Bitcoin Forum

Edit: This thread was created to discuss the possibility that Donal O'Mahony, Michael Peirce, Hitesh Tewari and now Michael Clear (et al., possibly more) make up the Crypto Mano Group, referred to as CMG (mano is Irish for coin), an entity we currently label as Satoshi Nakamoto.

---

Now where have I seen this White Paper before? http://www.w3.org/Conferences/WWW4/Papers/228/



~Bruno~

I wouldn't say Satoshi is Michael Pierce, but a group composed of him, Donal O'Mahony and likely Michael Clear himself, hence his relutance on denying 100% that he was Satoshi to The New Yorker journalist.

Does it make sense? :)

Priceless:

C++... that sounds familiar ::)

http://books.google.com/books/about/Electronic_payment_systems.html?id=rCYsAQAAIAAJ

When was the white paper <http://www.w3.org/Conferences/WWW4/Papers/228/> written?  There's no date in there based on my quick skim...

Also, wasn't someone writing the book "Bitcoin Billionaire?" I thought I saw some guy on the bitcoin show talk about that a few months back...

I found this http://bitcoinbillionaire.blogspot.com/2011_08_01_archive.html

Is this the guy I was thinking about?

Why is this so important?  The code is publicly available, and algorithm is relatively easy to understand even by non-experts. That's what matters.  Satoshi obviously didn't want their identity revealed, why not let it be? 

Here I was waiting for the Oliver Stone investigative movie about Bitcoin.

*

Agree, its not important.

When I first heard about Bitcoin I ofcourse as everyone else wanted to know who Satoshi Nakamoto was.
But I now think its best just to not find out unless he/she/it/they want to reveal themselves.
Its not even interesting. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is out now.

I'll assume you concur that Satoshi is possibly a group oppose to one individual "he" as most normally refer to Mr. Nakamoto as.

<tin foil hat on> This is exactly what I would pen if I knew Satoshi personally and was directed to protect "his" identity, albeit I wouldn't have used the word "their" but gone with "he" to echo the general consensus. <tin foil hat off>

Putting aside who is Satoshi, let's explore who is Donal O'Mahony, Hitesh Tewari and Michael Peirce, starting with the latter.

This is a collection of links and pointers to existing payment schemes that were designed for, or are in use on, the Internet. If you know of any more, please let me know. (http://ntrg.cs.tcd.ie/mepeirce/Project/oninternet.html) An impressive list for sure with one notable omission.


http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=893107


http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/jslttery/theo-7/sans-nothing/train-text/other/wisconsin/http:%5E%5Ewww.cs.wisc.edu%5E~cs640-1%5Es96-schedule.html

I disagree.  That's like saying it doesn't matter knowing who made SolidCoin.

assuming the notable omission your referring to is bitcoin, it becomes a non-issue once you check the page info and see it was last modified Wednesday, September 05, 2001 3:15:34 PM.

hell, i clicked 4 links on that page, 2 didn't resolve, 1 was a place holder, and the only one of the 4 still valid was a merchant check clearing site.

But if somebody was trying to figure out who puts a partial bottle of cognac and three roses on Poe’s grave on the night of the anniversary his birth, then I'll have to agree with niko's sentiment.

~Bruno~

<tin foil hat on> This Satoshi clan is slick! <tin foil hat off>

satoshi is a master of the long play.  my respect has increased a thousand fold.

as to looking into who satoshi is, i think its just human nature to be curious about these things.

I'll tell you what! Even if Michael Peirce had nothing to do with the creation Bitcoin, he'll be one hell of asset today.


~Bruno~

This is just a diversion.

Interesting theories.  But even if none of them are associated with Bitcoin in any way, it might be good to try and get them involved.

This thread is an awesome cure for insomnia.
Also, I think that Satoshi is near the Holy Grail, so whoever finds one, has the other as a bonus.

Bell Labs, eh? Well that tears it right there. Even Apple and Microsoft know Bell Labs doesn't give anything away for free...

-MarkM-

From http://www.ctvr.ie/

Since Donal O'Mahony has been active and publishing his digital currency ideas why would he and his group in 2008 publish anonymously another version?
PayMe's success left him unsatisfied?

Bitcoins were most likely somewhat based on his work but I wouldn't be willing to say he or his group are Satoshi Nakamoto.
Has he been interviewed for his view on Bitcoins, its strengths and weaknesses?

He was on the good wife a few months ago.  I saw him star on American Pie as well :)

Interesting findings, Phinnaeus.

When you say you read the archive of bitcoin.com, and it "lead you to" that book, how exactly did it lead you there?  Did you google search whatever was on the archived page?

I was waiting for somebody to ask that question so that I can give the following response: I'm not saying at this time, but it's there in plain sight.

~Cackling Bear~

Phin,

why are u doing this again?  you put all of us thru this same type of torture with Tom Williams in the summer.

you love titillation?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40750.240

Never tried the product.

http://www.slapiton.tv/acatalog/agent_provocateur_titillation_300.jpg

Hitesh Tewari http://www.scss.tcd.ie/~htewari/



Lightweight AAA for Cellular IP: Hitesh Tewari, Donal O’Mahony: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/74127678/Lightweight-AAA-for-Cellular-IP

Hitesh Tewari

Hitesh Tewari teamed up Michael Clear, along with A. Hughes, to pen Identity-Based Leveled Homomorphic Encryption from Learning With Errors and submitted to PKC 2012 (http://pkc2012.cased.de/) in Darmstadt, Germany, on May 21-23, 2012.

Clear, M., Hughes, A. and Tewari, H., Identity-Based Leveled Homomorphic Encryption from Learning With Errors, Submitted to The International Conference on Practice and Theory in Public-Key Cryptography (PKC) 2012 (http://www.tcd.ie/research/mis/digital/publications/index.php?peer_reviewed=yes&pub_type=CONFERENCE_PAPER&year=)

PKC 2011 (http://www.iacr.org/workshops/pkc2011/) took place in Taormina, Italy, and its main sponsor was...wait for it...Google. The name of the host was Tom Williams (OK, so I made that one up).

~Cackling Bear~

I think you're onto something, Phinnaeus Gage.  I'm not saying one person could not be responsible for the creation of Bitcoin, but it seems like a project more suited for a group of people.  Especially anything in Japan. 

You're all a bunch polysatoshi-ists.

Introducing MickCoin, heretofore BitCoin!

I think a lot of people have a necessity to brag and 3 can only keep a secret if 2 are dead.  I vote for dead or in jail.

I think it makes sense for the guy to be Irish because there is a lot of UK centric stuff about "Satoshi" ( like that Telegraph article ) and all the Japan stuff is probably a distraction more or less.

Would it not be a positive thing for the inventor(s) of bitcoin to be recognised as such , and to contribute further to the bitcoin infrastructure (if that's not the case)  , rather than the mysterious cloaked character of Satoshi Nakamoto?.

Looking around at bitcoin.com, Domaintools lists a 173.193.106.10 address out of Texas while Network Solutions lists the address as 66.246.76.246, which is Linode. archive.org only goes back to 2009 for bitcoin.com nothing for 2008. What is interesting is the micropayments for web apps model, which is different than the current view many hold with Bitcoins as a competing currency.

I saw that, too. Prior to posting this thread, I was in Tradehill/Dwolla mode when I found the following: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2011/08/24/tradehill-brightens-the-bitcoin-market-with-e-wallet-beta/

That's when I went to archive.org and discovered that I was only one hop away from what I posted in the OP of this thread.

~Crackling Bear~

Relevent? http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Mystery-American-bets-billions-on-Irelands-economic-turn-around-138920744.html

Donal O'Mahony --> Davy --> Franklin Templeton Investments --> Mystery American(s)

~Cackling Bear~

Hi all,

I happened upon this thread purely by chance (I rarely visit bitcointalk.org much, mainly for Bitcoin exchange reviews the odd time) and was astonished to see Donal O' Mahony's name mentioned! I know Donal through his daughter, and personally I'd be quite surprised if he had anything to do with Bitcoin, although the fact remains that he is incredibly good with numbers, very intelligent, and I reckon he'd have the necessary skills to develop such a crypto-currency from an investment / understanding markets point of view.

I'll see if I can find out anything more and post back know in a couple of days if I come up with anything, or if he's wearing his Satoshi Nakamoto hat and staying silent.  :P

Kind regards,

- G

Point him to this thread :)
And, it's a small world indeed...

Just read through the other thread on Satoshi Nakamoto and clicked the link to the book "Electronic Payment Systems for E-commerce"; if the picture of the author on that page is correct (which from the page here: http://65.54.113.26/Author/1718958/donal-o-mahony (http://65.54.113.26/Author/1718958/donal-o-mahony), it is) I'm afraid that Donal O' Mahony the author and Donal O' Mahony of Davy are two completely different people, which puts paid to the idea that Donal O' Mahony of Davy is Satoshi.

- G

Just saw your post now, apologies!

No need for apologies.
You even replied to the "Point him to this thread" even without seeing it.

Leave Satoshi alone!

Is that the picture of some dentist?
http://www.swordsdental.com/img/donal.jpg

Didn't you know? Satoshi cut his teeth in dentistry before taking up economics and finance.

He doesn't often pull teeth, but when he does he defangs entire financial systems.

-MarkM-

I just thought it odd that the dentist and the professor look similar, carry the same name and live in the same country if not the same town.
Here is another pic of professor O'Mahony: http://people.tcd.ie/domahony
Below is one of Professor O'Mahony's documents on micropayment systems.

Micropayments for Mobile Networks - .doc (http://www.scss.tcd.ie/~omahony/w99cam.doc)

+1

What good does it do besides providing the chance to show everyone how clever one is?
 
I am glad that Satoshi was not so insecure and chose to stay anonymous and allow bitcoin
to stand on its own merits.  

Do you see any irony in someone who values anonymity so much, publishes a non-anonymous digital payment system.
Also, you could say the challenge of solving this mystery is a result of its own success, providing a nice feather in the cap for the bright penny.

While Professor O'Mahony has spent time developing digital currency payment systems, the systems he has designed are much different than Bitcoin's design. The Bitcoin vision is most certainly not O'Mahony's and anonymity is not his style.


https://www.scss.tcd.ie/publications/tech-reports/reports.98/TCD-CS-1998-27.pdf

Now how the hell did I get these two Donals mixed up? First time I've ever made that mistake!  ;)

stop it because the end of the rainbow might be something you dont want to find.

everything is fine ... never change a running system ...

I don't agree.

I want Satoshi to be exposed.

I want to know who is holding onto 1.5 million BTC.

I also think others that are not invested into BTC want to know this before investing into it more heavily.

The anonymity reason is bollocks for me. You can be anonymous behind a screen name.

No need to disappear randomly and never come back though ...

Show us proof of 1.5 million BTC ANYWHERE. Do it. You can't. I'm starting to think you are nothing more than a shill for the fed that wants him exposed for some other reason. Why do I say that? Because I am pulling "facts" out of thin air, just like you are! You see what I did there?

http://ieee-ukri.org/category/latest-news-from-ieee-uk-section/page/2/


http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/the-worlds-first-bitcoin-conference

(just some more random facts pulled from thin air)

https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Donal.OMahony/

The blockchain started at 2009-01-01, the first public bitcoin version was released in march or april i think, so thats 3-4 months 'pre-mine' resulting in 600~800k btc. But even after it was released the community didn't begin to grow until mid 2010, so thats basicaly 1.5 years of mining of which say what? 80% went to the developer(s).

And what if the developer(s) were The MITRE Corporation?

Aha, of course! Sneaky of them to have CSIS handle the "revelation" of their ASIC capability for them through that Vancouver front-corporation, eh? Only 25 available, eh? Oh yeah, sure... to the public...

-MarkM-

The Genesis block was on January 3rd, 2009. Bitcoin v0.1 was publicly released six days later. Link (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/661/105).

I think that we can now agree that Satoshi Nakamoto is in fact a pseudonym representing more than one person, therefore not a single individual.

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09959.html

And the we gets repeated over and over and over... http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

http://ntrg.cs.tcd.ie/mepeirce/Project/Mlists/minifaq.html

Why would those who respect anonymity so much choose an identified digital cash system?

Why waste time sending a bill, when at this point just deduct what is owed?

I'm not sure why, or by whom, but I received an anonymous email instructing me to bump this thread.

BS, you just like to bump your old threads once in a while...

huh sure, sure! :P

use stylometry tools.

round up all of satoshi's forum posts and IRC logs.
use these tools to analyze his/their writing style against other books, whitepapers and whoever you think is satoshi: https://psal.cs.drexel.edu/index.php/JStylo-Anonymouth

jstylo researchers claim they were able to identify 80% of users with a 5,000-word writing sample

let the witch hunt begin

What if Satoshi used that Anonymouth tool they have there? :P

From Satoshi's white paper reference section #2:

H. Massias, X.S. Avila, and J.-J. Quisquater, "Design of a secure timestamping service with minimal
trust requirements," In 20th Symposium on Information Theory in the Benelux, May 1999.

This is an unusual Citation format. It's more common to cite the proceedings of the meeting (which are published after the meeting) rather than the meeting itself. To me this implies that Satoshi was at this meeting, most likely as a presenter or because the meeting was held nearby to his academic institution, and he kept his copy of the meeting program.  

There's no way there was a zillion people at this meeting. I suspect one could, with minimal difficulty, compile a short list of names of people who were at the symposium.  Satoshi's name would be on that list.

Lol...you're joking, right?  That's how you write in nerd speak. This absolutely in no way implies more than one person wrote it. There are many subtleties to true nerd culture...it takes one to know one indeed!

For remedial reading, see: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_plural

Was just telling Phinn what he wanted to hear lol

Anyone know how we can get a list of attendees for this meeting?

Satoshi told me that Bitcoin was roughly 2 years in the making before it was released. I am very skeptical he was at that meeting. Much more likely is that he simply copied the BibTEX citation code from here:

   http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.13.6228

As you can see, the "booktitle" attribute is simply the name of the meeting


I think this sort of thing is a waste of time. He clearly wanted to be left alone. If one day he decides to rejoin the project, I'm sure he'll be willing to answer questions about his background.

This is amazing, I couldn't imagine working on such a ground breaking, insane and awesome earth changing project and keeping quiet for 2 years. Everything I hear about Satoshi is kinda amazing.


This is true, you must understand however that many people are amazed at this person and are going to be naturally very curious. Eventually Bitcoin or a system based on Bitcoin will be world wide and used everywhere, and it all came from this mysterious person. People are always going to want to uncover this guy/girl.

Although I respect the fact that they want to be left alone.

One more thing, he/her said they wanted to work on something else, this is kinda interesting because what else could they be working on that is more important than Bitcoin?

His house in the Bahamas, obviously.

I thought for a while that one could discover Satoshi's identify by doing text analysis on his posting style, but then I realized he was probably too smart for that. If Satoshi is still around and posting under a different name then that identity should have the complete opposite style.

I conclude, therefore, that MysteryMiner is Satoshi Nakamoto.

That's interesting. That bibtex is incorrectly formatted to begin with. If that's the way it's publicly available, yeah I agree it's a waste of time. It's very odd to not see page numbers in the reference. That reference doesn't actually tell you where to find the abstract.

satoshi make me rich with bitcoin i thank him for this easy money just holding bitcion ;D

It's possible Satoshi did not have the page information at the time, if he only had the paper and not the whole proceedings available.

As you can see the paper as Massias published it does not contain that information.
http://www.uclouvain.be/crypto/services/download/publications.pdf.9ca0971b29e9c614.7064663131332e706466.pdf

From a marketing point of view, its a dream to have such a mystery about the dawn of bitcoin.

However, the unmasking of the developers could also be a part of the next stage  of marketing.  One of the magic of the big tech names is the people behind them.  Microsoft has Bill Gates, Apple had Steve Jobs and Facebook has whatshisname!
Linus was the face of Linux, and while he did very little of the day to day work once Linux became mainstream, he was the symbol who helped move the idea to that mainstream takeup!

While trying to sell Bitcoin to the masses, you need more than just a good idea and implementation - you need a great story.  The mystery start is a great story, but you do need a famous head to move it forward.

Guys from CIA know how to keep secrets...  :)

OTOH, given the break-from-the-norm and decentralized nature of Bitcoin, perhaps maintaining a mystery head is exactly in line with what Bitcoin is all about anyway.

Nah.  He's a thinker and doer.  Not one to sit on the beach.  I've often thought about what he's up to now, because he's got the funds to really make an impact now.  I suspect he's been working on v2, on the side if nothing else.  The last 3 years have given him a ton of real-life data to work with.

I suspect he's someone with a wife and young children.  Someone young and with no family would have more freedom to face the legal and political ramifications of inventing a new currency.  Once you have a family, you have obligations to people other than yourself.  Plus, my wife would kill me if I did something like this without anonymity.

Maybe it's time for you to get a better wife.

Also, what is more interesting - check out the headers of this URL:


So this document is almost 20 years old !

They had more than enough time...

The typical scenario for having knowledge of the presented paper but no published reference to it is having the meeting program (given to attendees). You cite that way before the proceeding are published (which is some time after the meeting).  But if someone's put it out publicly and not cited it as "in the proceedings of..." it's gonna get propagated that way.

It would be nice to at least look at the proceedings from the meeting though.

Did anyone notice that anarchy is back on the forum? Might have insight on our discussion. He was always on the forum during nov-dec 2010 when I first joined. Then went quiet except during times of high stress or high gains, didn't believe it was the same person until yesterday.
FF

At the risk of repeating myself: the most likely Satoshi candidate is Robert Hettinga.

It cannot be Michael Clear (among other reasons) because the Satoshi web posts show knowledge and culture dating to the 1980s. Michael Clear is a young man and could not have made those posts which were made by a man in his late 40s or 50s.

Maybe that was a part of the deception, old boy?

Is it not potentially dangerous for Satoshi if he/she/they are identified?

Think of the legal ramifications. Although Bitcoins legal position is at least a little bit hazy in most jurisdictions, there's bound to be some jurisdiction at some point that puts responsibility on the service provider, failing that, the service creator.

There's potentially a lot of tax that has gone unpaid because of Bitcoin and I'm sure the tax people would love to have someone to at least try and blame and recoup their losses from....


I'd love to know who Satoshi is, even if it's just to buy them a beer for their work. But I think, as mentioned previously, the selfless mystery creator(s) sacrificing fame and fortune for the good of mankind adds a certain element to Bitcoin, even if it just makes for good publicity.

Whilst a Satoshi Witch Hunt maybe interesting, novel etc. it's pretty selfish. He (she/they) created something for us all and all they asked for in return is a bit of privacy, for whatever reason. Leaving their identity unknown is the least we could do for them. If he/she/they wants to be known, I'm sure he/she/they will do it in their own time and on their own terms.

(aside: "selfless mystery creator(s) sacrificing fame and fortune for the good of mankind" conjures up images of religious folk knocking on my door offering me a flier with a picture of a man nailed to a cross on the front.)

  Satoshi is a genius. He can remain unknown for all I care. We all mine for Bitcoins that he created the programs for. I agree, maybe he should remain unknown. Just for the reason, "legal problems". I thank him myself for Bitcoins. It pays my rent and feeds me. Plus has given me progamming skills that I didn't have before. I thank him for this. I don't think that he is Gavin though. If Gavin is Satoshi, he have had a big workload for years. Gavin works for Google at the present time. He also is promoting Linux programs and software. I can't see Gavin been Satoshi. HJe would be a busy man if he was. He would be to worn out to work on such a complex system a Bitcoin.

Gavin doesn't work for Google, Mike Hearn does.

I'd prefer this version of who Shatoshi Nakamoto is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emDJTGTrEm0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emDJTGTrEm0)

Check it out...


The speaker discribes Shinichi Mochizuki
http://bannex.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/2012-03-30-mochizuki-shinichi-pic4-452x302-80776.jpg

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/05/19/ted-nelson-says-that-bitcons-satoshi-nakamoto-is-shinichi-mochizuki/

This guy actually does sound like a real candidate. I assumed either Satoshi was a genius, or a group of very good engineers.

There are some strong historical links between the group of mentioned individuals and my own theory.

The field of cryptography and e-cash systems back in 2008 / 2009 (and prior to that) was really rather limited. Most of these individuals attended similar conferences and/or published related cryptography, security and online privacy papers etc.

Yossi Nagy Moti - sound familiar to anyone ?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=206630.0

8)

Shinichi Mochizuki is a very unlikely candidate in my honest opinion.

well for me, satoshi is/are person whom i will really want to know at certain time & learn more.
Satoshi & his/their ideas is interesting to know for me atleast. The more you come to know about him, more you want to know!

I am satoshi  ;D

what is bounty on satoshi

This technology gives you anonymity, but does not give you decentalization.

I AM SATOSHI!!!!

NO I AM SATOSHI

NO I AM SATOSHI

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2012/01/spartacus.jpg


Satoshi isn't one person, for those wondering  ;)

Why not let it be? I'm for it  but I'm a minority, the majority can't and won't for the same reason they demand to be regulated like robots. People can't respect privacy and responsibility.