Bitcoin Forum

This thread got me thinking: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1530663.0

If I were Satoshi and I somehow misplaced my credentials (e.g. privkey to the first live bitcoin address, pgp key, etc.) and I wanted to claim the "satoshi" account on the forum, how do I prove that I'm Satoshi?

The forum account claim was only an example. As a general question, how do I prove I'm Satoshi if I lost/misplaced my credentials? For example: I could have burned them a few years ago over fears that I might be apprehended/for plausible deniability.

Look, I've been thinking exactly the same thing in recent days. If you look, the resulting bitcoins of the first mining blocks were never moved, which may mean that your theory is correct.

I think if it's not possible for him to sign from the genesis block address, he can still sign from one of his (tens of) thousand(s) other addresses. I am only not sure if theymos will find that enough evidence to give him the Satoshi forum account back. If he doesn't even have access to his other wallet addresses, then I think it's simply impossible for him to prove he is the real deal.

Instead of your question, if you are satoshi and you wanted to let the world know who you are at some point of the time, ask this, would you loose the credentials that would prove that you are indeed satohi? I think not.

The credentials is not what make someone mr satoshi. FOr you to be known as mr. satoshi you must present how bitcoin system was made or you should know how to increase the number of bitcoins supply in an instant. If you can reprogram or increase the bitcoin supply without mining only thru reconfiguration then thats the time that people will acknowledge you as mr satoshi.

if you have to ask, you're not Satsohi.  ;D

satoshi can be predicted by the nature of his language. he has more knowledge than all of us us about bitcoin. if he would roam here for a few days we could easily predict that he is satoshi by his posts. but thats just my opinion. many people want a strong proof so cant tell.

Exactly if someone is Satoshi who actually build bitcoin 7-8 years ago are actually now his product. So that guy will know each in and out of it since he would be first and knowledge of his own bitcoin and clever enough to name Satoshi instead of himself.

if you were Satoshi Nakamoto you wouldn't want to prove your identity in the first place because you wanted to stay as an anonymous identity and there is no reason for you to change that now.

but also apparently you can show some crap to Gavin behind curtains and he will approve you are satoshi to public :D

Satoshi once mentioned that you should never delete your private keys (wallet.dat). Therefore, if he is still around, he must have the private key to sign the genesis address. If he lost the private keys, he must have given up on bitcoin and moved on => he will not want to prove himself as Satoshi Nakamoto.

In short, all you need to do is to sign the Genesis block - Everyone will believe that you are Satoshi.

Satoshi have a very unique way of communication and his writing are being analyzed as we speak by specialists in the field. They could make an assessment of his writings and communication and derive from that if he is indeed the real Satoshi.

People like Gavin can also pitch in to help to authenticate him, but it seems as though Gavin is not as good as we thought he was to do that, based on the CW issue.

The only solid proof would be for him to sign any of his addresses or the genesis block, but you ruled that out. 

Its easy actually, you just need to sign a message from the address holding that 1.000.000 bitcoins you are holding supposedly but since you are asking here, I guess you are not Satoshi and Gavin and Craig Wright are also not Satoshi and the latter one just ashamed himself with his latest lie that he was indeed satoshi.

Unless there is no signed message from the address holding 1 mln coins no one will believe anyone claiming he/she is satoshi. A simple proof can make him reveal his identity but since he has not opted to reveal himself so far, I think he will like to stay that way anonymous.

Lol it's funny because it would mean that you were so successful at being anonymous that not even you can undo your own magic.
Seriously though, a perfect/flawless vanishing act is impossible to achieve, everything leaves a trail, you just have to look hard enough. For all we know, the government/intelligence agencies may already have found out who he is and are simply withholding the information from the general public.

It is possible that during his involvement with Bitcoin, he used his credit card to make telltale purchases online. He would've had to interact with third party companies at one point or another for a bunch of stuff, like for example the creation of this forum. While it might be hard for the public to trace his exact steps, the real Satoshi would of course know all of the moves he made, like the aliases he used for various stuff (for example when buying hosting etc). Also it's unlikely that he would've completed his work on Bitcoin from a cave on a deserted island, it is not far-fetched to imagine that there might be people close to him who also hold some type of proof of him being Satoshi.
No matter how thorough he was in covering his tracks, I don't think the real Satoshi would have any problems proving who he is if he really wanted to.

Funny :D, maybe he just put up this post to see what people would say and he is indeed Satoshi.

what you replied is correct i agree with you if he is Mr.Satoshi then he should have full knowledge of the bitcoin system as he is the only person who created this theory and should be knowing how to recreate and change the function. If he is not able to clarify this details and cannot tell the theory properly then their is not use of him to expect others to believe him as Mr.Satoshi.

I think your first step would be to stop spamming the forum for dust with useless posts wearing your signature.

Your second step is to stop creating ridiculous topics such as this one.

I am not sure what your third step would be, but I am pretty sure that satoshi does not care about his forum account, so it is a moot point.

if you were indeed satoshi and have created something like bitcoin the first thing you would do is to not misplace your credentials and make backups from your code/pgp key/wallet/etc this is the first step any computer expert would do. so proving is as easy and signing a message.


I don't understand what you mean by "forum account claim" are you taking about satoshi account on bitcointalk?!!
and as for the rest, as I said the first step is to keep backups from your important information.

You seriously think Satoshi's coins are all put into a single wallet containing 1,000,000BTC? He was mining and receiving his 50BTC block rewards on different addresses. Which basically means that the majority of his wealth in Bitcoin sits in many many thousands of wallets containing 50BTC each.

The sad thing is that he may not even be able to convert or use his coins. Imagine if tomorrow, one of the genesis addresses spends some coins. It would mean that 1'000'000 coins were injected into the bitcoin ecosystem. The price would crash since much more bitcoins are available (they were considered as lost).

If satoshi spents some money, he might create one of the biggest crisis in the bitcoin ecosystem.

i thinkno onecan prove satoshi nakamoto. because i think that the real people behind him will not use his real name for bitcoin. and that alias is impossible to prove that yours. hahhaa

you need more than sign message,more unique proof,i think its complicated how to satoshi nakamoto proff that he is the original satoshi or bitcoin creator,we already have some fake satoshi,its why original satoshi nakamoto seems not important anymore.

yeah the only reason that can cause bitcoin price to crash is if satoshi moves those coins and not simply moving, selling them which can cause panic.

but important thing is that this crash would only be temporary and price would soon come back from it even if it was big.

Well, if you really wanted to prove you were Satoshi Nakamoto but you didn't have the keys with which to sign a message, then you could just do another build. You would have to create a more scalable system and a more efficient block chain ledger which implements a fractal based data structure. And, of course, you would have to utilize all the information extrapolated from the data collected during the first trial of the bloody experiment to achieve that task.  Duh!

The closest I guess would be a video of him/them talking about specific bitcoin details that can be verified to have been made before making it public and can be proven not to be false of course.

But there would still be doubt

i don't think such details exist!

bitcoin is an opensource project so anybody can know every single detail about it and you can even see the history of commits and changes so all the details are known to the public.

Of course but I said the video should be proven to be made before announcing it to the public, e.g. from 2007. And how well, I dont know :D But I think you can get pretty far with video forensics. So stuff visible in the background and so on. Like I said can still be doubted, but could be very convincing depending what is in it.

Not to be rude or anything but like what is always said...

PGP or GTFO

Satoshi may or may not have contacted us since his last proven communication but we won't know until a key proving his identity is provided.

a key is not a person

A key proves ownership

ownership can be taken.

Consider: The only way you will know me being me, is when you can see me and point at me (or in other words you would have had to be there, the second when it began until its 1st release), the 2nd best would be an army of witnesses that you trust
(It is just an example, not claiming any weird)

It is not the only key that requires verification of yourself, I think it will require more valid proof and it will really cost you time if you want to prove that you're satoshi.

It's impossible to prove, its too late, too much noise so the keys could have been stolen from satoshi. You could not prove that you aren't a theft that got satoshi's coin under his control. It's impossible to prove that you wrote the bitcoin code yourself. It's over, just buy and hold and enjoy being rich in 2026.

Strong proof is a must so we can really say he is satoshi because anyone can claim that they are satoshi and satoshi's identity is very mysterious maybe it contributed a littles success of bitcoins success, and also many claimants that they say they are satoshi some others proofed that they are not and i really think the real satoshi wont reveal himself he wants to remain anonymous just what like hes coin design its anonymous.

We do not need any owner for bitcoin we all are the owners of bitcoin so no one need to prove that he is the Satoshi, and if someone want to be Satoshi and want to prove it then they will have to at least one bitcoin to every person of the world. Now can you proof?

To prove that you are Satoshi you need to control the old addresses that are supposed to belong to him. As sson as you sign a transaction from one of these addresses you autometically prove that you are him.

It's very hard to prove even for real Satoshi Nakamoto, cause people just don't believe to words, need to prove it by different actions.

We're not proving any owner here, we're just trying to identify the creator of bitcoin which will not happen because it might affect bitcoin confidentiality and safetiness.

lol seven countries police are searching for Satoshi Nakamoto. and you says that you are the wanted person. he is in hit list of the seven countries police. let me tell them that here is a person who claim that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. i think then you will feel no need to prove your self that you are Satoshi Nakamoto. (just for fun)

I have some simple questions...why do you want to prove yourself as satoshi nakamoto?? What would you gain from it??

DO you want to be detained for the rest of your life? DO you want all the regulatory authorities after you seeking your ass?? Dude, stop chasing Satoshi Nakamoto and live a happy life. Bitcoin is a path braking innovation so enjoy bitcoin without proving yourself as Satoshi Nakamoto.

excatly,good question. and i think is people claim that he was satoshi and want to declare to all people,its just put his self on danger,people will get access to you to stole or doing anything to get your bitcoin,all people will thought that you are have so much bitcoin. not wise.

I would advise the real Satoshi to never reveal himself,  lest the USA imprison him or seize his wealth.

That said, i think he is no longer among us.

I think satoshi nakamoto has no time to alive here again and i think he is hiding right now so even you have give any proof that you are satoshi why you are using other account instead the old account?

For giving proof that you are satoshi, you will have to create another coin like bitcoin and will have to give as much success to that coin which currently bitcoin is, so after that we will agree that yes you are also the owner of a successful coin, but of your own coin, not a Satoshi of bitcoin ;D ;) :D

No need for fancy video forensics partner... just have live television in the background and have him sign a PGP with his message. That should do the trick.  ::) ... I still think Satoshi would come up

with a very unique way, if he wanted to come back.. He or she has the knowledge to do just that. I am still waiting for the time, when the headlines in the news will read " Satoshi Nakamoto is back "

We have enough skilled Bitcoin developers who could help out, if we really needed someone to identify him or her.  ;)

There's nothing anyone could do to make me believe in them.

I'm also pretty sure that Satoshi Nakamoto is dead or hiding.

Till right now satoshi still cover his identity, why do you need recognition from us? I'm sure the actual satoshi will never open identity.

of course that satoshi nakamoto will never show up his identity and i think that it is actually better for creator of bitcoin not to do that as it would be hard to live i think

i think it would be really hard to prove if you were satoshi nakamoto because in my opinion no one would actually believe you as there were already some people who tried to do that

In order to get access to all his "1,000,000" coins, he first has to empty all his addresses first. Do the math ; 1,000,000 / 50 = 20,000 addresses with 50BTC in it. But yes, I do agree on the fact that if one of the first addresses gets empied, the entire market will be in panic. Just look at what happened with the clown Craigh Wright fud. He walks in and tells the world 'I am Satoshi!' and the market sees red candles directly. Imagine what would happen if the real Satoshi steps up. :D

It's a hypothetical question. No one can really tell if I'm Satoshi.

But, I can think of some situations that being Satoshi would come in handy. For example, my say about the current block size debate would really matter since Bitcoin is my project in the first place.

If you look at Satoshi's posting record on here you can see that he disappeared virtually mid-sentence at around the time of the big mainstream IT press negative scoop story on BTC. I don't think anyone who leaves in those circumstances will be coming back.

if you were Satoshi Nakamoto you would not had yobit signature on you lol :D  satoshi just need to do a press conference telling he is Satoshi Nakamoto and the rest will be investigated by etc etc

That's entirely besides the point, he wasn't asking any of the stuff you just responded to, it's just a simple 'What if ...'situation.
I think it would be possible to prove if you still had your original code and notes that you made when creating Bitcoin.

this sounds more like a cinspiracy theory to me.
satoshi was supposed to be anonymous and it needed to stay that way. for all we know satoshi can be a gourp of people who can already be among the current developer team.

I don't think that's very effective.
http://www.ibtimes.com/craig-wright-reportedly-set-prove-he-bitcoin-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-2348687

And how would you know Satoshi doesn't use sig campaign signatures?