Questioning Satoshi Nakamoto's existence...

[JoelKatz]

The attack you are suggesting is virtually impossible. What motive would people have for accepting a client that was rigged in such a way, particularly if the utility of bitcoin for them was harmed by such a choice? All that would happen if the developers did that is that their client version would quickly cease to be the official one.

And nothing stops anyone from writing their own client. So long as it follows the same network protocol, nobody need even ever know.

[1713910046]

1713910046

[Desolator]

well then someone should make an alternate client ASAP because I only know of one and everyone trusts it 100% and that's setting it up for a very, very bad situation.  There really should only be like 3 though because if there's 50 and people keep making more, you know some fake ones will appear that just beam your wallet straight to russia once it hits a trigger

[JoelKatz]

well then someone should make an alternate client ASAP because I only know of one and everyone trusts it 100% and that's setting it up for a very, very bad situation.  There really should only be like 3 though because if there's 50 and people keep making more, you know some fake ones will appear that just beam your wallet straight to russia once it hits a trigger

I don't see how it's setting anything up for a bad situation. In any event, what you're suggesting is happening anyway. People are running several different version of the client and upgrades do not happen instantaneously. There is no conceivable way such an attack could work until the majority of people were running an upgraded client, and there would be no way to induce the majority of people to upgrade to a client that destroyed the entire point of bitcoins.

The attack is just not feasible. If the Firefox team started making Firefox unusable, you wouldn't switch to Internet Explorer. You'd stick with the last unbroken version of Firefox until someone else took over the project and made a release you found better than the one you were using.

The people who control the official client only do so because they have earned trust. Any hint that that trust was betrayed and they would lose control over the official client.

That said, alternate client implementations are actually not a very good idea, IMO. Any slight incompatibility that caused a block to be accepted by one set of clients and not another could fork the public chain and lead to serious pain. (Imagine if one client said I paid you 100 bitcoins and another client said I paid someone else. However that's resolved, somebody won't be happy.) That's a pretty high risk for very little benefit. (I might be persuaded otherwise if there was some significant benefit, but I don't know of any. Obviously, it's a cost/benefit analysis and the cost is high.)

[Xephan]

well then someone should make an alternate client ASAP because I only know of one and everyone trusts it 100% and that's setting it up for a very, very bad situation.  There really should only be like 3 though because if there's 50 and people keep making more, you know some fake ones will appear that just beam your wallet straight to russia once it hits a trigger

Frankly speaking, I've thought of coding an alternate client to address certain issues. But as my research moved along, I realized a lot of these are actually already catered for within the specifications, just that the official client hasn't implemented them.

Now the problem arises that if I go ahead and write an alternate client, assuming that my skills are up to it, what happens if I implement some of those "newer" features like contracts using disabled script operators? These transactions become invalid because most of the official clients user cannot validate it. So anybody using mine will get borked if they tried to use that feature.

So it ends up that whatever I do, I need to keep in step with the official client. If they implement a "new" feature, I have to keep up before it is released as public so I'd forever have to keep catching up. The end analysis of it is I would be wasting my effort duplicating the backend system. We're probably better off with a single official implementation and then hanging off GUI frontends from it to cater to preferences. But this won't address your fear that the devs can sneak in loopholes like that since the core processing is still a single implementation.

However, that's already an issue that's covered by the fact the official code is open source. I'm sure there are people outside the dev teams who look at every new release and check for potential flaws and backdoors.

[JohnRetardKeynes]

The attack you are suggesting is virtually impossible. What motive would people have for accepting a client that was rigged in such a way, particularly if the utility of bitcoin for them was harmed by such a choice? All that would happen if the developers did that is that their client version would quickly cease to be the official one.

And nothing stops anyone from writing their own client. So long as it follows the same network protocol, nobody need even ever know.

Surely there is also the issue that some users are going to be using the older client, at least initially. So if they release a new client with this rather major change to the system in it, the vast majority of users would initially be rejecting those blocks that didn't follow the old rules. At this point it would become clear that there is something bad with the new client, that it was issuing bad blocks.

So one would have to ensure that it was hidden in the new client, but didn't start to create bad blocks until some point in the future when most if not all users would have upgraded. And being open source, its unlikely that such code could escape notice for long.

[Ghostofkobra]

Occams Razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor) tells me that:

This Satoshi dude/dudes/dudette is a guy that hangs out of the crypto list, he/she/they
read Paco Ahlgren’s book "Discipline", got inspired and created bitcoin.

Paco then found bitcoin and thought f*cking nice, this looks like the stuff in my book,
lets write about it.


All other explanations are less likely.
/GoK

[ribuck]

... what happens if I implement some of those "newer" features like contracts using disabled script operators? These transactions become invalid because most of the official clients user cannot validate it ...

If you write a client that implements the currently-disabled script operators, your client can interoperate gracefully with existing clients.

Your client can connect to existing clients. Standard clients will not relay any non-standard transactions that they receive from your client, so you need to connect to at least one willing node. For example, luke-jr operates a node that will relay non-standard transactions.

You will want to get your non-standard transactions into a block. There are some operators who will mine blocks that include non-standard transactions. Non-standard transactions will take longer to get into the block chain (a few hours rather than about ten minutes) because not every miner will hash them.

Once your non-standard transactions are in the block chain, they don't cause problems. Clients that don't know about them will still accept the block, but will just ignore the individual transactions that they don't understand. The counterparties to the transactions that use your script operators will of course use a client that recognizes them.

And when your script operators have been demonstrated to be useful and proven to be safe, they are likely to be incorporated into the standard client.

There are already some non-standard transactions in the block chain, and the existing clients cope with them just fine.

[JohnRetardKeynes]

Occams Razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor) tells me that:

This Satoshi dude/dudes/dudette is a guy that hangs out of the crypto list, he/she/they
read Paco Ahlgren’s book "Discipline", got inspired and created bitcoin.

Paco then found bitcoin and thought f*cking nice, this looks like the stuff in my book,
lets write about it.


All other explanations are less likely.
/GoK

I'm with you all the way..... until...

why did Paco Ahlgren then decide to delete his blog post about bitcoin?

[ribuck]

why did Paco Ahlgren then decide to delete his blog post about bitcoin?

1. Satoshi would not have written a blog post about Bitcoin in a non-anonymous place.

2. Paco has not just deleted his Bitcoin blog post. He seems to have deleted both of his blogs and is redirecting the domains to his "Discipline Book" site. Very odd.

[b.miller]

Occams Razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor) tells me that:

This Satoshi dude/dudes/dudette is a guy that hangs out of the crypto list, he/she/they
read Paco Ahlgren’s book "Discipline", got inspired and created bitcoin.

Paco then found bitcoin and thought f*cking nice, this looks like the stuff in my book,
lets write about it.


All other explanations are less likely.
/GoK

I'm with you all the way..... until...

why did Paco Ahlgren then decide to delete his blog post about bitcoin?

Errr.....Paco Ahlgren's two sites that held his blog have now been redirected.  Sooooooo, it looks like none of his articles are available.  If you guys are looking for the simplest solution to be the best solution, my money is with the idea that Ahlgren wrote about bitcoin, created bitcoin and is now quietly fading away because we may have accidentally stumbled upon the truth.  Why else would he be rearranging his blogs?  Why would he be watching us and reacting to our speculations if there wasn't something to hide?  I can only assume that the removal of his blogs indicates just that very idea!  He's watching and reacting.  If you want my two cents, there you go!

[b.miller]

why did Paco Ahlgren then decide to delete his blog post about bitcoin?

1. Satoshi would not have written a blog post about Bitcoin in a non-anonymous place.

2. Paco has not just deleted his Bitcoin blog post. He seems to have deleted both of his blogs and is redirecting the domains to his "Discipline Book" site. Very odd.

Game theory suggests that is EXACTLY what Satoshi would do, especially if Satoshi is Ahlgren.

[Raoul Duke]

why did Paco Ahlgren then decide to delete his blog post about bitcoin?

1. Satoshi would not have written a blog post about Bitcoin in a non-anonymous place.

2. Paco has not just deleted his Bitcoin blog post. He seems to have deleted both of his blogs and is redirecting the domains to his "Discipline Book" site. Very odd.

No, he's banking on all you guys going there searching for the bitcoin post. Very clever

[blueadept]

That said, alternate client implementations are actually not a very good idea, IMO. Any slight incompatibility that caused a block to be accepted by one set of clients and not another could fork the public chain and lead to serious pain. (Imagine if one client said I paid you 100 bitcoins and another client said I paid someone else. However that's resolved, somebody won't be happy.) That's a pretty high risk for very little benefit. (I might be persuaded otherwise if there was some significant benefit, but I don't know of any. Obviously, it's a cost/benefit analysis and the cost is high.)

But there are several alternative clients available.  And the beauty of the way the network works is that it protects against malicious and broken clients.  If two clients interpret a transaction differently, one client will fit with the rest of the network and the other will be broken and its transaction (a spend from someone who erroneously thinks they got your 100 bitcoins?) won't be forwarded by honest, correctly-working nodes.

[Xephan]

... what happens if I implement some of those "newer" features like contracts using disabled script operators? These transactions become invalid because most of the official clients user cannot validate it ...

If you write a client that implements the currently-disabled script operators, your client can interoperate gracefully with existing clients.

Your client can connect to existing clients. Standard clients will not relay any non-standard transactions that they receive from your client, so you need to connect to at least one willing node. For example, luke-jr operates a node that will relay non-standard transactions.

You will want to get your non-standard transactions into a block. There are some operators who will mine blocks that include non-standard transactions. Non-standard transactions will take longer to get into the block chain (a few hours rather than about ten minutes) because not every miner will hash them.

Once your non-standard transactions are in the block chain, they don't cause problems. Clients that don't know about them will still accept the block, but will just ignore the individual transactions that they don't understand. The counterparties to the transactions that use your script operators will of course use a client that recognizes them.

And when your script operators have been demonstrated to be useful and proven to be safe, they are likely to be incorporated into the standard client.

There are already some non-standard transactions in the block chain, and the existing clients cope with them just fine.

Thanks for clearing that up, quite obviously I haven't gone through all the documentation nor as thoroughly as I ought to for those parts that I did

[MackTrow]

why did Paco Ahlgren then decide to delete his blog post about bitcoin?

1. Satoshi would not have written a blog post about Bitcoin in a non-anonymous place.

2. Paco has not just deleted his Bitcoin blog post. He seems to have deleted both of his blogs and is redirecting the domains to his "Discipline Book" site. Very odd.

No, he's banking on all you guys going there searching for the bitcoin post. Very clever

Now it says Ahlgren's site is down for maintenance. So let me make sure I have this right. A published author pulls down his entire presence on the internet just to fool a bunch of geeks. I'm not buying it. Paco Ahlgren is definitely Satoshi Nakamoto. Or else he's connected to him/them/whatever.

[TiagoTiago]

Satoshi could've intentionally acted in a way that would look suspect to throw us off expecting we would expect him to not be so careless. If we expect him to be smart enough to not produce obvious clues pointing to his identity, the presence of obvious clues would signal it isn't him, and we would be desestimulated(sp?) to look deeper into connection to this person.


Though, he could actually have thought about the possibility of someone seeing that move, like me, and played it so that either way we're throw off (the person isn't him, it's a decoy)

[JoelKatz]

Satoshi could've intentionally acted in a way that would look suspect to throw us off expecting we would expect him to not be so careless. If we expect him to be smart enough to not produce obvious clues pointing to his identity, the presence of obvious clues would signal it isn't him, and we would be desestimulated(sp?) to look deeper into connection to this person.


Though, he could actually have thought about the possibility of someone seeing that move, like me, and played it so that either way we're throw off (the person isn't him, it's a decoy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQNHBUqfLnM

[sd]

satoshi nakamoto is too smart to repeat these fallacies:

...the online gambling industry — which was, by the way, pumping billions of dollars into a struggling U.S. economy. ...

pumping billions of dollars? shuffling billions of dollars. which doesn't add any real production.

Taking dollars from savings accounts and moving them to gambling sites might be considered to be pumping dollars into the economy. Those dollars are going from rent to circulation.

I don't think Paco's above statement is wrong.

[theymos]

Satoshi uses British English and inserts two spaces between sentences. Does Paco Ahlgren?

[Raoul Duke]

Satoshi uses British English and inserts two spaces between sentences. Does Paco Ahlgren?

Check for yourself: http://coinbits.com/bitcoin-cannot-fail.html

But i must warn you that wordpress sometimes auto-formats text depending on users settings, so, it may not mean much if he doesn't use the 2 spaces between sentences in his blog

About the british english, well... I can't pronounce myself because i learnt english watching to hollywood movies lol