Ask HN: Why do people care about Satoshi Nakamoto's identity?

[faanghacker]

Why is this even a thing, people wondering about who Satoshi really is? What good would it do for the rest of us to find out his real identity? Bitcoin has already taken off without him publicly revealing himself. There are plenty of cryptocurrency experts out there commenting on it.

Is this just a case of celebrity worship? Or is there something practical that I'm missing?

I have searched this question online and haven't found any threads discussing it. The only results I've found were threads discussing whom he might be, or why he might have chosen to stay anonymous.

[mikewarot]

Estimates place the size of Satoshi Nakamoto's holdings at between 600,000 BTC and 1.1 million BTC.

The vast majority of Satoshi Nakamoto's wallets received a 50 BTC block reward and have remained dormant since.

If those resources were to come into play, it could cause a major disruption of the value of bitcoin.

[muzani]

Also someone with that much wealth probably owes some tax somewhere. He's pretty much El Dorado.

[syndeo]

(For the lazy, that's between $33.5B and $61.5B, at current exchange rates.)

[sk11001]

Because it's interesting, someone did a significant thing and we don't know who they are.

> What good would it do for the rest of us to find out his real identity?

Other people's curiosity isn't about you or some potential good that you receive.

[LiquidSky]

You’re really overthinking this.

It’s a mystery. People like mysteries. People naturally want to see mysteries solved. It’s that simple.

[callalex]

For me it’s interesting because in the general case, nobody is perfect at opsec and eventually slips up. Satoshi is a super prominent counter-example.

[DANmode]

Yes.

Either an absolute legend in the sec pub,

or powerful group(s) have incentive to retain the secret.

[nullc]

Fairly few people do, but some of them can't seem to shut up about it. Media outlets like the cheap clicks too.

It's also like those cheap "reddit comments" that are discouraged on HN-- the sort of thing anyone can comment on which most people will find mildly interesting.

The discussion threads are usually low in insight and even contain a lot of outright falsehoods, but the people involved are having fun.

[nunobrito]

The identity seems to have been shared initially between 2 people. One of them being Craig Wright, the other is the genius Dave Kleinman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Kleiman

Dave died years ago following depression, before releasing bitcoin he published papers on the topic of Cipher Block Chaining and similar cryptographic tech: https://www.davekleiman.com/

This has already been known for years. There were good reasons to keep his anonimity at the time, especially if you consider that his main customer was the same government where cryptography tech is considered an ammunition. At that time he could face jail for his work, or in the best scenario lose his customers/reputation.

You have to remember that in 2009 and next years, BTC was something only relevant for cybersec researchers and criminals. You would not want to be seen as associated with the latter.

[defrost]

Maybe those two, maybe not.

There's a very high chance that Satoshi is some form of modern day Nicolas Bourbaki with a segmented shared key.

Whether it's a majority vote share or an all in or nothing key split, that's a good back story on the long silence, either some are dead or not everybody agrees to move forward on joint releases or cashing in.

[cbxyp]

Craig Wright is a fraud and there are numerous instances where people have caught him directly contradicting the opinions and factual assertions about code Satoshi wrote. Like a patent troll without any patent.

[mrkramer]

Craig Wright being Satoshi is unpopular opinion in the Bitcoin community but I think there is a good chance that he is indeed Satoshi or that he was a leader of Satoshi group.

I did some research on him and his past activities, and the things that I found on the Web and on the Internet Archive are somewhat compelling.

I will write it up sooner or later as a blog post(the clues that I found).

[ajvpot]

FYI Craig Wright’s claims are quite contentious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Steven_Wright

[yen223]

Do people still care? This is the first time in a long time I've seen Satoshi being mentioned at all. Though admittedly I'm not big into crypto.

[iraKleiman]

neither is he

[aaronrobinson]

They care. A bunch of previously unseen by the public emails got released of them interacting with others thought to be candidates. I expect they’re dead, already captured by the American Stasi or is hiding very well from them.

[kayamon]

Bitcoin works because you can prove it mathematically without Satoshi's involvement. He made a quote in the recent email dump that reinforces this: "self-evident proof of the majority consensus”. [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1760718747768087033

The world doesn't need Satoshi for Bitcoin to continue working. And so the reason people want to find his identity is because there exist people in the world who lie, cheat, steal and ultimately kill. Those people want to find Satoshi, to punish him for inventing a fair system of economic trade that doesn't cut them into it.

[aChattuio]

That's probably the most ridiculous answer there is.

1. The chance that something like Bitcoin is a logical virus and being though of is.not that far fetched. All of it's tec was already here.

2. Just because people believe in Bitcoin and don't understand it doesn't make it fair.

3. People like to think about it because he is still the inventor even if his invention is responsible for a tremendous amount of CO2 and he should be very rich which makes this 'mystery' interesting

And as said in a thread yesterday: Bitcoin doesn't even solve the trust issue.

[iraKleiman]

common core math

[sneak]

Human beings are obsessed with narrative: x did y to z. This repeats everywhere - the identity of the characters is as important as the events themselves.

I don’t know why this is, but I do know that it is much, much bigger than Bitcoin.

It’s not about the billions of dollars, it’s not about the mystery. It’s because we are pack animals obsessed with hierarchy and cannot rest as organisms until we identify which people are important.

It could be related to survival in pre-civilized times. Not being aware of the social hierarchy and society’s expectations placed on you based on your position in it could very well have proven to be lethal throughout most of human history.

[faanghacker]

Great answer, thank you for your perspective.

[illuminant]

If Craig Wright is Satoshi he can claim it all as his intellectual property, which could be worth billions.

If Satoshi remains a ghost, it belongs to everyone and it is whatever it is.

I think mostly people only want to prove it isn't Craig Wright.

[RicoElectrico]

Can he, though? On which grounds? Patent not so much because he published it before filing, copyright also is out of question because of MIT licence.

[DANmode]

> he can claim it all as his intellectual property, which could be worth billions.

Let's pretend he does the impossible: what does this look like, in your opinion?

[cusspvz]

I think it is a mixture of both celebrity worship and the fact that his stake within his invention is significantly high. He specifically stated that he didn't want to be associated with the project anymore, so I'm pretty sure he had his own reasoning behind that decision. Taking into consideration the fact that he used a nickname to keep his anonymity, I assume that not becoming a public figure was one of those.

[ParadisoShlee]

We don't want to hurt him..... We just want to talk

[barber_the_dope]

It's all money laundering. The creators are probably Russian oligarchs and mobsters. There is no Satoshi, just Ivan, Vladimir, and so on.

[NewJazz]

Gotta get demand up for their fossil fuel based economy somehow!

[reducesuffering]

No it's very high probability he's not that.

[apache101]

Or the CIA

[lionkor]

"Its probably the baddies again!"

[mrkramer]

It's like asking why historians care who was the author of some historical piece of art or literature. We mammals are curious, curiosity is driving evolution and innovation. The quest of understanding the world our us and beyond us never stops.

[mrkramer]

The quest of understanding the world around us*

[swman]

I don't personally care about his identity.

As a layman I think its cool that there's some mystery dude who built something cool, "valuable" (debatable), and then disappeared.

I'd honestly be disappointed if his identity is ever revealed. Even worse would be if it turns out to be some d bag we all know lol.

[DANmode]

There are a couple of "d bags we all know" on the tech/hacker side that would make for a very satisfying answer to this question.

[a-dub]

because it's a tale of intrigue!

[cozzyd]

People like puzzles.

[iraKleiman]

I just want to know his ip address “Hint”

[slater]

i always thought it was that Swiss guy living in Tokyo

[RCitronsBroker]

you know what? one factoid that just came to mind is that he listed an @gmx mail address on the original Bitcoin paper. I genuinely don’t know a single person using GMX without some sort of connection to DACh (Germany, Austria and Switzerland).