/biz/ - Business & Finance

In security contexts - and especially in cryptography - Trusted is an epithet. In fact it's almost an obscenity. Trusted means something or someone has the power to break your security by acting in bad faith. Every Trusted role is, by definition, a weakness in security. You can see why security professionals are aghast when people talk about "Trusted Computing Modules" becoming a standard part of computers.

Good security means trying to limit the damage a Trusted role can do, even if you can't completely eliminate the Trusted role. And up until that point, limiting the damage had been the best that any digital-cash system had been able to do. But Satoshi had developed, as far as I'm aware, the first digital cash system with no Trusted role at all and thus, no way to abuse a Trusted position.

And the Trustless nature of Bitcoin was the main thing that convinced me Satoshi wasn't scamming. He built a highway with no toll bridge. People could use Bitcoin without creating any obligation to pay him anything ever. He wasn't selling coins, he was giving them away for solving hashes. He reserved nothing for himself.

He wasn't trying to line his own pockets at the expense of others. In fact I don't think I've ever encountered someone so completely uninterested in personal wealth. You know the old saw about being able to get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit? Satoshi doesn't want the credit. Two years later he walked away and left the pseudonym behind. And hard as this may be to believe, it looks like he doesn't even want to be paid for it. As far as we can tell he mined approximately a million Bitcoins and has never sold a single one of them.

The first anonymous multibillionaire is being absolutely hardcore about demonstrating to the world that he is not ripping anybody off. He is not even using his privileged early-miner position for personal gain. Just stop and think about that for a minute, before you go on.

Honestly I’m very surprised Tethercoin isn’t dead yet. What they propose, economically speaking, simply will not work. They got themselves somehow declared to be the only way to get money OUT of a major wallet, which props up their transaction volume, but if the people haven’t already walked away with most of the money they’re supposedly holding but won’t say where, then I’m very surprised.

That endless fight, starting with the block size fight, with everybody yelling and nobody listening, pretty much convinced me that the “community” which had grown around Bitcoin was in deep trouble.

The differences between the various proposed technical changes to the block chain, are far less important to the futures of those forks, than the integrity of the people who support and do business using them.

But the technical merits were never discussed by most. Instead, repetitive sound bites and slogans about them containing absolutely no new information were shouted. Integrity was seldom displayed either. Instead, the fight was carried forward almost exclusively by partisans who had already decided what was the only possible solution that they would accept, and in many cases using tactics that inspire an absolute refusal to support their interests, or even participate in the communities where they are found.
These factions had no interest whatsoever in reaching a consensus. And nothing prevented each from implementing their idea and launching, with no hard feelings from anybody and no fight. The only thing they were really fighting over was the name “Bitcoin,” which was absolutely unrelated to the technical merit of any proposal. And, to a first approximation, the other merits of having the name is a thing that none of them even mentioned during the fight.

Satoshi definitely understood, and planned, that there would probably be server farms devoted to mining and that economies of scale and infrastructure would eventually drive individuals with ordinary desktop machines out of the mining business by being more efficient and making it unprofitable for the less efficient machines.

But I’m pretty sure he didn’t think of miners in places with artificially low subsidized rates for electricity outcompeting all other miners because of that advantage, driving the concentration of the vast majority of hashing power into just one country where it’s subject to the orders and whims of just one government and a few businessmen who
pal around with each other.

So he probably figured, yes, there’d be a few dozen large-ish server farms and a couple hundred small-ish server farms, but I’m pretty sure he envisioned them being scattered around the planet, wherever people find it worthwhile to install server farms for other reasons.

I’m fairly sure Satoshi’s notion of the eventual centralization of hashing power didn’t really encompass todays nearly-complete centralization in a single country, owned by a set of people who are subject to the whims and commands of a single government, who very clearly know each other and work together whenever it’s convenient.

And I find it worrisome.

Those enormous mining farms, and the way economics drove them together, are a structural problem with converting electricity into security.

I am not comfortable with the implication that, for any Proof-of-Work block chain including Bitcoin, economics will eventually devolve to the point where, when Beijing says ‘jump’ the mining and security of that block chain says ‘how high?’

And that is one of the greatest reasons why I look around for a different means of securing block chains.

During his college years, Martti had become fascinated by the rise in Scandinavia of the Pirate Party, which promoted technology over political engagement as the way to move society. Napster and other music-sharing services hadn’t waited for politics to reform copyright law; they forced the world to change. As Martti pondered these ideas, he began wondering whether money might be the next thing vulnerable to technological disruption. After a brief spasm of random web searches, Martti had found his way to the primitive website at Bitcoin.org.

""I would like to help with Bitcoin.""

In his first email to Satoshi Nakamoto, in May 2009, Martti had offered his services:

"I would like to help with Bitcoin, if there’s something I can do," he wrote.

Before reaching out to Satoshi, Martti had written about Bitcoin on anti-state.org, a forum dedicated to the possibility of an anarchist society organized only by the market. Using the screen name Trickster, Martti gave a brief description of the Bitcoin idea and asked for thoughts:

"What do you think about this? I’m really excited about the thought of something practical that could truly bring us closer to freedom in our lifetime :-)"

Martti included a link to this post in his first email to Satoshi, and Satoshi quickly read it and responded.

"Your understanding of Bitcoin is spot on," Satoshi wrote back.

While Satoshi never discussed anything personal in these emails, he would banter with Martti about little things. In one email, Satoshi pointed to a recent exchange on the Bitcoin email list in which a user referred to bitcoin as a "cryptocurrency," a neologism inspired by the cryptographic functions that made it run.

"Maybe it’s a word we should use when describing bitcoin. Do you like it?" Satoshi asked.

Despite Martti’s relative lack of programming experience, Satoshi gave him full permission to make changes to the core Bitcoin software on the server where it was stored—something that, to this point, only Satoshi could do. Starting in August, the log of changes to the software showed that Martti was now the main actor. When the next version of Bitcoin, 0.2, was released, Satoshi gave credit for most of the improvements to Martti.

At about the same time, Martti set up an online forum where the small but growing group of people attracted to the technology could communicate.

The Bitcoin forum went online in the fall of 2009 and soon attracted a few regulars. One of them, who called himself NewLibertyStandard, talked about the need for a website where people could buy and sell bitcoins for real money. Martti had been talking with Satoshi about something similar, but he was eager to help NewLibertyStandard. In the very first recorded transaction of bitcoin for United States dollars, Martti sent NewLibertyStandard 5,050 bitcoins to use for seeding the new exchange. In return, Martti got $5.02 by PayPal.

interesting, please continue OP

>>15924547
If you want to know, you can just ask Craig himself.

>>15924855
Fuck off retard

Interesting stuff, please continue, OP.

>>15924706
Proof that Cuck Wright, or anyone else claiming to be Satoshi, is a fraud.
He will remain anonymous until the CIA find out who he is and someone leaks it. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been anonymous in the first place

>>15924815
>the very first recorded transaction of bitcoin for United States dollars, Martti sent NewLibertyStandard 5,050 bitcoins to use for seeding the new exchange. In return, Martti got $5.02 by PayPal.

>>15924855
Ray totally ridiculed Craig on bitcointalk.

>>15924934
>didn’t need money
>didn’t identify himself
>didn’t want credit
Satoshi was almost certainly CIA, or some other three letter

>>15924934
Ray's comments on the matter are pretty insightful:

>Okay, big nope. Satoshi absolutely never lost a key. He kept correspondence keys I'd deleted a whole year previously and was amazed that anyone would EVER lose keys. I remember him being puzzled about the idea that people might not get further payments to old txouts because they'd delete or lose keys after spending txOuts. Exact words: "why would anyone *ever* delete a key?"

especially this
>The nicest thing anybody could do for Satoshi would be to convince the world that the Satoshi pseudonym was his.

>Wright will fail in this, but it's nice of him to try.

>Wright apparently has large amounts of Bitcoin of unexplained origin. It seems likely to have reached his hands via a ransomware scam - he started telling people that he was an early miner to account for the coins, and now it's looking like he's escalated to the point of claiming to be Satoshi.

>If only enough suckers would believe him, the original Satoshi could rest easier at night.

>>15925204
Yea ray was just trying to deflect the attention away from craig. Havent heard from ray since have u? Sure would be nice for him to clear it up

>>15925292
Clear up what? His profile is Cryddit on bitcointalk, you can look up his posts yourself. Craig is a completely irrelevant, unrelated person in the Satoshi story anyway, just let him continue laundering his ransomware bitcoins

>>15925204
>>15925343
craig does not have a large amount of bitcoin though

>>15925343
And u are?...An expert?

>>15925371
Who is?

>>15924706
He did sell some, I actually have proof.

>>15924547
Is there no end to the retardation

>>15924706
>As far as we can tell he mined approximately a million Bitcoins and has never sold a single one of them.
This shows he has absolute faith that what he created will succeed in what he intended it to do, disrupt all fiat currencies and become the global reserve currency.

Imagine, if you had ABSOLUTE faith that Bitcoin's marketcap will eventually reach tens or hundreds of trillions of today's dollars, why would you ever spend even a single Satoshi until that happens?

But following this mindset, he still set out to mine over a million bitcoins.
He didn't let the network run on its own once enough people were running the software, nope, he went on to build a stash of 1 million out of a 21 million total before stopping.

Remember, this is a man who said "why would you ever delete a key?"

You know what I see here?
Combine these traits:
- absolute faith in global hyper-Bitcoinization
- never deletes keys
- INTENTIONALLY kept mining until he had 1 million out of a 21 million total final supply
- pretends to be dead and disappears completely

I see someone who knows that if global hyper-Bitcoinization happens, with that many bitcoins, he will RULE THE WORLD. But in order to avoid people getting on his trail and preventing him from getting into power (which most 3-letter agencies will most likely do), he must disappear, and he cannot ever touch any coins afterwards or this illusion will break. He can only resurface when Bitcoin had taken over the world, and that is still not the case.

I see someone with plans of WORLD DOMINATION. Hence, something as trivial as a phony claiming his identity and starting a civil war over an altcoin is of no concern to him. Not even in the same realm of level of power he is targeting.

>>15924547
>>15924706
>>15924776
>>15924790
>>15924809
>>15924815
>ctrl + f "Craig"
>0 results

You really expect me to read that shit without even mentioning the hottest candidate for the Satoshi title? Big yikes

The idea behind crypto currency was noble but it already has been totally undermined and compromised by the all powerful Judeo-Globalist Finance Mafia.

>>15925153
>>15924934
https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm

>>15925534
What's the proof? I've always thought he probably would have sold some coins not directly linked to himself if he wasn't govt

>>15925618
lel

he doesn't care about this stuff, he was scared of govt along the way

sirtoshi

>>15925946
*chink
ftfy

>>15925351
he does not have any noteworthy technical understanding of bitcoin or crypto either.

>>15924547
test

>>15925981
You can track a few blocks that only he could have mined and they have had coins moved.

>>15924547
holy shit these are great pieces

>‘cypherpunks’ was where I became aware of and started corresponding with Hal. Although, way back then, I think we were both mostly annoying to each other. And possibly to others as well. Hal had been stridently political all the way from those days (and probably before) to the day he died, and in retrospect, I think I really needed some ‘remedial human-being lessons’ and some wider education at the time. I’ve learned a lot since then – and perspective outside the narrow specialties we studied in school really does matter.

LOL this is a fucking anime

>>15925837
how much do they pay you?

>>15925038

>I dont feel so good...

>It was when we started talking about floating-point types in accounting code that I learned Hal was involved in the effort. Hal was reviewing the transaction scripting language, and both the code he had, and the code I had, interacted with the accounting code. So Satoshi brought him in for the discussion on floating point, and both of us reviewed the accounting code.

"SO IT'S YOU... yare yare"

>>15928038
>how much do they pay you?
Manny ruuupppeee sirs. Very good value. My family eat curry every day sirs, thanks to sirs Crej Sanjhoosi

>>15924547
It was most likely Hal Finney. Satoshi Nakamoto lived close enough to Hal that his name could be picked out at random through a phone book. RIP Hal

>>15928291
>hurr Hal Finney was mailing himself and bug fixing his code for himself
no

>>15925618
I, for one, welcome the rule of Satoshi

>>15925618
>he will RULE THE WORLD
so long he is not an aussie shitposting faglord i'm okay with that.

>>15925618
This is the point you put your tinfoil hat on. My take on Satoshi after reading as much of his correspondence as I can; he didn't care about power, he cared about freedom of privacy. Past tense because he's dead

>>15929240
This. Satoshi belongs up there with Jonas Salk in the pantheon of great men who did great things for noble reasons. Good reads op

Heartened that only 2 glue huffing Craig wright morons are slithering around on this thread

poo poo pee pee

>>15924815
>Despite Martti’s relative lack of programming experience, Satoshi gave him full permission to make changes to the core Bitcoin software on the server where it was stored—something that, to this point, only Satoshi could do.

That would explain why Bitcoin has so many vulnerabilities and can't scale. It was worked on by an amateur who was given the job due to nepotism.

>>15930459
0 vulnerabilities lol

>>15928824
This. If Hal was Satoshi he was a total schizo

Satoshi wasn't just one person

>>15931258
You are correct. It was Craig Wright, Dave Kleiman and the late professor David Rees. The story have already been told, and all the noise is simply political misdirection. Everyone serious in the space knows what I said is true, but have a lot of incentives and financial and political interests at stake for it not to be well known. But by all means, keep the disinfo flowing.