “she”, as it should be.
However, in an article in which you speculate about the real identity behind a pseudonym, suggesting any possible gender or plurality, you should use /they/, this being the whole point of what your doing.
Can you link a style guide that captures this norm? I usually consider pseudonyms to function like a pointer to the real person when the real person is in scope. If my HN handle was JaneAustism and I was being referenced in a discussion about things pertaining to my meatspace identity and I was a male, I would expect to be described with masculine pronouns. If the discussion was not related to my meatspace identity, I would, in a pseudonymous context, not expect to be referred to as she/her just because my handle contains a female name. My gender is likely irrelevant (or at least unknown) in that context and I would expect they/them.
It’s only inconsistent to you because your understanding of english language usage seems to also be inconsistent (at least with mine, others’ commenting on this thread, and the author’s of the linked article). I find this interesting in the abstract.
I think that would be a more appropriate theory if we were talking about all the silly pronoun fields every site feels the need to add so that everyone and their mother can virtue signal to infinity and beyond as if they were a good/correct UX or as if they enriched the content of the site or something unfounded. But we're talking about something that predates any sort of culture war of the last 20 years (which I do not deny exists, I just don't see it being waged here).
>The only harm happening here is people like you overstepping bounds and ultimately trashing actually correct usage of the language because you are operating under some pretext that there's a woke conspiracy to remove all gendered pronouns from colloquial usage.
So it seems like you agree with me. The sensitivity and derision of the (more or less) correct usage of a pronoun indicates culture war malarky here.
No, I’m a pedantic grammar nazi. I’m responding to people overcorrecting and suggesting incorrect language usage because of the perception that there’s a culture war to fight. I just want people to use language correctly and with precision because it soothes my OCD.
The only harm happening here is people like you overstepping bounds and ultimately trashing actually correct usage of the language because you are operating under some pretext that there's a woke conspiracy to remove all gendered pronouns from colloquial usage. This conspiracy may well exist, but it simply does not apply to this situation. As multiple people have explained and linked, the singular "they" is used to refer to an antecedent of unknown or unspecified gender or when gender is simply irrelevant. "They" is not being used because "satoshi could be trans let's not hurt zer feelings". It's because we literally don't know. You're barking up the wrong tree here. I care because I cringe every time someone says "We were just at Mary and I's house baking cookies." which is so obviously incorrect it drives me up a wall. I guess that makes me a grammar nazi.
I'm not being an anti-trans culture warrior with this argument. My point is that this post is made less clear and harder to read by referring to Satoshi as 'they' whenever possible. I am being anti-political-correctness because it's ruining written and spoken English.
Satoshi is a masculine name, so it's reasonable to expect the author to use masculine singular pronouns. Even if Satoshi is a woman or a group of people, we can still refer to the pseudonym construct as 'he' because the construct is masculine.
It's needlessly confusing to use the singular 'they' in reference to a specific individual with a gendered name, especially when the whole point of the article is that Satoshi is this one man. And most other writing I find on Satoshi refers to him as a 'he' without a problem.
> I am being anti-political-correctness because it's ruining written and spoken English.
You incessantly continue to miss the point. People have explained multiple times that this isn't about political correctness. You are seriously missing the point.
It doesn't matter what you think about whether it's politically correct or not to assume Satoshi's gender. And it doesn't matter what I think either. And it doesn't matter whether either of us even give a shit.
What matters is that it is objectively correct, colloquial, and precise to wield the singular `they` when discussing an unknown person. It doesn't matter whether they've picked Mary or Satoshi as their pseudonymous handle.
> we can still refer to the pseudonym construct as 'he' because the construct is masculine.
I'd love to be introduced to a group or style guide that has adopted this style. I have never encountered it. The closest I've encountered is just a default "use he/him because most people just assume male without really thinking about it when online". I would never, as a pedant, use a masculine pronoun to describe e.g. a forum user of unknown meatspace characteristics irrespective of the gender of their handle unless there was a pretext of role playing. If I'm Jisoo on waffles.fm I don't expect to be referred to as "she".
Even if you're correct (and I think you are) that it can be considered correct to use a gendered pronoun when a pseudonym is clearly masculine or feminine and you're strictly referring to the pseudonym, the author of the essay is simply making a style choice and I'm perplexed how you consider his correct usage of the english language (as it's been used since the 14th century) to be ruining the english language. EDIT: also I actually think the author is not referring to the "pseudonym construct" in the essay, I think the author is deliberately referring to the unknown entity that goes by satoshi rather than satoshi full stop (but I may be wrong).
Now if the author said something along the lines of "Satoshi and I's shared understanding of the cypherpunk ... ... " I'd pull out the pitchfork immediately.
The linguistic analysis does not hold water. Len was born in PA. He would not start using British language patterns like that. but rather retain native tongue.
"It's a very well-researched and respectful article, but to the best of my knowledge, Len was not Satoshi. Worth reading for the history and the conclusions about mental health, though."
https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/1364325186372304904?t=yY...