It is very simple to look that up. Look at the first 20 000 blocks on blockchain.info.
There you will see Satoshi's addresses and their contents (indeed mostly 50 coins). Why do you assume the first 20,000 blocks were all mined by Satoshi. There were other miners. Hal Finney even reported solving a block a few weeks after the genesis block and he wasn't the only one. Also Satoshi did let some information leak. He used a sequential extra nonce and didn't reset it between blocks. Using that people have made projections on how many of the blocks in the first year were mined by Satoshi. Nobody has reached a conclusion that Satoshi mined blocks 0 through 20,000 sequentially. Not every single one - but most. Estimates are he mined around 1m coins. And it's interesting that those blocks of 50 were never moved. Most other people presumably would have done, including Hal Finney - he says as much. By the way, Hal Finney also said he then left bitcoin aside for a while (he didn't like the effect CPU mining had on his computer!) and only came back to it some time later. In the early days there weren't many miners. |
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Article looks like bullshit based off nothing but speculation to me. There's nothing that offers proof or backs up their claims at all. Nobody knows what happened to satoshi, his coins, or even if he is one or more people.
It is very simple to look that up. Look at the first 20 000 blocks on blockchain.info. There you will see Satoshi's addresses and their contents (indeed mostly 50 coins). Block 0 (genesis block): address 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa It has received some dust (and now has 65 coins in it) but never spend anything Block 1 (first block) after genesis block: address 12c6DSiU4Rq3P4ZxziKxzrL5LmMBrzjrJX It has received much less dust and now contains 50.025 coins, never spend anything Block 2 : address: 1HLoD9E4SDFFPDiYfNYnkBLQ85Y51J3Zb1 and contains 50.00038429 BTC and so on. Block 10000: address 1JoiKZz2QRd47ARtcYgvgxC9jhnre9aphv, still contains the 50 BTC and no dust. Block 15000: address 1KzP9ideELyDMyjg4svrheub7Ttg6W2cdk still contains the 50 BTC. Block 20000: address 1Gtj5h1u8yZJe32neQZB5C7efP9XeMd9SW still contains the 50 BTC. ... In fact, I wonder whether the idea is simply not that instead of a total amount of bitcoin of 21 million something, to have exactly 20 million. If you subtract the early coins that don't seem to move, it seems to turn out to be about that. Thank you. This is a more detailed rundown of what the chart shows. What is really at stake is whether he kept all 20000 keys. Ultimately there's no proof for that - unless and until the coins in one of those addresses moves. It hasn't happened yet, so all we can say there's an absence of proof he kept the keys. You can't ever prove he discarded them, only that he didn't. But given that no one else was mining bitcoin, that bitcointalk didn't even exist, that the coins were worthless - albeit if he hoped they'd one day have some value - it's a valid theory. |
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If Satoshi was clever enough to invent Bitcoin, I also believe with all my heart that his intelligence stretched to, like, writing stuff down too.
Face. Palm. Not the point here. |
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No, because what people deliberately choose not to do can be as informative as what they choose to do. But I won't labour the point any further if you're not interested.
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...
This is essentially my view  That he was aware of the potential - but still decided he couldn't be bothered? ... Maybe buying back later...? That's certainly a route to lesser riches but much increased anonymity when cashing in. Smart enough to know you only need so much money, and when it's wise to stop? Yes, absolutely. That seems entirely in character. Hence also stepping back when he did. |
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So you just have a different public key with the same private key.
That's not how it works. A public key is computed from the private key. There can not be two different public keys for one private key. The other direction is possible (multiple private keys can have public keys that hash to the same bitcoin address) but so extremely unlikely that the probability can safely be ignored. Onkel Paul I don't really know all that much about ECDSA and co, but if that's true bitcoin-qt generates new private key/public key pairs on it's own every block when mining. Yes, this is my understanding. I think we are talking cross purposes. Edit: there's some ambiguity in the article that I'll fix, I suspect this has caused the problem. Point stands: he had to have the keys to create the addresses, but I'm not convinced he still has every single one. It's speculation. A discussion starter. With some interesting evidence from the blockchain for his habits. Take it as you will. |
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...
That's possible, of course. But it's interesting they haven't moved since. It's speculation, but Occam's Razor suggests it's more likely than the alternative. Remember, the coins were literally worthless then, and bitcoin was still an experiment in its infancy. when making complex software, my default is to log absolutely every minor detail to log files, for debugging. I can't imagine not logging the private keys. he also specifically stated in early communications something to the effect "it might be wise to hold on to a few in case value increases". Mining is supposed to provide value to the miner. This is key to the entire Bitcoin thing. So I think he was aware of the potential. I think it's entirely possible he didn't keep the keys, all the same. But whether he did or didn't I'm sure it wasn't anything other than a deliberate decision. This is essentially my view |
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Each wallet can have several receiving addresses. And I'm pretty sure you don't need a new private key for that.
Really? How do you get 2 addresses from 1 key? And we're talking about 20000 addresses here, untouched since they were mined. A Bitcoin address is a 160-bit hash of the public portion of a public/private ECDSA keypair. Using public-key cryptography, you can "sign" data with your private key and anyone who knows your public key can verify that the signature is valid. So you just have a different public key with the same private key. It doesn't work like that to my knowledge. Privkey -> pubkey -> address, 1:1:1. The wiki suggests this too, surely. Perhaps he has a wallet with 20000 addresses, or rather a series of wallets as he'd be running it on many computers. |
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Each wallet can have several receiving addresses. And I'm pretty sure you don't need a new private key for that.
Really? How do you get 2 addresses from 1 key? And we're talking about 20000 addresses here, untouched since they were mined. |
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The article speculates that keeping 20,000 private keys is "unlikely".
This is the only "evidence" that I see.
Maybe Satoshi generated them sequentially from some seeds. Then he only needs a unique seed per mining machine.
Maybe he wrote them out to a database or simple log file and has these files backed up.
I do kind of want to believe he threw away the keys, it would have been the best thing to do for the good of Bitcoin. (Shame he won't actually state he did that...) But I see nothing approaching proof.
Bingo There is also the possibility that satoshi nakamoto thought it's possible that generating the coins into different adresses each block can make it harder to track which ones are his. And it would have worked if it weren't for the sequential nonces that linked the different blocks together. Plus AFIK solo mining sends generated coins to different addresses on it's own, at least using any client I am aware of, which doesn't mean they don't all belong to the same private key. I even think that was the default behavior from the start. So IIRC the whole article is incorrect. Can somebody confirm? Yes: new address, new key each block. I don't follow your logic. |
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The article speculates that keeping 20,000 private keys is "unlikely".
This is the only "evidence" that I see.
Maybe Satoshi generated them sequentially from some seeds. Then he only needs a unique seed per mining machine.
Maybe he wrote them out to a database or simple log file and has these files backed up.
I do kind of want to believe he threw away the keys, it would have been the best thing to do for the good of Bitcoin. (Shame he won't actually state he did that...) But I see nothing approaching proof.
That's possible, of course. But it's interesting they haven't moved since. It's speculation, but Occam's Razor suggests it's more likely than the alternative. Remember, the coins were literally worthless then, and bitcoin was still an experiment in its infancy. |
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That band on the graph can only be him. Did he really keep 20,000 keys, or just a few to larger accounts?
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Article looks like bullshit based off nothing but speculation to me. There's nothing that offers proof or backs up their claims at all. Nobody knows what happened to satoshi, his coins, or even if he is one or more people.
Aside from the evidence of course. Did you even read it? It's not a watertight case but strongly plausible. |
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Hm... I dont know. I guess repeating "you're full of shit" would be a less classy way to say that... though you could say I'm curious to see what claim he will say counts as evidence/proof of what he said to be true.
Most of what he says in response can be summed up to "hard fork here, hard fork there, poof! Magic!", so I guess I should stop.
Forget it. Telling him this stuff is actually useful and proving it by using it in ways you can't use fiat doesn't convince him, because of theoretical issues that don't seem to cause real world problems... |
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Dear "Stolfi", I have come across the page: http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2014-02-17-HowToMakeSomeEasyMoney.htmlIt appears you formed the impression around February 2014 that bitcoin is a pyramid scheme. Since that date, however, you have thoroughly educated yourself on the technology, tacitly admitting that it constitutes an advance in CS and in economics. In any case, you no longer think being a pyramid is one of bitcoin's top six drawbacks. The bitcoin prootocol was a promising solution to an old distributed computing problem, yes; and the blockchain started by Satoshi on 2009-01-03 was a technical experiment to test it, yes. But the experiment revealed some serious problems, which were not clearly seen at the time, and still have no solution in sight. Economically, as a "deflationary decentralized pseudonymous irreversible currency", bitcoin still makes no sense to me. As an investment, I believe that it is fairly well illustrated by that money-making circle on my website. The bitcoin system does not create any real wealth (food, homes, cars, boat rides, haircuts...) Unlike the dividends and valuation of typical company stocks, any proft that one can make from bitcoin, wether by short-term trading or long-term "hodling", will be someone else's loss. If bitcoin crashes, or never rises above the current levels, the losers will be obvious -- namely, all those who bought high and had to sell low, or will die holding the bag. When an investor uses his sweat-earned 260 $ to increase his holdings by 1 BTC today, he is either giving that money to a Chinese miner, or is paying for a bottle of fine French wine on Risto's table, or a new pair of designer ties for the Winklevoss twins. But even if bitcoin "goes to the moon", the mansions and lamborghinis that the bitcoin holders will acquire, when they finally start spending their bitcoins, will not have been created by bitcoin. By spending those tokens, the bitcoin holders will take real wealth from society, without giving any other real wealth in return. In that case, the losers will be harder to pin down, because (as in my money-spinning circle) the loss will be diffuse and moving from hand to hand. Still, the total loss of the "others" will be equal to the gain of the holders. So, in either case, the economic effect of bitcoin will be the same as that of any pyramid or ponzi scheme: it will only transfer real wealth from the late adopters to the early adopters, without creating any real wealth by itself. Ponzi schemes are usually planned and managed by one person, which is not the case of bitcoin; but that not an essential difference. As some Indian economist aptly put it, "bitcoin is not a deliberate ponzi". I believe that Satoshi did not intend bitcoin to be a pyramid scheme, and that it only became one a couple of years later, when other people started viewing (and pushing) it as a serious investment, rather than a computer experiment. To the extent that people like Risto, Sielbert and the Winkles are still selling it as a way to get filthy rich without working, even with due risk warnings, it is still a pyramid scheme. Would you consider removing HowToMakeSomeEasyMoney.html?
Of course not. EDIT: Actually, whether bitcoin flops or goes to the moon, the losses of the losers will be much greater than the profits of the winners, because a huge amount of real wealth will be consumed by mining. Thus, in that aspect, bitcoin is not just a ponzi, but an egregiously stupid kind of ponzi. This is ridiculous. Around half my income comes in the form of bitcoin payments for copywriting and communications work with clients around the world. Payments are typically $50-300 each. Without bitcoin, it would be utterly uneconomical to transfer those amounts through the traditional banking system. There's clear value there to me: the ability to access global work, without which this month I'd have trouble paying my mortgage and feeding my kids. And yes, to pre-empt your next point, I do pay my mortgage in fiat. But I also keep some in bitcoin, because it's the best way of paying for goods and services globally, like the gigs on Fiverr I've been using to create material for communications campaigns using professionals around the world, and because the punitive bank rates make it smart to keep the money in the system rather than going via fiat. Some of those people, I imagine, will do the same, and some of them are only able to access the work I give them because I pay in bitcoin, rather than be extorted by a fiat transfer. Ever tried sending $5 across continents by fiat? A clue: Fiverr wouldn't be called Fiverr any more. And so the bitcoins go round, providing a useful and valuable service as a fast, cheap means of international currency transfer. I love that you're so engaged and enthusiastic about proving bitcoin is a ponzi/scam/will never work, etc. Really. But while you're pontificating about why it can't work, you seem not to realise there are people like me who are able to pay the bills and create real value for other people because it does work. |
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Until we break the log downtrend line we wont get a lot of technical traders jumping on board - that is when i consider us in a bull market (bitcoin style).
Where is that right now? |
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Alohar!! http://www.techtimes.com/articles/34023/20150219/alohar-mobile-security-authentication.htm (security is going to go beyond traditional biometric profiling ^^, for instance using machine learning to learn from the data collected by our devices and using that to build far more complex identification verification models from that data... going to be listening to our heartbeats eventually no doubt too, incidentally our phones will also turn into onboard doctors, as well as onboard policemen) Very true. I remember reading somewhere about a device that was already able to monitor an individual's ECG waves as they are even more unique than fingerprints. This stuff is being created as we type. What happens if you stop typing? Yep, the ecg thing is being developed by a UK bank. |
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There's still around 20k UNITY assets on BTER  No Jay for us. |
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