...This is a MUST read. I don't think this is fiction, I think this is exactly what went down when Gavin met Dr. Wright. The hair on the back of my neck is still standing up!!!
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Philip Saunders
6 hrs ago10 min read
Genesis
Disclaimer: what follows is quite possibly a work of fiction.
Andresen looked out of Starbucks upon the London street. He was waiting for the half-full Latte before him to grow cold so he could order an Americano instead. The mix up had occurred when the girl had asked for his name to write on the coffee cup.
‘I’d uh… prefer to stay anonymous,’ Andresen had bumbled. Generally, he avoided identifying himself unless absolutely necessary. He was about to ask if he could pay for the coffee with Bitcoin, but the gentleman next in the queue cleared his throat impatiently, so he paid fiat instead.
It was April, and the day was pale. The queue stretched out the door to the imperial buses parked outside. So jet-lagged had he been after the long flight from Boston that he barely noticed when the barista handed him a Latte meant for the gentleman. He decided to read a spare copy of the The Times by the window until reordering seemed innocuous. If there was one thing Andresen hated, it was making a scene.
His phone buzzed, the caller unknown.
‘Dr Wright,’ he said. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes,’ a voice said curtly after a pause. ‘Come to Covent Garden at 3PM, the address we agreed. My assistant will meet you in the lobby.’
Dial tone. This was the first time he had heard that voice. Up to now, he had only ever interacted with Satoshi Nakamoto online. The man on the phone sounded Australian and business-like. It was not the sound of a cypherpunk basement dweller his mind’s eye had pictured. And yet, at a gut level, he felt a thrill of recognition. As a studious person, Andresen found answering phone calls felt like being made to dance on a stage by command. He preferred conversations conducted via text, which gave him the space to reply in his own time. The man sounded similarly indirect (or “abstracted”, as he preferred to put it).
Until Satoshi had disappeared publicly in late 2010, this had been about the sum of their relationship. It had even continued by private correspondence until about mid 2011. A year after Satoshi’s email address went dead, Andresen was made chief scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation, but lately crypto-politics had tarnished his credibility in the community. This would be his final chance to restore his reputation, to meet for the first time and settle the question of Satoshi’s identity forever.
Andresen went to the back of the queue to reorder. ‘Gavin,’ he said firmly, when she asked again.
The hotel lobby was marble, with an array of potted trees surrounding an oasis. A small restaurant lay at the other side. He was frankly impressed, and a little surprised. No doubt Satoshi was very rich, not far off being a billionaire depending on the day, but he had never seemed like the type to show off. And according to the blockchain, Satoshi’s stake had not yet changed hands.
A tall, black-haired woman came out of the elevator and introduced herself as Jan. ‘Welcome Dr Andresen. Just make your way up to the third floor, fourth room on the right. I have to go out to buy a clean laptop.’
A clean laptop: of course. Andresen had brought his own in case, but this made more sense. He reminded himself that he must remain skeptical until the burden of proof had been overcome. Until he had witnessed hard cryptographic evidence, he would have to assume Craig Steven Wright was a very smart imposter.
At the top of the elevator, the fourth door on the right was open. His heart pounded as he walked inside; a plain conference room, no furniture except a blank desk and a couple of chairs strewn about the room. By the window overlooking London, the man sat.
‘Gavin,’ the man said- coldly, he thought- and stood up to shake his hand. Dr Wright had sharp, inquisitive eyes and looked reasonably fit for his age. ‘How is Frodo?’
It dawned upon him. In his earlier exchanges with Satoshi, Andresen had mentioned the pet hamster in his home office, Frodo. He hadn’t posted about his office pet anywhere else online. That proved this man must have had access to Satoshi’s email account, at the very least. He reminded himself the email could still have been hacked.
‘Frodo died three years ago,’ he said, and countered with another indicator that Satoshi himself had mentioned. ‘How is your wife?”
‘She’s doing great,’ said Dr Wright. ‘I’ve been away for some time. I don’t think I ever showed you a picture of us… here we are.’
He showed him a photo from his wallet. It was over ten years old, and they looked to be in their early thirties. Andresen couldn’t help but notice that she looked Asian in origin- interesting evidence in itself- but he didn’t want to sound racist by drawing attention to it.
‘That’s cute,’ said Andresen, sitting down, trying not to be starstruck. ‘So, you know this is all very surreal. You’re the real Satoshi. Wow.’
‘That has yet to be shown. My assistant is getting the equipment. Until I have proven myself to you, I’m nobody.’
‘Why reveal yourself? Why now?’
‘It’s been seven years since genesis. Mainly, my hand was forced in an ongoing blackmail, which I’m not at liberty to disclose. Last year I was outed against my will and my home was ransacked by the Australian government for tax purposes. Luckily, the story didn’t catch on. The downside is that I was framed as some kind of scammer, which is affecting business. I don’t want to do this. But either the truth about me is known, and I can go back to work, or my public reputation will be ruined. I wanted to remain anonymous. I still do. I have no choice but to come clean. But I feel like you should be the first to know, Gavin.’
‘So what are your credentials?’
‘I have two PhD’s. I’m a computer scientist first and foremost. I taught computer science as an adjunct professor at CSU. I’ve designed many protocols and written many papers on cryptography, besides… you know. I created the world’s first online casino and have worked for several companies. Lately I’ve been building one of the biggest supercomputers outside of the public sector for studying scalability issues with Bitcoin. I thought that would interest you.’
Indeed, Andresen had come up with several proposals for increasing the capacity of the network, which had been mostly rejected by the community. At the back of his mind, he wondered if having the true founder on his side might help win the argument.
‘And the other one?’
‘I achieved a doctorate in theology,’ said Dr Wright.
Theology. That seemed rather wooly-minded of him.
‘Every civilization needs a creation myth,’ he said, eyes glinting with a strange fire the likes of which he’d never seen. ‘We think of ourselves as being outside and above history, like enlightened meta-observers. But we’re not.We’re still in it. 21 million coins, 21 centuries. I wanted to spark a rebirth of trust, a new and decentralized world of liberty, with its own money and its own law.’
‘Well, the blockchain is the best way of keeping history, whatever that is,’ Andresen offered.
‘I failed. Have you ever heard of the myth of Romulus and Remus?’
‘When I was a child. I’ve forgotten it now.’
‘I’ll tell you.
Romulus and Remus were the twin brothers who founded the city of Rome. Their mother was Rhea Silva, the daughter of King Numitor. One day Numitor was toppled by his brother, Amulius, who seized power and forced Rhea to swear chastity and lived her life as a virgin. But Rhea was impregnated with twins by Mars, the god of war. Amulius was furious, and cast the babies on the river Tiber once they were born. The twins survived like sewer rats against all odds. They floated downstream and washed upon the banks of the Tiber and were suckled by a she-wolf, until a shepherd and his wife fostered them and raised them to be shepherds like themselves. They grew up strong. When they discovered their true origin, they led a revolution and defeated Amulius, restoring Numitor to the throne. But instead of inheriting the old kingdom themselves they founded a new village along the banks of the Tiber. And that was how Rome began.’
‘What happened then?’ Andresen said, feeling a little out of his depth.
‘It’s complicated. The point is that it’s no good trying to fix the old. Fork it, make it new, and conquer the old. That’s what the story is about.’
In his mind he marvelled, this is him. This is Satoshi Nakamoto, sitting in front of me. He even had the prickliness he had picked up from the emails. For a while he had thought it might be Dave Kleiman, a forensic computer investigator who had been reported to have died in his home in Florida from MRSA in 2013. The story had been posted in a Gizmodo article after several documents pointed his way. He doubted it now; if Kleiman really was Satoshi, he would have been posting and writing code from a hospital bed during their years of correspondence.
Not that it mattered of course, the network worked regardless of the founder’s identity. We are all Satoshi. Pfft. Yeah right.
The door opened, it was the assistant Jan with a fresh laptop still encased, followed by two men in suits. Both of the men came across as very vigilant and dark tempered, like security guards. Assassins, even.
‘I hope you don’t mind, these are associates from my company whom I trust,’ said Satoshi, standing up. ‘Gentlemen, this is Gavin Andresen from the Bitcoin Foundation. You’ve met Jan.’
They mumbled a greeting and stood watchfully at either side of the desk.
‘Okay, I guess we better get this done,’ said Andresen, taking the lead. ‘To prove you’re the real Satoshi, I need you to sign a message with the private key from the genesis block, which only Satoshi holds. That’s the single best evidence we have. If it all checks out I can give you my blessing.’
Andresen double checked the receipt Jan had provided for the new laptop; it had been purchased about 10 minutes ago. He also checked the packaging to make sure it was still sealed. After installing a fresh Linux operating system from his own thumb drive, he ran several stat commands to check nothing had been tampered with. He even went to the trouble of downloading the exact OpenSSL binaries that would have existed in 2009 so there would be no protocol disparities.
There were a number of ways of verifying the key, including moving actual coins, but the same effect could be achieved by simply using the private key to digitally sign a short message. The public key cryptography on which Bitcoin was built was essentially a one way street: you could use the private key to calculate the public key, but not the other way around. That is what made the keys secure to distribute. Then there was a third factor- a signature, which is what you got when you used the private key to hash any random piece of text. Almost magically it seemed, you could verify whether the signature was created by the private key using only the corresponding public key and the original text.
Satoshi’s message in the genesis block of Bitcoin was well known:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
‘I’ll demonstrate signing the original message first, then I’ll sign any message you want,’ said Dr Wright.
Andresen stood up and watched as Dr Wright took a pem file from his own thumb drive and implemented a series of operations in the command line, writing the exact same message as what was hidden in the original genesis block. Then Andresen used the Chancellor text and the public key to match against the private key Dr Wright had provided. It was a match.
‘That seems to have passed,’ Andresen said.
‘Good. Now step two. Give me any sentence, and I’ll use the private key of the genesis block to sign it.’
‘Hmm. Let’s say, Gavin’s favourite number is eleven CSW. My message and your initials.’
Dr Wright sat down and ran through the operations to sign this text using the private key. He produced a signature and saved it.
‘Final step. Moment of truth.’
Heart thudding again, Andresen combined the public key with the new signature, and hit enter.
Gavin’s favourite number is eleven CSW
A stunned silence fell upon the room.
‘There it is,’ he declared. ‘I was Satoshi Nakamoto.’
There was a weirdly reverent atmosphere around the rather simple cryptographic operation he had performed. Andresen stood and shook Dr Wright’s hand.
‘In case I don’t get the chance again,’ Andresen said, ‘I just want to thank you for what you’ve created and what you’ve done for humanity. This has been my whole life for the last seven years. It’s an honour to meet you in person. Thank you.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without your help, said Dr Wright. ‘You were the best programmer I could find. You’ll be needed now more than ever; when this is all over with I intend to move onto other projects. I’m going to publish a public proof in a few weeks time. When it’s time, you’ll know.’
‘I’ll be ready,’ said Andresen.
Their first and only meeting was concluded.
The flight from Heathrow back to Boston was later that evening; he had no intention of staying in London any longer. While he was waiting he went for a walk around the British Museum to satisfy his interest in numismatics. It was the one part of London he never tired of. On his mind as he passed from age to age was how the money changed; from bartered trinkets to the clay tokens of the ancient Sumerians to the gold coins pummeled with the heads of rulers. What he liked about the Museum were the secrets each section hid in plain view; unseen by millions and noticed only by a few. They were available to those who did the work.
Wondering what future numismatists would make of Bitcoin, he revisited the Starbucks. The queue was gone by now, and The Times was thrown away. The barista appeared to have forgotten him.
‘Hello sir, can I take your name?’
Andresen responded half in jest: ‘Satoshi.’
Why not. He suspected that on some level the community might be underwhelmed when they found out their hero was a flawed man of flesh and blood. He was still haunted by the strange death of Dave Kleiman, so he decided he would settle one last piece of evidence for the record.
He entered Satoshi’s old email address into his phone.
Hi Satoshi, Thanks for meeting. I don’t think you told me how the myth ended! -G
If Satoshi really was Kleiman, he wouldn’t have expected anything to come of this. There was every chance the email account had fallen into disrepair, now that it had become one of the most famous in the world. It was a rude awakening when his phone buzzed promptly some seconds later.
Romulus killed Remus. - CSW---
If Dr. Wright is Satoshi, and I have maintained that he is, and he created Bitcoin, in part, around the twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, then I ask you: Is it a stretch of my crazy imagination to presume that Satoshi also created a TWIN Bitcoin, with the foresight that one brother will eventually have to kill the other?
Riddle me that, cause this crazy shit just jumped another Vlad level!!!!
Poll
