I think it's either Hal Finney or Dave Kleiman. Both have background in crypto and security, and both have been deceased since early 2010s - just before the meteoric rise of bitcoin. The second part is key, because given the prominence and status of bitcoin they would have been unable to stay anonymous or silent.
> they would have been unable to stay anonymous or silent.
Not necessarily. Satoshi obviously planned his pseudonymity from the start. The decision to leave the project may very well have been taken long before it was carried out.
Satoshi could be alive and well. Maybe he carried on his work under his real name, as one developer among many, or maybe not. He obviously thought fairness and trust was important enough to value to form for him to prove the non-possbility of backdating the chain (later known as premining). Planned obsolescence for the creator plays well into this scenario.
In hindsight, having no real creator has served Bitcoin well. People would have listened too much to the creator for a decentralized decision process by consensus to form.
>Not necessarily. Satoshi obviously planned his pseudonymity from the start. The decision to leave the project may very well have been taken long before it was carried out.
I don't think so. I can't disprove your claim, but people aren't very good at that kind of planning and execution. Too many things can go wrong for them to either maintain anonymity or prevent others from maintaining this anonymity.
It comes off as a bad Hollywood movie. I think the person behind Satoshi has died.
>In hindsight, having no real creator has served Bitcoin well.
We'll see. It's too early to tell. One thing's for sure, I see a lot of less places that take bitcoin as currency then I did a few years ago. Also, the community is much more divided, and there are massive structural issues with bitcoin, from technical issues around the protocol itself, to lack of unified vision leading to forks and arguments, to massive amount of illegal behaviour.
>People would have listened too much to the creator for a decentralized decision process by consensus to form.
Is the leadership decentralized though? At the end of the day, someone needs to hold the keys for the code the runs the bitcoin protocol. Ultimately that individual or group has the power to do anything they want with bitcoin.
Have you considered the possibility that Satoshi was some random cryptography enthusiast of little note who died in a traffic accident? He probably told nobody about his project, and the lengths he went to to remain anonymous make me think he used full disk encryption -- so his family, not knowing his passphrase, probably unknowingly destroyed all evidence of his work on Bitcoin after he passed away.
What makes you think Satoshi had any background in cryptography? Everything about the Bitcoin whitepaper and even the design of Bitcoin itself says otherwise.
You must be a new bitcoin user. Before Craig Wright came into the scene, has anyone heard of Kleiman? Legit question. What evidence is there of Dave? Dave wasn't even around then, zero evidence exists outside of CSW's claims.
>Before Craig Wright came into the scene, has anyone heard of Kleiman?
The salient part of my argument is that the individual behind the 'Satoshi' persona has most likely died in early 2010s. I have no idea if either Kleiman or Finney (or both or others) were Satoshi, but both fit the profile of Satoshi, and both have died in that time-frame. If not them, then it would be some individual or individuals like them. If you are sure it couldn't have been Kleiman, I won't argue and I will defer to you.
I have followed Craig Wright's claims and he does strike me as a bullshitter (for one thing, he promised 'irrefutable' proof and never delivered). So I'm OK with writing his claims off as a total fabrication. I could also see him trying to take credit for the work of the deceased person behind Satoshi IF he was somehow connected to early bitcoin development and knew who Satoshi was.
I apologize for not being clear enough. "has anyone heard of Kleiman? Legit question." By this I mean what substantive proof exists that Kleiman was interested with the underlying technologies that bitcoin incorporates?
> He was getting interviewed by US TV stations so he had some reputation in the security industry.
The field is pretty vast. This is like saying because I've made websites, I can somehow fix your laptop. (I probably could but I couldn't come up with a solution fast and well thought out.) Satoshi was clearly meticulous about this, if you've read enough of their posts, it's clear as day.
> And btw who heard of Jeff Bezos before Amazon? Nobody.
A lot of top talent is in hedge funds. So, I'm sure many people were looking. It is fair to say I choose a weak logical argument but the point is still valid (hopefully the added clarity to my intent pushes us deeper into our actual points).
> You can not judge somebody just by looking at their past. People change and evolve.
Sure, this applies if we're trying to gauge someone's character but this doesn't apply in the expertise required to be Satoshi. Terry Tao (expert mathematician) isn't going to just randomly come up with the next bulletproof SHA function. It's out of his scope. Bitcoin is out of the scope of Kleiman's skillset. I have seen zero evidence to the contrary, other than a false narrative (perpetuated by 'news') that him and CSW created Bitcoin. Even the court has thrown out numerous dated evidence [1,2].
Being a computer forensics specialist doesn't easily port to creating a blend of PGP, Hashcash, eCash, bitgold, etc. Satoshi was an expert at this stuff. What evidence shows that Kleiman did anything? Even in the Kleiman/CSW court cases, there isn't evidence that's been produced by either party. That's the court of law. Please don't avoid this point, no evidence exists to tie Kleiman even to the ideas of digital cash. I haven't seen any and I looked into it heavily, maintaining an open mind. I got no dog in the fight, just a sizable curiosity to this mysterious character.
Like Gavin Andresen said Satoshi wasn't a cryptographer.
First reference in Bitcoin Whitepaper is "W. Dai, b-money". But Satoshi never heard of it, Adam Back suggested to Satoshi to read it and he decided to reference it in Bitcoin Whitepaper.
"I suggested Satoshi should look into B-Money, which he didn’t seem to know about at that time, and this is how I think B-Money was added to the paper."[1]
Satoshi said to Wei Dai "I was very interested to read your b-money page. I’m getting ready to release a paper that expands on your ideas into a complete working system. Adam Back (hashcash.org) noticed the similarities and pointed me to your site."[2]
Satoshi seemed to be very good C++ programmer who had interests in electronic cash and cryptography but not a cryptographer.
Look and hear what Gavin said in his presentation:
When I said 'no proof exists', I didn't mean 'no proof of authority'. I mean no document exists. Assuming Satoshi 'covered ones tracks' is a straw-man because then you open up the possibility to anyone being Satoshi, not an exclusive person.
Please understand that many people talked with Satoshi through email as well. Those emails are mostly private. When someone points to an authority, the entire argument is a straw-man, even with someone very relevant to the discussion.
> Satoshi seemed to be very good C++ programmer who had interests in electronic cash and cryptography but not a cryptographer.
What physical circumstantial evidence exists that is shows Kleiman was good at anything you've described or was even interested in these during 2008 or earlier (heck, I can't find anything prior to 2013)? What about any interest into any digital cash/gold attempts?
The argument you're giving is fairly persistent in the crypto community. I'm not entirely sure why, except intellectual laziness. The irony here is 'proof of authority' argument...is an absolute contradiction to what bitcoin's primary function is (trustless 3rd party system). Why are people lifting up a 3rd party and not the code/evidence? An opinion (no matter how relevant) isn't what we're looking for, we are looking for evidence. Did scientific reasoning leave everyone?
Finally finished it this summer. So fascinating and so disturbing at the same time. Re: him being Satoshi, it's the type of thing of which he was certainly capable, but after a certain point in the development of his operations, I don't think he had the time.
From what I've seen, it just seems too implausible to me even beyond the practical considerations. Satoshi was carefully guarded, but I suspect something not that far off from his real personality shone through in all of his posts and emails. Maybe even something very close to it. I have no idea what his moral character is, but my gut feeling is that he's just not the sort of person who would work as a bogus pharmaceutical seller, spammer, drug trafficker, arms trafficker, and murderer. Of course I can't possibly claim to know this with any certainty, but I just have the feeling it's very unlikely he's anything close to a Pablo Escobar-type.
My guess is he's a single individual whose real identity has never been publicly suggested as a serious Satoshi suspect.
I think Satoshi is Craig Wright like it or not. I did some research on Craig's historical writings and I compared it to Satoshi and I found many similarities between them. I will publish my research when I get more time.
I did my research as a historian would do so I started from the basics and the first clue was Satoshi used perfect British English so most likely he is not American like some people imply. And why an American would link to British daily national newspaper cover like Satoshi did in Genesis Block?[1][2]
I met Craig last year in person and spent some time reading his book. No way he is Satoshi; he refused to give straight answers to rather simple questions and spent the whole time making rather obvious allegations. From all the dodgy people I met in crypto over the last years, if I ever met someone where just everything screams “conman” then it was Craig. I might be wrong, who knows. But I’d be willing to make a huge bet against him.
Sure it can. His use of remailers makes me think he used full disk encryption. His sudden disappearance makes me think he unexpectedly died (e.g. in a traffic accident), and his family probably did not know his passphrase. All evidence of this person's work on Bitcoin was probably unintentionally destroyed in that scenario, and the people who destroyed it have no idea what their loved one was up to before his death (and will never mention it, for lack of knowledge).
