[2018-05-29] Laszlo pizza man - 'satoshi was weird, paranoid and bossy'

[gentlemand]

http://www.businessinsider.com/satoshi-nakamoto-was-weird-and-bossy-says-bitcoin-developer-2018-5

Some thoughts from Laszlo thingy the man who bought the pizza and gave us GPU mining. He also developed for satoshi and shares his impressions of him here.

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[vit05]

I think Laszlo Hanyecz talked about this before, I remember reading those comments. BI always has a peculiar way of putting an interview, you can never be sure if it's an exclusive interview or a summary of another interview.

Either way, it's always fun to read what the early user talk with Satoshi was like. The concern he had with attacks, with commercial use etc. He always seemed in a hurry, it seemed that he had a deadline. It's quite different from the other projects, some of which spend a whole year raising funds for which nobody knows what the use will be

[hatshepsut93]

Nice interview, I didn't know that  Laszlo  the pizza guy was involved in Bitcoin development and mining. I agree with him about Satoshi's anonymity, it's way better for the network this way, otherwise it would be like Ethereum with "benevolent dictator", even if Satoshi would decide to be less active in development, everyone would still be looking up to him. This would mean a giant single point of failure, if something would happen to him or if he would make a mistake, it would negatively affect the whole project. It's great that Bitcoin's development is meritocracy of smaller group of core developers and larger group of contributors, very few cryptocurrencies have such a system.

[Kemarit]

Well its always fun to see articles like this from Legend to another Legend. Wasn't aware though that Laszlo was heavily involved with the early developments and even have thousands of correspondence with Satoshi. Good to note that even he can't extracted personal information about the man. So that's how Satoshi regarding his privacy and anonymity. About the bossy thing, maybe Satoshi really wanted to have his creation perfected that's why he pushes Laszlo to make the changes ASAP so that no they can have it releases without bugs.

[odolvlobo]

So, Satoshi complained about how much Laszlo was mining. I wonder how many of the coins attributed to Satoshi were actually mined by Laszlo.

[Kakmakr]

These words, nullify every negative thing that might have been said about Satoshi Nakamoto :

"It's exciting because people love a man of mystery, but I try to steer people towards the fact that it doesn't matter who made it; he could be a psycho killer," Hanyecz said. "People like to identify with heroes or villains, but in the cryptosphere, your code has to speak for itself. Charisma and being an interesting person only gets you so far when you're a developer. Ultimately, you'll be judged on the quality of your code and your idea."

I do not care who he or she or it is, I just look at the masterpiece that is the code.   ... You also have to put yourself in Satoshi's shoes at the time, because creating your own money and going up against The system was a very risky endeavour.

[richardsNY]

So, Satoshi complained about how much Laszlo was mining. I wonder how many of the coins attributed to Satoshi were actually mined by Laszlo.

I never really thought that Satoshi has actually mined all the coins the general public assumes that he has. I am quite certain that there have been a couple of more individuals all more or less mining at the same time. I find it more interesting to know what actually happened with all the 50 BTC rewards that have never moved. Did they burn them? Are there still private keys of all the addresses stored somewhere? We will likely never find out, and it is better for this entire ecosystem that we will never find out. At current levels it will be pretty destructive for the market (not for Bitcoin directly) if the ancient coins start moving. I hope they are burned, even the genesis block reward.

[audaciousbeing]

http://www.businessinsider.com/satoshi-nakamoto-was-weird-and-bossy-says-bitcoin-developer-2018-5

Some thoughts from Laszlo thingy the man who bought the pizza and gave us GPU mining. He also developed for satoshi and shares his impressions of him here.

With all of his comments, the only thing I see in him, is that he is the next most popular person after Satoshi and more people would even know about him before Satoshi himself and while Satoshi remains a mystery, he gets all of the attention. Its good we have people like him though, that sets the records straight because they were there at almost the beginning rather than adulterated history that others who tag along the line have passed from one podium to the other. His comments might sound negative but I more value into it than those who sings praises alone.

[squatter]

So, Satoshi complained about how much Laszlo was mining. I wonder how many of the coins attributed to Satoshi were actually mined by Laszlo.

I doubt he was mining the Satoshi coins. According to the article, this all happened in 2010. There were already millions of coins mined by then.

I do remember that Satoshi complained about GPUs and even asked people to stop using them:

We should have a gentleman's agreement to postpone the GPU arms race as long as we can for the good of the network.  It's much easer to get new users up to speed if they don't have to worry about GPU drivers and compatibility.  It's nice how anyone with just a CPU can compete fairly equally right now.

Didn't know Laszlo was a GPU mining pioneer, though.

[gentlemand]

Didn't know Laszlo was a GPU mining pioneer, though.

As far as I know he was the very first to suggest it. Satoshi indeed asked him to lay off the idea to give others a chance with their CPUs. I'm not sure if he did or not. Presumably if he blew 10,000 coins and had many more he did not.

Edit - confirmed here - https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-pizza-guy-laszlo-hanyecz-on-why-bitcoin-is-still-the-only-flavor-of-crypto-for-him

[hatshepsut93]

Didn't know Laszlo was a GPU mining pioneer, though.

As far as I know he was the very first to suggest it. Satoshi indeed asked him to lay off the idea to give others a chance with their CPUs. I'm not sure if he did or not. Presumably if he blew 10,000 coins and had many more he did not.

Edit - confirmed here - https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-pizza-guy-laszlo-hanyecz-on-why-bitcoin-is-still-the-only-flavor-of-crypto-for-him

This is very interesting in the light of "Satoshi owns 1 million coins" myth that is being brought up so often . It seems like Satoshi was against concentration of big amounts of coins in one hands, so this might mean 2 things:

1. Satoshi didn't mine any disproportionate amounts of coins, there were many early miners that we don't know about.

2. Satoshi did mine big amounts of early coins, but he destroyed them or don't plan to spend them in any way.

[gentlemand]

This is very interesting in the light of "Satoshi owns 1 million coins" myth that is being brought up so often . It seems like Satoshi was against concentration of big amounts of coins in one hands, so this might mean 2 things:

1. Satoshi didn't mine any disproportionate amounts of coins, there were many early miners that we don't know about.

2. Satoshi did mine big amounts of early coins, but he destroyed them or don't plan to spend them in any way.

At the very least he must have several hundred thousand. 7200 coins a day were arriving and the only one who expressed any interest in the earliest of phases was Hal Finney and he admitted to giving up mining pretty rapidly. For days on end it probably would've been Satoshi only.

[krishnapramod]

Didn't know Laszlo was a GPU mining pioneer, though.

As far as I know he was the very first to suggest it. Satoshi indeed asked him to lay off the idea to give others a chance with their CPUs. I'm not sure if he did or not. Presumably if he blew 10,000 coins and had many more he did not.

Edit - confirmed here - https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-pizza-guy-laszlo-hanyecz-on-why-bitcoin-is-still-the-only-flavor-of-crypto-for-him

This is very interesting in the light of "Satoshi owns 1 million coins" myth that is being brought up so often . It seems like Satoshi was against concentration of big amounts of coins in one hands, so this might mean 2 things:

1. Satoshi didn't mine any disproportionate amounts of coins, there were many early miners that we don't know about.

2. Satoshi did mine big amounts of early coins, but he destroyed them or don't plan to spend them in any way.

In his book, Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money, Nathaniel Popper had published an email conversation between Satoshi and Laszlo.

Laszlo’s CPU had been winning, at most, one block of 50 Bitcoins each day, of the approximately 140 blocks that were released daily. Once Laszlo got his GPU card hooked in he began winning one or two blocks an hour, and occasionally more. On May 17 he won twenty-eight blocks; these wins gave him fourteen hundred new coins that day.

Satoshi knew someone would eventually spot this opportunity as Bitcoin became more successful and was not surprised when Laszlo e-mailed him about his project. But in responding to Laszlo, Satoshi was clearly torn. If one person was taking all the coins, there would be less of an incentive for new people to join in.

A big attraction to new users is that anyone with a computer can generate some free coins. When there are 5000 users, that incentive may fade, but for now it's still true.

GPUs would prematurely limit the incentive to only those with high end GPU hardware. It's inevitable that GPU compute clusters will eventually hog all the generated coins, but I don't want to hasten that day. If the difficulty gets really high, that increases the value of each coin in a way since the supply becomes more limited. The supply is the same: 50 coins every 10 minutes.

But GPUs are much less evenly distributed, so the generated coins only go towards rewarding 20% of the people for joining the network instead of 100%.

I don't mean to sound like a socialist, I don't care if wealth is concentrated, but for now, we get more growth by giving that money to 100% of the people than giving it to 20%. Also, the longer we can delay the GPU arms race, the more mature the OpenCL libraries get, and the more people will have OpenCL compatible video cards. If we see from the difficulty factor that someone is using too much GPU, we can certainly pick this OpenCL stuff up again then. Maybe my effort to maintain GPU innocence is running out of time. It's worked out so far.

If you interpret the mail as it's, I don't think Satoshi was against concentration of wealth and Bitcoin isn't designed to address the issue of wealth inequality.

According to Nathaniel Popper, Laszlo did slow down.

he did slow down -- but others also soon began doing their own gpu mining after bitcoin gained in popularity after the first slashdot item on bitocin.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/36vnmr/heres_what_satoshi_wrote_to_the_man_responsible

https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X

[Lucius]

Laszlo Hanyecz might have been right regarding Satoshi, person who invented BTC and blockchain could not have been different from what he describes, it had to be somehow special and different. But that is only his personal opinion, and as he say in that time he have regular job and helping Satoshi with his project was not his priority.

One of the earliest contributors on BTC project was Hal Finney who also work with Satoshi, but he have completely different opinion about him, and he wrote in this forum something on that subject :

When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test. I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them.

Today, Satoshi's true identity has become a mystery. But at the time, I thought I was dealing with a young man of Japanese ancestry who was very smart and sincere. I've had the good fortune to know many brilliant people over the course of my life, so I recognize the signs.

[Carlton Banks]

I do remember that Satoshi complained about GPUs and even asked people to stop using them:

We should have a gentleman's agreement to postpone the GPU arms race as long as we can for the good of the network.  It's much easer to get new users up to speed if they don't have to worry about GPU drivers and compatibility.  It's nice how anyone with just a CPU can compete fairly equally right now.

I'm pretty sure that it was Jeff Garzik (that's right, Mr. "Satoshi's Vision") that broke or decided against that particular agreement (Garzik publicly released some crucial part of GPU mining software for Bitcoin).

I guess he could've kept it to himself, but it definitely helped to exacerbate the "early adopters" complaints (however short sighted those comments are, even today), and Garzik certainly didn't want to respect Satoshi's thoughts on the matter (which were arguably a little naive, if people like Garzik had held back, someone else would have written GPU mining code eventually anyway).

[1Referee]

1. Satoshi didn't mine any disproportionate amounts of coins, there were many early miners that we don't know about.

If we look at the block generation times (starting from block 1), then it's clear that it wasn't just one entity minting Bitcoin. The inconsistent delays between the blocks hint that there was at least some form of miner competition going on. It technically could be Satoshi himself minting from several locations/machines attempting to test how it fares, but it's likely just that there were more individuals involved.

Is there anything even indicating that it was Satoshi who actually minted the genesis block?

[Snaic]

To make brilliant discoveries a person should not have the logical thinking of an ordinary person. Therefore, all the geniuses seem a bit weird and a bit paranoid. Only having thinking with deviations from the ordinary, such a person can discover something new, since the approach itself is new and unusual. That's exactly what Satoshi Nakamoto should be.
Perhaps he did the right thing, that he remained anonymous. So we are quite sure that the Crypto currency will remain decentralized and no one will be able to claim it as its property and its brand.

[squatter]

Didn't know Laszlo was a GPU mining pioneer, though.

As far as I know he was the very first to suggest it. Satoshi indeed asked him to lay off the idea to give others a chance with their CPUs. I'm not sure if he did or not. Presumably if he blew 10,000 coins and had many more he did not.

Edit - confirmed here - https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-pizza-guy-laszlo-hanyecz-on-why-bitcoin-is-still-the-only-flavor-of-crypto-for-him

This is very interesting in the light of "Satoshi owns 1 million coins" myth that is being brought up so often . It seems like Satoshi was against concentration of big amounts of coins in one hands, so this might mean 2 things:

1. Satoshi didn't mine any disproportionate amounts of coins, there were many early miners that we don't know about.

2. Satoshi did mine big amounts of early coins, but he destroyed them or don't plan to spend them in any way.

The former is possible.... there's been some analysis about this. Apparently, Hal Finney stated that he mined one of the first 100 blocks. Per the same article, the hash rate stayed constant around 5 MH/s for the first six months after genesis. I suppose that suggests there weren't many other early miners.

That author concludes:

Based on the above, I find it reasonable to assume that most of the hashing power in the first year or so of Bitcoin’s existence came from Satoshi Nakamoto. If real users were actually joining and leaving Bitcoin, one would expect the hash rate to have varied a lot more, particularly in the first six months. Starting in early 2010 the network hash rate does start increasing rapidly, suggesting that’s when the real serious users started using (and mining) Bitcoin.

I think it makes sense to assume the Satoshi coins number somewhere in the millions. Pinpointing a number would be a futile exercise. Let's hope those keys were destroyed.

[BitHodler]

Let's hope those keys were destroyed.

Roger Ver's words: If he had half the total supply of all the Bitcoins he would still deserve it.

I somewhat agree there. I don't mind if he still owns the keys. If ever he would liquidate his holdings, at that point in time it will prove to be the best ever moment to allow fresh capital to enter the market.

On the other hand, these coins are pretty much worthless with how authorities would love to track him down and do whatever with him that they think is necessary, which obviously is something completely unethical.