2013-11-23 - NYTimes Blog - Study Suggests Link Between DPR and Satoshi

[Peter Todd]

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/study-suggests-link-between-dread-pirate-roberts-and-satoshi-nakamoto/

After Mr. Ulbricht was arrested last month, the scientists used public information to begin tracing Silk Road-related transactions. Among their discoveries was a particular transfer to an account controlled by Mr. Ulbricht from another that had been created in January 2009, during the very earliest days of the bitcoin network, which was set up the previous year.

In tracing various transactions made to and from Mr. Ulbricht’s account, the authors found an intriguing one involving the transfer of 1,000 bitcoin, which would have been worth $60,000 when it was made on March 20 of this year, but is now worth roughly $847,000.

Proof that Satoshi was DPR wouldn't be a bad thing for Bitcoin; there's way too many people in this community who treat every word and every decision made by Satoshi as gospel rather than evaluating ideas on their own merits.

Having said that, if you had as many Bitcoins as Satoshi probably has $60k wouldn't be that much money to you; laundering it through the Silk Road as a starting point might make a lot of sense if you were still trying to stay anonymous and wanted to retain access to your funds.

EDIT: Academic paper's been posted: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/839348/silk-road-paper.pdf

I'm not overly impressed... Given the suspicion is that the FBI confiscated the Silk Road "hot wallets", it sounds very plausible to me that this link is simply Satoshi (or some other very early adopter) making use of the Silk Road as a mixing service - they haven't at all ruled out that possibility.

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[Akka]

Proof that Satoshi was DPR wouldn't be a bad thing for Bitcoin; there's way too many people in this community who treat every word and every decision made by Satoshi as gospel rather than evaluating ideas on their own merits.

I always thought that was a possibility. If I recall correctly, Silk Road showed up ~1 Month after Satoshi disappeared. (Read it somewhere, but don't find it any more)

Although this would be a massive Press disaster. 

[d'aniel]

This post by Satoshi makes me very skeptical of such a claim (that DPR and Satoshi are the same person):

Basically, bring it on.  Let's encourage Wikileaks to use Bitcoins and I'm willing to face any risk or fallout from that act.

No, don't "bring it on".

The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way.

I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy.  You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.

[Nemesis]

Ppl who believe DPR is as knowledgeable as Satoshi are morons .... 

Really the kid posted thread on here asking for help when he integrate bitcoin client into his website....... Right that sounds like Satoshi to me 

[oakpacific]

We know at least Hal and Sirius were also involved in the January 2009, and they haven't shown us the originating address yet.

[jojo69]

Ppl who believe DPR is as knowledgeable as Satoshi are morons .... 

Really the kid posted thread on here asking for help when he integrate bitcoin client into his website....... Right that sounds like Satoshi to me 

this, Satoshi has the disappearing thing nailed...Ross was an amateur chump in the right place at the right time

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

I strongly doubt there's any connection whatsoever between Satoshi and DPR.  Most likely the early adopter/miner was DPR himself, or some other heavy user as per this more plausible speculation (with evidence) from reddit:

[–]helohe 1 point 2 hours ago

that large transaction might just have been this crazy user buying a shit load of drugs: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1e8gdp/bitcoin_millionaire/

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[–]bobabouey 2 points 2 hours ago

This really could be it.

NY times says 1,000 BTC transferred on March 20 (when transferred), equating to about $60,000. Looking at data from site, that is consistent with the weighted average for the day: http://www.quandl.com/BITCOIN-Bitcoin-Charts/MTGOXUSD-Bitcoin-Markets-mtgoxUSD

If I look at your bitcoin millionaire post, it was made May 13, and had a balance of $104,100. Using May 13 2013 average price from same link of $117, I get to 889.7 BTC.

The difference between the two is 110BTC. This would be $6,615 at the March 20 price, or $12,900 at the May price.

If this guy was buying an insane amount of drugs, spending that amount between March 20 and May 13 seems plausible.

But regardless of who he is, or any actions taken in his private life, Bitcoin long ago transcended its creator.  To bastardize Lin Chi: If you meet Satoshi on the road, kill him!

[GenTarkin]

this would make absolutely no sense if it was the case. We have Satoshi who made a brilliant , nearly unbreakable currency ... then we have DPR ...who has managed to set up and leave the most insecure(in reference to the feds already having a lot of his bitcoin) trail to his the demise of his empire.    yeah, absolutely no sense.

[fancy_pants]

Given the large number of coins both parties touched,  it would be more likely than not that they had some overlap just from random chance.

[beetcoin]

Ppl who believe DPR is as knowledgeable as Satoshi are morons ....  

Really the kid posted thread on here asking for help when he integrate bitcoin client into his website....... Right that sounds like Satoshi to me  

this, Satoshi has the disappearing thing nailed...Ross was an amateur chump in the right place at the right time

yep. ulbricht was the amateur. there's no way in hell ulbricht is satoshi. ulbricht voluntarily put himself out there, talking about his libertarian ideology while sporting a linkedin.com page where he says.. libertarian things. and showing his e-mail address on this site is just nuts.

[Carlton Banks]

Wouldn't Satoshi era coins being moved to ANY address in 2013 get noticed even earlier by our faithful worshippers at the Church of the Latter Day Cryptographers? Could the investigators be making a "Bitcoin, it's all drugs y'know" type of slur?

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Kind'a sad how people dogpile on DPR after he gets owned by the feds.  Silk Road remained online for over two years -- longer than any other major  BTC business.  It processed heavy amounts of money, while its users trafficked in everything from drugs to murder.  This sort of thing attracts more attention from the law than ... well, just about anything in the realm of bitcoin.

[LiteCoinGuy]

of course that would be very bad news in my opionion but i doubt it.

one more satoshi story.

[Carlton Banks]

Also, "scientists"? Is this really what the general public are expected to believe? What sort of actual physical sciences professional is doing this sort research? Story is, at a minimum, badly reported.

[TraderTimm]

Sorry parent poster - you suggesting that co-mingling DPR and Satoshi as a "good thing" is ludicrous. Give me a fucking break. This is precisely why satoshi stayed anonymous. Imagine if they had a group of people or a single person to target. Oh look, a convenient story to smear everyone involved!

Satoshi wasn't perfect, but I'll take this vision of imperfection over the steaming pile of crap they call "fiat".

Also, people should stop trying to dig up Satoshi's identity. I swear to fucking god, it makes my head hurt how stupid that is.

[beetcoin]

Kind'a sad how people dogpile on DPR after he gets owned by the feds.  Silk Road remained online for over two years -- longer than any other major  BTC business.  It processed heavy amounts of money, while its users trafficked in everything from drugs to murder.  This sort of thing attracts more attention from the law than ... well, just about anything in the realm of bitcoin.

the FBI knew about him for most of that time. i don't dislike him, but he's just an amateur who didn't know when to keep his mouth shut, and how to not reveal his personal information.

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Kind'a sad how people dogpile on DPR after he gets owned by the feds.  Silk Road remained online for over two years -- longer than any other major  BTC business.  It processed heavy amounts of money, while its users trafficked in everything from drugs to murder.  This sort of thing attracts more attention from the law than ... well, just about anything in the realm of bitcoin.

the FBI knew about him for most of that time. i don't dislike him, but he's just an amateur who didn't know when to keep his mouth shut, and how to not reveal his personal information.

I didn't have an opinion about him -- didn't know the guy.  But inability to evade the FBI indefinitely while actively running a multimillion dollar biz doesn't make him an amateur.  Just building up such a business & running it as long as he has makes him a pro (sadly for him, the feds agree with me on this).
Anonymity is hard, LEO are smart & work in very unexpected ways.  Tinfoilery aside, there's an amazing amount of info collected on all of us, and amazing improvements in parsing that info made every day. The fantasy of dull-normal fat cops snarfing down doughnuts put many cocky people behind bars. 

[TheWoodser]

I heard that Stephen Hawking's wheelchair IS "Skynet".....It's just publishing books in Hawking's name until the uprising......

[Jouke]

I believe they are talking about this transaction: cdcaaa0ff1446d41aae5d32c23da1ff3353765ebaf26ffd32ab912948645c08f

So what is interesting is that in the follow-up transaction, you see that there is not one 1000 btc transaction, but three. And over 25 transactions of over 500 btc. So I don't get the following sentence:

Such a single large transfer does not represent the typical
behaviour of a buyer who opens an account on Silk Road in order to purchase
some narcotics (such buyers are expected to make an initial deposit of tens or
hundreds of dollars, and to top the account o whenever they buy additional
merchandise). It could represent either large scale activity on Silk Road, or some
form of investment or partnership, but this is pure speculation."

It happened multiple times, so why do they say it is atypical?

Silkroad as well as other services has been used and is still being used to enforce the privacy of bitcoin-transactions. If you send money to a regular online wallet, for example that of mtgox or silkroad and you withdraw the same amount of coins, you'll probably receive other bitcoins than the one you sent to the wallet. This is typical behaviour and I know several people who used Silkroad for this purpose.

[gmaxwell]

I'm not overly impressed... Given the suspicion is that the FBI confiscated the Silk Road "hot wallets", it sounds very plausible to me that this link is simply Satoshi (or some other very early adopter) making use of the Silk Road as a mixing service

It doesn't even look like that at all, the "early adopter" coins in question are the ones sent to 12higDjoCCNXSA95xZMWUdPvXNmkAduhWv.

Seems weird to me to assign that particular party to Satoshi: the earliest of the connected blocks was mined a week after Bitcoin's public announcement... and it aggregated up all that coin in a single address, in a pretty decidedly non-anonymous way.

What it looks like to me is that party sent a bunch of funds to an early exchange (perhaps Britcoin, based on the date), and presumably the at that point they changed ownership.

Again, I'm confused and disappointed. Like the first from these authors this paper seems really seems second rate, not well researched— even about the operations of Bitcoin, and rather high on soundbite-grade speculation compared to substance.