Bitcoin Forum

Earlier today I posted a thread on the interesting October 10th article in the New Yorker positing that Satoshi was Michael Clear, a grad student at Trinity. After a review of some of the forum posts and paper by "Satoshi" I do not think it could be him. Even though occasional British spellings are used, the overall language is very Americanized. Also, the writer is much older than 23. He refers to the USENET, for example. Also, the writer's fluent knowledge of cryptocurrency issues is way too thorough for a youngster, even a brilliant one.

Like others I analyzed the language of the Satoshi posts and quickly noticed word collisions with posts of another contributor, Robert A. Hettinga. For example,

.......Right, exactly.
.......synchronisation (spelled with an 's')
.......etched
.......shenanigans

Hettinga founded the "Digital Commerce Society of Boston" and has been intensely interested in digital currency for many years. He would know Gavin Andresen personally through that group. As a young man he went to school in St. Thomas explaining the occasional Britishisms in his writings. Hettinga has extensive expertise in digital currencies and deep familiarity with DigiCash. He has been relentlessly pushing for a digital currency for decades.

I suspect Hettinga designed the Bitcoin system and wrote the paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" and paid (or invited) a contractor, possibly David Chaum himself, to do the heavy lifting on the coding of the initial version. Hettinga may even have coded it himself. Overall he seems to be a close match philosophically, culturally and technically to be Satoishi.

The chances of Satoshi being a single person are slim. I am skeptical of Gavin's explanation for the name Clearcoin.

Lol, please. Like satoshi is going to keep hidden and then Gavin is going to use his real name. Clear? Transparent? Get it?

I know, it's like hiding in plain sight. Well, you never know and frankly, I prefer the mystery.  ;D

Interesting. Can you provide some links?

That is interesting, but..

1. none of those are super rare.
2. I (and others I'm sure) eventually start mimicking after talking to or reading from someone for a while.
3. If I were hiding I would make sure to remove my own previously shown idiosyncrasies, but not think of ones I'd picked up from others considering them standard.

I believe Bob was a big unix fan, whereas Satoshi did his coding on Windows.

And even if that is true you find that's a smart move on your side, to out someone who clearly done something good and wished to remain anonymous?

With friends like these who needs enemies...

I've been looking at the bitcoin source code lately.  The first eight commits were by "sirius-m."  What is his supposed relationship to Satoshi?

He used to be the forum server sysadmin if I'm not mistaken.

The below is exactly what I proposed to do to help figure out who Satoshi is when I posted this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25764.msg322700#msg322700

None of them INDIVIDUALLY is rare but the combination is what clued me in to Hettinga. If you do a concordance analysis on the mailing list archive what you will find is that Satoshi's posts correlate most closely with Hettinga's and by a wide margin.

If I really wanted to prove it was the same person I could do a latent semantic analysis using a Stanford parse of the grammar, but I have little doubt what the results would be: a match to Hettinga.

then i think that is what you should do to settle this controversy.

Isn't this exactly what I proposed back in July?: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25764.msg322700#msg322700

It's one thing to propose something, and another to provide a result.

Has anyone actually asked Robert Hettinga whether he is Satoshi as well as his thoughts on the analysis in the thread?

You are exactly correct. I was unable to tackle what I proposed, therefore no results. I offered up the solution for other(s) to tackle the issue by providing a tool--a tool I didn't know how to use. I look forward to the results, now that it looks like the tool is being used.

  This is all very interesting and while I certainly wouldn't protest some good ol' fashion detective work or the occasional debate on someones identity, I feel it may be inappropriate do pursue Satoshi's. It is of my opinion that we have, at the least, a civic duty to ensure that Satoshi's real identity should remain anonymous if that is what he so chooses. We could probably debate that viewpoint until our brains fall out. But it just seems to me, in light of the potential problems one could face with being the 'creator' of such an endeavour, that our continued research into his identity is impulsive at best. And potentially dangerous to him at worst.

  Sincerely,
     Derek

(Directed towards your last sentence) I guess if the US government really wanted to track down SN, they could easily utilize the said tool.

Too late for that. I already forwarded a full dossier on Hettinga including his address in Antigua to the Secret Enforcement Office (SEG) at the FED. I expect to be receiving sizable rewards from the Bilderburg Group and Trilateral Commission any day now.

  What a well thought out and mature response.   ::)

  Just to make sure any potential conspiracy implications did not distract you from the part that really matters I have bolded and underlined it in my orginal quote.  If you don't give a crap after that, that's your business. But to dismiss it because the Gov don't care or 'they could find him anyhows' is irresponsible in my humblest of opinions.

Difference is you weren't wearing a troll as your avatar. :)

My most recently weird guess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Keiser I would be interested in knowing his programming background to be more sure, but a quick interesting Wiki read, nonetheless.

nah, Max Keiser is too extrovert  8)

+1

Possible photo of Robert Hettinga

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ0-KnZUtoDu4K67bINFgN3nwlw2gAMI5my9P83mlMQPZtSJahrbQ

and at http://www.snipview.com/q/Cryptography_organizations