Bitcoin Forum

On November 3rd and 5th 2013 the ownership of Bitcoin.net and Bitcoins.org changed hands. These are two domains that were registered at the same day as Bitcoin.org with the same anonymous registration service. They changed ownership to Michael Marquardt (aka Theymos) hands.

Bitcoin.net prior whois (http://whoisrequest.org/whois/bitcoin.net), current whois (https://whoisrecord.info/d/bitcoin.net)

Bitcoins.org prior and current whois match but cannot find a public/free services to show the changes.

These domains appear to have remained "parked" in a manner commonly used by the registrar, up until the ownership changed hands. This means that the DNS did not change hands (historical record indicates the same). All of this indicates that the change of ownership required the original owner use their login credentials at the registrar to initiate the transfer. So either Satoshi handled this himself in November 2013 or he provided the account details to someone before he left his mortal coil.

How do you know satoshi owned Bitcoin.net and Bitcoins.org?
Any previous post can prove that?

I make the assumption as they were registered on the same day as bitcoin.org, with the same registrar.

Here is a search for domains (http://reversewhois.domaintools.com/?refine#q=%5B%5B%5B%22owner%22%2C%220%22%2C%22anonymousspeech%22%5D%5D%2C%5B%5B%22domain%22%2C%224%22%2C%22bitcoin%22%5D%5D%5D&historical=1) with owner "anonymousspeach" (the original registrar for bitcoins.org) and "bitcoin" in the domain name. Note those registered on 2008-08-18.

The holder of those domains has been known for a while to be Sirius (Martti Malmi)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144445.0
http://sc5.io/blog/2013/02/sc5er-intro-the-bitcoin-guy/

The fact that he sold most of his coins for under $32 back in 2011 suggests pretty strongly to me that he's not Satoshi.

This isn't so much about figuring out who Satoshi is as it is to showing he IS alive.

It is known that Sirius was given ownership of bitcoin.org but I did not see any mention of bitcoin.net and bitcoins.org. It is possible that when Satoshi handed over bitcoin.org to Sirius he also handed over bitcoin.net and bitcoins.org as well. However, bitcoin.org whois shows it moved Registrar and to a Finish ownership of some sort in 2011. Bitcoin.net and bitcoins.org did not follow the same path. They sat at Anonymousspeech until a couple months ago. This implies that if Satoshi passed ownership of those domains to Sirius along with bitcoin.org in 2011, Sirius continued to keep those domains at Anonymousspeech, paying the higher markup fee charged by that registrar, while moving bitcoin.org to his own registrar. Further, to do this Sirius would have needed to bother with setting up at Anonymousspeech OR satoshi would have given Sirius his own username and password to continue with the registration renewals at this registrar. The latter is *highly* unlikely as Satoshi used an email address provided by the same registrar for anonymous mail (vistomail.com is a webmail service of Anonymousspeech) that was likely tied to the same login.

I received the domains from an anonymous person who claimed to have worked with Satoshi in the early days. He claimed that Satoshi split up his assets before leaving in order to prevent too much centralization: The SourceForge project to Gavin, bitcoin.org to Sirius, and the two other domains to this anonymous person.

Absolutely legit. And I admire that he didn't choose to put it all in The Bitcoin Foundation's hand. I'm just trying to understand how the transfer could happen without Satoshi or at least someone having his login credentials at anonymousspeech.com.

The whois registration of bitcoin[.net][s.org] remained "locked" until Theymos took ownership Nov 2013. (Signup for a trial domaintools account to confirm all of this.) Contrast this with Bitcoin.org which changed from "locked" in May 2011 so that it could be transferred to Sirius. The transfer post-Satoshi pre-Theymos to the "anonymous" owner would have to have happened on Dec 27 2010. Why? Transfer internally between Anonymousspeech accounts would require at least extending the renewal period by one year. The last time those domains had years added was on Dec 27 2010, when the max 5 years were added. So this would have to have been the date that Satoshi handed off to the anonymous owner. It's possible that he did this in 2010 and then took his ride to the space shuttle mid 2011 to never be heard from again. But its also possible he is still alive and made the transfer himself just a couple months ago.

Welcome to Bitcoin. The foundation is a little over a year old.

it certainly dosn't make much sense even if you don't really know someone by their real name doesn't necessarily mean they are anonymous to you

the way its being described like its all over secure anonymous networks and you didn't even know them is pretty hilarious  

to say someone is anonymous really means here is all the information i possibly know about the person and see

we cannot really have any idea who they are ? well i know we are not being shared this extra information so they are not anonymous  :D

i made no claims about who satoshi IS and this thread is not about that.


The admiration for Satoshi not putting everything in their hands is still relevant. It was only 2 months ago that bitcoin.net and bitcoins.org changed hands. Either Satoshi himself or his anonymous friend that handled the change knew what they were doing.

What's more interesting to discuss is whether he passed on his other assets too (his coins). This was clearly someone who had decided to move on and leave behind the "Satoshi Nakamoto" pseudonym and all the responsibilities that came with it.

In this context, does "anonymous person" mean that you don't know his identity or that you know it but have reasons to not reveal it here?

I don't know his identity, and it was clear that he didn't want his identity to be known.

Why should we believe a word of this?

There will probably come a day when you have to attest to this under oath.

Why should I care whether you do?

I am Satoshi.  ;D

I would agree that satoshi is still alive.

I wouldn't be shocked if someone who plays a big role in the bitcoin community is satoshi and they did a great job of creating an online personality and then ditching it. Still being able to be involved with bitcoin but no one ever knowing they once went by the name satoshi.

Apparently you don't.

Very clever, you revealed my intention. Which was to have the answer carved in stone so it can always be used for reference :-)

fascinating.