Bitcoin Forum

I've just finished listening to another Internet radio interview about bitcoin, and although some mistakes should be expected, please avoid spreading the meme that Satoshi is a "world renown" cryptologist.  He is not well known worldwide outside of this bitcoin community, and may not have training in cryptography.

Or rather, *nothing* is known about Satoshi outside of bitcoin, and most I've talked to believe it's a pseudonym.

I too was under the impression that Satoshi worked at a university somewhere due to his publishing of the bitcoin details in a paper.  Most non-academic projects don't do this.  When people said Satoshi was just a pseudonym, I was like "No way, there's a paper that lists all of his credentials, etc." and then when I checked I realized the only identifying information in that paper is his email, hosted at a free email provider.  Searches based on that email yield only bitcoin-related results.

Ironically, he is now a world renowned cryptologist.

Please, don't keep spreading the word that Satoshi is from Japan.  While I found a mention of somebody with his name graduating from a high school in New York (on Classmates.com), there is no reason to suspect that is even him either.

Also..... don't say "bitcoin.com", which is a completely different website based off of a completely different concept, but still is electronic currency or at least electronic money exchange.  The confusion is something that I think the "bitcoin.org" community is going to need to confront eventually, but it generally is easy to distinguish between the two ideas.

Might be a good investment to try to pick it up from that company. I bet it'll be worth a lot more as a bitcoin wallet than whatever is going on there now. Googling "bitcoin.com" give bitcoin.org as the top hit, lol.

I heard he was born in a mental institution and he sleeps only one hour a night.

I actually placed a backorder on the domain as of last week when I realised it expires soon.

I didnt want to bring it up in case the owner googles it and sees the interest before it expires. If they renew it the other option is to setup a bounty to purchase it from the owner. I did this because I came across a forum where they were saying how crappy bitcoin was and they werent even talking about bitcoin.org

I had to sign up and fix their assumptions based on the wrong domain.

Oh, I hope you get it easily. I'm going to tell my grandkids all about how grandpa knew bitcoin was the new money and how I generated 9 blocks ON MY OWN back in 2010. But that's not nearly as cool as owning bitcoin.com.

I have my doubts now :P


 They havent updated the site for 2 years. At least they should allow it to be used for something as cool as the actual bitcoin project.

[quote author=FreeMoney link=topic=2350.msg31545#msg31545 date=1292739968

Oh, I hope you get it easily. I'm going to tell my grandkids all about how grandpa knew bitcoin was the new money and how I generated 9 blocks ON MY OWN back in 2010. But that's not nearly as cool as owning bitcoin.com.
[/quote]

And your great-great-great kids, which presumably be something on the order of 55 of them.

Well, he IS now, isn't he ?

he is what?

I think that's a compliment, but I'm not sure.

Is it safe to say Satoshi's paper is based on the work of world reknown cryptologists?  For instance in Satoshi's paper he references Wei Dai who basically wrote the C++ Crypto library.

You think you only have 72 years but you forget to take into account technological advancement.

I don't know, actually I'm in favor of lying about Satoshi's credentials and also about transactions being completely free to lure people in. People keep buying Big Macs even though they look nothing like the ones from the commercials, don't they?

That's how to run a pyramid scheme, where you're trying to charge money for hot air.  Bitcoin has more merit than that.  Satoshi's work has more value than that.  Let's save the lying for the wongo juice, magic salt water, and the fountain of youth vitamins.

Well, 87% of the surveyed women said that bitcoin did in fact reduce their wrinkles.

Exactly because Bitcoin has tremendous value I think it's ok to lie a little. It's not like people will go "Oh man, Bitcoin is absolute genius!! Oh wait disregard that, Bitcoin sucks because its creator was not famous as I was told".

100% of the surveyed Bitcoin users said that heating with Bitcoin makes for a nice and cozy home :)

People aren't stupid. You lie and it will bite you in the ass. Don't we always argue for openness and transparency?

Just say we don't know shit about who Satoshi is.

I think you are overestimating the reaction of people when discovering little white lies.

+1

Does anyone have a link to the interview that spawned this thread?

I think you'll find if you search on "one radio network bitcoin" or something like that, brucewagner also gave the link, but I'm too lazy to search :)

The central banksters have created the biggest lies in human history. Dont start bitcoin down that path , it is different and better than those fraudsters.

Bitcoin is based on the work of world renowned cryptographers. Unless satoshi is actually wei dai .......  :D

Because Bitcoin has tremendous value, it's OK to underpromise and overdeliver. It always turns out better that way, in the long run.

If you lie, you only need one prominent journalist to say "I tried it, and it's crap, it doesn't do what they say it does", and the public loses interest.

Well said!

Trust is Bitcoin's biggest barrier to success.  I don't think there is anything we can do to speed up the process of getting people to trust that bitcoin is solid; it takes time to build trust.  However, there is plenty we could do to lose that trust, including overpromising or misrepresenting what bitcoin can do.

Bitcoin is beta software; nobody should trust it 100%.  Do not invest your life savings in bitcoin-- in fact, do not invest any money you're not willing to lose.  Expect more ponzi schemes and fraud.  Expect irrational valuation bubbles, and, while the bitcoin economy is small, expect people to try to manipulate the bitcoin markets.

I considered that too. But I looked into Wei Dai's online persona, and he has so many current interests that I don't think he would have time for Bitcoin.

Maybe that what Wei Dai want YOU to think?  ;D

Maybe you're right. But be careful of spreading misinformation.

Yeah, you are right. I guess I didn't express myself well. I wasn't advocating lying to journalists/mainstream media when I said that, I was thinking more along the lines of getting family/friends with short attention span interested.

I agree that Wei Dai does not have time.  He is a busy guy since I've tried contacting him last month.

I am not sure if I agree with this 100%.  Most successful marketing campaigns rely on successful salesmanship and marketing.  It's possible that Bitcoin could be analogous to a "sleeper hit movie" where little or no marketing is required, but those kind of movies are rare (Forrest Gump).  I'd rather do some marketing to increase the chances of Bitcoin becoming adopted.  What I don't want to do is over-promise something and under-deliver.  So, I guess the promises need to be "just right".

Just stick to the facts as you know them then you cant go wrong. Outlandish claims such as bitcoin giving you a cloak of invisibility isnt really helpful.

 :)


It might be funny to do a project where people actually do make soundbites such as "Bitcoin gets you laid" or "Bitcoin made me regrow my hair" just to poke fun at marketing ideas. :D

You must be thinking of wikileaks. I'm pretty sure bitcoin is all about the opposite of that.

Bitcoin isn't open and transparent?  Perhaps you should go over to GitHub and download the source.  Compile it and do a file comparison with the distributed executables.  Take a look at the source and compare it to the documentation.

10 foot tall I heard, with a shock of hair, red like the fires of hell. And eyes like gimlets.

Maybe you think that an anonymous payment network where the developers hide their identity is a good of example of openness and transparency, but I respectfully disagree.

The developers aren't hiding, they just don't wish to be at a disadvantage to everyone else.  What do they know about you?  Even geek fame has it's downside.

I envision Satoshi as S.R. Hadden (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UkUPED3y34) from the movie Contact.

Maybe a little less dramatic though. ;D