Bitcoin Forum

I thought I'd ask, considering what they have written, is it informative. What can we tell about their opinions and where could these opinions of emerged from?

He's a coach for Louisiana.

What has who written about him? I think your best bet is to just google about him. Is he satoshi? Who knows. Only he can answer that.

Szabo is a displaced Vulcan who had to use a jedi mind trick to get Satoshi to mind meld with him after he got overloaded with crypto information from the device the Ancients left in Antarctica... or something like that.

nick szabo is one of a dozen+ people that for decades have been trying to create a new form of electronic money. nick is not satoshi, but satoshi did utilize idea's of nick, hal finney, wai, and others and it has been noted that satoshi alone had the mindset to seamlessly join the individual idea's into one perfect protocol.

although hal finney, nick szabo and others use to talk to each other on the cyberpunks forum nick did not continue along the bitcoin path (chatting on this forum) even when satoshi, hal finney and others did move across. which leads me to believe that nick gave up trying to invent money, when satoshi reached the finish line first. (tail between his ass, in my opinion)

so any theories that nick is satoshi, or hal finney or any of the other cyberpunk team is satoshi, can easily be denied purely on the history and evidence that has come to light that their grammar, messages, and actions show that they are all different people and not satoshi.

it is like saying that god made US bank notes because reference to christian religion can be found on a bank note "in god we trust". and also the bank notes own trust is being aimed at that of god.. but we all know god has nothing to do with money, unless god = Government Of Dumbass's.

so do not automatically assume nick szabo is satoshi simply because part of bitcoin protocol utilises szabo's idea.. nor should we say that bitcoin was NSA purely because 256sha was invented by NSA. or that hal finney or wai are satoshi purely on their slices of the protocol.

satoshi was a simple individual that created the white paper and only utilised the other peoples idea's to form his own idea, with his own concepts that joined it all together.

only feeble minds will find the smallest straw and exaggerate it into something large, whilst never looking beyond that straw. so look beyond the simple evidence and look deeper.

Are you talking about this book: http://www.ibtimes.com/new-book-claims-nick-szabo-true-bitcoin-creator-researcher-denies-establishing-1722395

https://i.imgur.com/wnwIemZ.jpg

I am pretty sure we cannot truly know the answer of who this person really is, but should we care? I personally don't; I just want to know their mind.

And I've already read it so, I just want to find out what the people of this forum think.

History:

-1992 The Cypherpunks create an anonymous mailer for like-minded users to share ideas.(Eric Hughes, Tim May, Hal Finney, Wei Dai, Nick Szabo, Adam Back, Ray Dillenger, etc….)
https://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.txt
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/10/msg00759.html

-1995 Tim May posts a call to the Cypherpunks to create a decentralised electronic currency.
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1995/09/msg00964.html

-1995 Nick Szabo answers Tim’s call(He also has smart contracts to include once it gets going)
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1995/09/msg01303.html

1996 Wei Dai PipeNet 1.1
http://www.weidai.com/pipenet.txt

-1997 Tim Mays Anonymous Digital Cash paper.
http://osaka.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/tcmay.htm

1997 Adam Backs “Hashash”
http://www.hashcash.org/

- 1998 Wei Dai elaborates on Tim’s idea for a digital currency and called it “Bmoney”.(It reads like the beginning idea of BitGold/Bitcoin)
http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt

-1998 Szabo had a simular more detailed idea “BitGold” soon after Dai’s paper and he worked relentlessly on making that idea work.
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/intrapoly.html
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1995/09/msg00988.htmle

-1999 Szabo mentions bitgold and talk of a special “ASIC” type chip that could be used for mining.
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/intrapoly.html

-2001 Tim May explains a system like BitGold/Bitcoin would have to be released anonymous:
https://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks@lne.com/msg00080.html

- 2004 Hal Finney’s “RPOW” was the missing piece of the puzzle. “RPOW” was added on top of Adam Back’s “HashCash”. (The solution for the Byzantine General’s Problem which allows BitGold/Bitcoin to be completed)
http://cryptome.org/rpow.htm

-2004 Wei Dai’s c++ library
http://www.cryptopp.com/

-2005 Nick Szabo publishes BitGold paper.
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html?m=1

2007 Szabo Blogging about two ideas. BitGold and Scarce Objects(finite supply like Bitcoin)
Note: These two ideas put together is Bitcoin.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070625154046/http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20070618142414/http://szabo.best.vwh.net/scarce.html

2007 Satoshi (at a later date) says he started putting Bitcoin together.
http://m.benzinga.com/article/3563567

-2008 Szabo calls out to the cypherpunk types for help to finalize coding BitGold and run a test net a few months before the white paper gets published online.
*Szabo’s post for assistance:
“Bitgold would greatly benefit from a demonstration, an experimental market (with e.g. a trusted third party substituted for the complex security that would be needed for a real system). Anybody want to help me code one up?”
https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2013/12/

-Satoshi Nakamoto appears out of thin air and introduces Bitcoin right in the middle of the economic crisis that was saturated in the news at that time and then disappears.

*“Szabo has extensively studied British history for his legal and monetary theories (it’s hard to miss this if you’ve read his essays), so I do not regard the Britishisms as a point against Szabo”. ~ gwern

*Ray Dillenger (Bear) quote: “Look, (Satoshi) was a construction made explicitly for the purpose of launching Bitcoin……That purpose is fulfilled.  The person who created (Satoshi) has no further need for him.  Thus ends the story”.

*Hal Finney quote: “How do you find someone who has spent a lifetime covering his tracks?…For some, he was a guardian angel. others, a ghost, who never quite fit in…What’s the S stand for?”

Cypherpunks were thousands, not dozens.

I think Hal Finney is much more likely to be Satoshi than Nick Szabo.

Unfortunately, if correct, then Satoshi is deceased :'(

Satoshi's involvement has been fading at a similar rate to Hal's motor functions... Hmm...

@ Taras

Nick Szabo: “(assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai)”…..Only Finney (RPOW) and Nakamoto were motivated enough to actually implement such a scheme”.

What I've read is the direct opposite. Do you have any links to any such analysis?

I'll add a post Adam Back made on here two days ago after I asked about some of the early history (specifically the extent to which David Chaum had double-spending solved in the 80s/90s): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=856069.0

Also, Ray Dillinger recently commented on here about how 2.1e15 was chosen to be the number of base units in the bitcoin system: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=819656.msg9181746#msg9181746


As to Szabo being Satoshi? It's hard to read the BitGold paper, then Satoshi's whitepaper, then the MetzDowd thread and not feel like they've gotta be the same guy, but who knows... (FYI - I'm not on a Satoshi hunt (it doesn't matter who he is); I've just been researching the early history of crypto-money lately for academic reasons).

FWIW, some quotes from that first link posted by L.Detweiler:
and
Both quotes from: http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/10/msg00759.html

some peopel say hes satoshi ;)

Maybe Satoshi was both Finney and Szabo. It's very possible that satoshi was more than one person or a group.

I wonder if we'll ever know or find out for certain. I also wonder if it would be a good or bad thing if they were ever exposed or came out voluntarily?

Szabo’s blog is a vast encyclopedia of puzzle pieces that were being put together to solve the existing problems in his life long endeavor of implementing “BitGold”. His blogs cover everything, right down to the invention of the time keeping devices that changed our culture, and the value of it, up until Satoshi creating Bitcoin, and even beyond that with his vision and realization of smart contracts. Szabo’s research includes an extreme amount of past history and technology that allows him to explain what we have here today so well.
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/?m=1
https://mobile.twitter.com/nickszabo4

Nick Szabo describes the entire significant history of law right up until the Non-Delegation doctrine and it’s implications that are above our National Constitutions.  He taught us all how to be lawyers, because you need this to be free.
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/delegation.pdf

Szabo has access to study and research information that is not easily accessed(or understood well) by the common man. He studies this knowledge and writes papers in layman's terms that he publishes in public for free so every man(both ritch and poor) can have access to the true knowledge and history of mankind. Szabo's work enables us to truely understand our past and our future.

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/

http://web.archive.org/web/20070618142414/http://szabo.best.vwh.net/scarce.html

http://szabo.best.vwh.net/ttps.html

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets.html?m=1

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-long.html?m=1

http://unenumerated.blogspot.ca/2008/06/commodity-hysteria-overview.html?m=1

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article9175461.ece/alternates/w620/Satoshi-Nakamoto-AP.jpg



(by the way: iam pretty sure that it was not just one guy who invented this.)

Those hunts for Satoshi are for me a great resource of the history and I always love to read those threads where people are sharing a lot of great links which contains such a fascinating informations.

I don't really care who is Satoshi because this information is not as important as Bitcoin itself. 

Thanks for another great set of texts to read. 

♥BTC

Me either, I could probably answer to my own satisfaction if I wanted to burn up a month on it, have a few ways to metaphorically triangulate as it were. Mostly the obsession with it from others amuses me. I judge Satoshi's child on it's own merits. I don't see the purpose, really, unless one wants to attempt a pathetic denigration of bitcoin itself by a logically invalid ad hominem. It's like refusing to acknowledge the existence of an orphan until the poor kid produces it's parents.



I'll misquote Trinity...

Haxx0r: I know why you're here, noob. I know what you've been doing... why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You're looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn't really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It's the question that drives us, noob. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did.

noob: What is Bitcoin?

Haxx0r: The answer is out there, noob, and it's looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.

All I know is that Nick is brilliant and has tweeted about Ethereum at least 3 times and has been quoted stating:

"Ethereum has vast potential, whereas Bitcoin won't ever do anything well beyond implementing a currency," programmer Nick Szabo, another early Bitcoin proponent who's recently begun tweeting after an extended absence from the internet, told us in an email several weeks ago"

http://www.businessinsider.com/ethereum-launches-ether-2014-7

Now, tell me how it's a scam LULZ

I got a couple of PM's about leaving someone out of this list so here it is:

Nick Szabo: “(assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai)”…..Only Finney (RPOW) and Nakamoto were motivated enough to actually implement such a scheme”.

There seems to be one other person with the motivation that Szabo says would be needed to create Bitcoin:

2007
Zooko quote: “Nick Szabo is a very interesting thinker whose domain includes law,  
economics, networking, cryptography, and so on. I’ve been acquainted  with his ideas for many years (starting with his inspiring and mind- expanding “Smart Contracts”, which I became aware of in approximately 1996). He has just now posted a blog entry about Allmydata-Tahoe economics:”
https://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2007-June/000025.html

2007  
Zooko quote: “I want to invent something else: a truly decentralized economic mechanism. Research that points in this direction includes the sub-field of “algorithmic mechanism design” within economic game theory, some peer-to-peer research such as GNUnet, Wei Dai’s and Nick Szabo’s ideas about “bit gold”, Nick Szabo’s “smart contracts”, and much more. Another inspiration is BitTorrent’s tit-for-tat mechanism, which is decentralized and minimal, but gets the job done within its limited problem domain.”
https://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2007-June/000022.html

2007 Szabo applies BitGold and his “Scarce Object” theory to Zookos p2p hard drive project with "Nanobarter"
Szabo: “One possible answer to central mint vulnerability is bit gold — a currency the value of which does not depend on any particular trusted third party. Another alternative is (an object barter economy”Scarce Objects”).”  
http://web.archive.org/web/20070625154046/http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/  
http://web.archive.org/web/20070618142414/http://szabo.best.vwh.net/scarce.html

2007 Szabo's "Nanobarter" (READ THIS LINK)
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2007/06/nanobarter.html?m= 1

2007/2008 Zooko c++
https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/pycryptopp/ticket/3

Zooko quote 26 January 2009(right after Bitcoins release, seems to be pointing people to Bitcoin)

"What I want is a currency which everyone can cheaply and conveniently use but which no-one has the power to manipulate. No-one has the power to inflate or deflate the currency supply, no-one has the power to monitor, tax, or prevent transactions. Truly the digital equivalent of gold, during the times and places when gold was the universal currency. See the BitGold idea by Nick Szabo and b-money idea by Wei Dai, and recent effort to actually implement something along these lines: BitCoin by Satoshi Nakamoto."

Zooko: May 31, 2011 at 6:42 PM

"Gwern's post fails to appreciate the technical advances that BitCoin originated."

"I have been trying, off and on, to invent a decentralized digital payment system for fifteen years (since I was at DigiCash). I wasn't sure that a practical system was even *possible*, until BitCoin was actually implemented and became as popular as it has. Scientific advances often seem obvious in retrospect, and so it is with BitCoin."

Zooko: May 31, 2011 at 6:44 PM

"Oh wait, I have to revise this, as I remember trying to invent a decentralized digital payment system in about 1995, which was before I joined DigiCash. :-)"

NOTE: I emailed Dominic Frisby after he released his new book:

D.Frisby: "Yes, I looked at Zooko. In fact he was one of my main suspects at one stage - although I hadn't seen those posts that you sent through so thank you."

D.Frisby: "I had some people look at his C++ and was told it didn't match. I'm afraid I'm relying on the expertise of others here."

D.Frisby: "Look at Zooko on Twitter and you'll see lots of exchanges between him and Szabo. Indeed Zooko is one of the first people Szabo followed. He's definitely in the mix somewhere."

D.Frisby: "Maybe in the next book I'll look further at that possibility. I found it hard to see beyond Szabo. I'll admit."

I do agree Zooko is part of the solution Nick found for Bitgold/Bitcoin(that's shown in the Nanobarter paper and your links), but there is the money issue. I don't think Zooko could have resisted using some of those Bitcoins to fund the other things he is so motivated about today. He seems to have funding issues for things he's trying to accomplish right now. But I could be very wrong about this.

Update: After reading again I see Zooko was eagerly posting about Bitcoin 23 days after the geniuses block. If he was mining at that time, why wouldn't he have, he should be loaded unless he was into buying 10,000BTC pizzas or he sold once Bitcoin rose to $1.

I'm guessing that Satoshi (be it Zooko, Szabo, or someone else) probably mined a bunch of coins in 2010 and 2011 which were never identifiable as his. So while the 2009 coins that are obviously his (the ones with the right nonce distro) have never moved, it seems at least possible that he does use some bitcoin funds.