What's wrong with Gavin Andresen?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Gavin Andresen, the person that took the leadership of the bitcoin project right after Satoshi's disappearance, says that Satoshi is Craig Wright. He says that he signed him a message from the 1st block. And I'm like ... ?? I know that I'm 4 years late, but I'm just questioning how that person that Satoshi trusted, stated that he believes such scammer.

Here's the video: Gavin Andresen about Craig Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto

And here's a video of Vitalik humiliating him: Gavin vs Vitalik, "Craig wright is probably not Satoshi" Mic drop moment

I personally think that Gavin is either lying or getting paid to say such things.

[BitcoinFX]

Signal - To - Noise Ratio -- Vitalik Mic Drop
- https://soundcloud.com/proofofbeats/signal-to-noise-ratio-vitalik-mic-drop

...

Where to begin ...

Topic: Gavin will visit the CIA
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6652.0

...

Either/or : ignore!
- http://gavinandresen.ninja/either-or-ignore

"Now that six months have gone past, I’m being asked if I still think Craig Wright was Satoshi.

I think there are two possibilities.

Either he was Satoshi, but really wants the world to think he isn’t, so he created an impossible-to-untangle web of truths, half-truths and lies. And ruined his reputation in the process.

If he was Satoshi, we should respect his wish to remain anonymous, and ignore him.

The other possibility is he is a master scammer/fraudster who managed to trick some pretty smart people over a period of several years.

In which case everybody except the victims of his fraud and law enforcement working on behalf of those victims should ignore him.

So, either he was or he wasn’t. In either case, we should ignore him. I regret ever getting involved in the “who was Satoshi” game, and am going to spend my time on more fun and productive pursuits." - Gavin "Bell" Andresen, November 16, 2016

...

...snip...

Read Gavin Andresen's sworn deposition (Kleiman case) in regards to the PGP Key ...
- https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.521536/gov.uscourts.flsd.521536.589.3.pdf
Pages. 41, 42, 65 and 217

Completely farcical.

...

Perhaps one of the worst #Faketoshi enablers of all time.

Allegedly he was "bamboozled" into believing Craig.

Gavin Andresen Casts Doubts on Craig Wright’s Satoshi Claim ...
- https://cointelegraph.com/news/gavin-andresen-casts-doubts-on-craig-wrights-satoshi-claim

Excerpt;

    "There are places in the private proving session where I could have been fooled, where somebody could have switched out the software that was being used or, perhaps, the laptop that was delivered was not a brand-new laptop, and it had been tampered with in some way. I was also jet lagged. And, again, I was not in the headspace of this is going to prove to the world that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto. I was in the head space of, you know, this will prove to me beyond a reasonable doubt that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto. And my doubts arise because the proof that was presented to me is very different from the pseudo proof that was later presented to the world."

[o_e_l_e_o]

I personally think that Gavin is either lying or getting paid to say such things.

There is a good post from Greg Maxwell about this here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215128.msg53907439#msg53907439. That entire thread is worth a read, but the stuff specifically regarding Andresen starts from about page 6 onwards.

The bottom line is "We don't know for sure". Either Andresen is incompetent and allowed CSW to fool him - and given CSW "proved" his signature on a computer he provided, using a copy of Electrum he provided which was not verified, while connect to a WiFi network in a location of his choosing, there were many opportunities to easily fake a valid signature - or Andresen is compromised and was lying for his own benefit, be that money, influence, coercion, whatever.

Regardless of what happened between CSW and Andresen, if there is one thing we absolutely know for sure, it's that CSW is a fraud, a criminal, and not Satoshi.

[SirArthur]

Old news reborn? That's from 2016.

Here's to sum up what we know about CW:

- He's an early adopter, no doubts about it.
- He lost a lot of BTC with MtGox hack.
- He seams to had some business going on and due to his lost he needed a way to gain some time over his creditors. So he came up waving "Satoshi's fortune".
- This Faketoshi thing got out of hand and he keeps living his persona up to this day.

Gavin was initially lured, just that.

[gmaxwell]

- He's an early adopter, no doubts about it.

I don't believe there is any known not provably forged evidence of him having touched Bitcoin prior to 2013.  Or did I miss something?

[SirArthur]

- He's an early adopter, no doubts about it.

I don't believe there is any known not provably forged evidence of him having touched Bitcoin prior to 2013.  Or did I miss something?

Trying to not commit the same mistake as Gavin, but he seamed to have a good insight of our early community (my ID here is 217). Maybe he's just a good liar and studied it over to sound credible. Thus his lawyer keeping talk about "Mount Gox", either he didn't told him or it's a flaw on his lying, but MtG stand for "Magic the Gathering" (Online eXchange), Jed's business before use it to trade crypto and later sold the site to M'Tux (later we came to know it was Karpeles), anyone from such time knows it, it was public here at the Forum and the number of topics were quite low.
Without doubt however, he isn't Satoshi or related.

[odolvlobo]

I have met and interacted with Gavin Andresen and he seems to me to be a decent and intelligent person. Even decent and intelligent people can be fooled, so I feel that any animosity towards him is undeserved. Note also that he is not the only person that was fooled by CSW.

My belief is that Gavin probably felt that his certification was not really important because CSW stated that he was going to show the proof to the public. Then, when CSW's public proof turned out to be bogus, Gavin's certification led to his undoing.

[nutildah]

Not to mention 14 to 17.24 BTC isn't exactly "a lot", especially for 2014.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hqbux/fun_fact_craig_wright_lost_14_in_mtgox/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hx3q9/according_to_the_mtgox_leaks_from_early_2014_our/

Trying to not commit the same mistake as Gavin, but he seamed to have a good insight of our early community

Not really. He's droned on and on about how he (supposedly) didn't post half of the stuff that is currently under the satoshi account name, dedicating an entire blog post to it:

https://craigwright.net/blog/bitcoin-blockchain-tech/satoshi-never-posted-on-bitcointalk/

If you don't see how he's a pathological liar by now even after being thoroughly trashed in court (even by judges), you're not really paying attention.

[SirArthur]

@nutildah,

That may actually check out. This forums wasn't originally under "bitcointalk.org" but "bitcoin.org/smf". The change happened by 2011 and Satoshi (the real one) isn't around since December 2010.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts;start=0

And if he just lost 14 BTC, then it wasn't much. I lost 15 not at MtGox but due to the hack, I'd some change at mybitcoin.com under the same password as MtGox (I'd a big fight with Jed and lost confidence in his service way before he even sold it to MagicalTux).
I remember also was M'Tux always giving "lectures about password security", and turns out we found after the hack it was single round MD5 hashes... WTG!  

[odolvlobo]

@nutildah,

That may actually check out. This forums wasn't originally under "bitcointalk.org" but "bitcoin.org/smf". The change happened by 2011 and Satoshi (the real one) isn't around since December 2010.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts;start=0

The fact that CSW can write something that is historically accurate is not proof that he is Satoshi. I could have written that same article (though I would have left out any claims that I am Satoshi and that posts were forged).

[nutildah]

@nutildah,

That may actually check out. This forums wasn't originally under "bitcointalk.org" but "bitcoin.org/smf". The change happened by 2011 and Satoshi (the real one) isn't around since December 2010.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts;start=0

That's not the part I was referring to -- it was the part where he said that the content of his posts had been dramatically altered (outside of the auto-substitution of bitcoin.org for bitcointalk.org links)... He's basically insinuating that the content of posts had been changed for nefarious purposes when in fact there is no evidence of this.

[SirArthur]

@nutildah,

That may actually check out. This forums wasn't originally under "bitcointalk.org" but "bitcoin.org/smf". The change happened by 2011 and Satoshi (the real one) isn't around since December 2010.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts;start=0

The fact that CSW can write something that is historically accurate is not proof that he is Satoshi. I could have written that same article (though I would have left out the claim that I am Satoshi).

Sure.
It proves nothing about him being or not Satoshi, but checks out, Satoshi never used this domain, at least using his main account.

His former blog shows him to speak about Bitcoin by 2009, a few days after Genesis Block:
http://web.archive.org/web/20140602022810/http://gse-compliance.blogspot.com.au/2009_01_04_archive.html

But the only captures from Archive.org date from 2014. Could he put up an entire fake blog to second his story? Idk!

@nutildah

He (CW) didn't wrote that, Satoshi did. And yes, other than the domain change the text is exactly the same at both former and current Forum.

[nutildah]

His former blog shows him to speak about Bitcoin by 2009, a few days after Genesis Block:
http://web.archive.org/web/20140602022810/http://gse-compliance.blogspot.com.au/2009_01_04_archive.html

But the only captures from Archive.org date from 2014. Could he put up an entire fake blog to second his story? Idk!

Oh buddy. You have some catching up to do. Start here:

https://twitter.com/MyLegacyKit/status/1220264990810300416

Then here:

https://modernconsensus.com/commentary/the-case-against-craig-wright-part-i-2009-2011/

He (CW) didn't wrote that, Satoshi did. And yes, other than the domain change the text is exactly the same at both former and current Forum.

OK so we're more on the same page than I previously suspected.

[odolvlobo]

That may actually check out. This forums wasn't originally under "bitcointalk.org" but "bitcoin.org/smf". The change happened by 2011 and Satoshi (the real one) isn't around since December 2010.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts;start=0

The fact that CSW can write something that is historically accurate is not proof that he is Satoshi. I could have written that same article (though I would have left out the claim that I am Satoshi).

Sure.
It proves nothing about him being or not Satoshi, ...

Then it is irrelevant, or am I missing your point?

[SirArthur]

@nutildah
Well, compared to the next snapshot one year later, he was tampering with dates at his blog:

https://web.archive.org/web/20151003011245/http://gse-compliance.blogspot.com.au/2009_01_04_archive.html

The January 8th 2009 post wasn't there in 2014. So we can assume the blog entries timestamp and content was just as fake as his claims.

@odolvlobo yes, it's irrelevant indeed.

So, sorry to think he was around longer.

[gmaxwell]

His former blog shows him to speak about Bitcoin by 2009, a few days after Genesis Block:
http://web.archive.org/web/20140602022810/http://gse-compliance.blogspot.com.au/2009_01_04_archive.html

That is a snapshot from 2014. Archive.org actually shows that he added that backdated page in 2014:  https://twitter.com/mylegacykit/status/1220264990810300416

The block was archived prior to 2014-- back to 2011. But pages like that simply did not exist prior to 2014.  You can also verify this by loading

https://web.archive.org/web/20111123102230/http://gse-compliance.blogspot.com/

Which is a page actually archived in 2011.  And notice that it says that there are 81 posts in 2009.  If you load any version of any page up until 2014 they all say that there are 81 posts in 2009.  But the in 2014 that page is added to the archive and the history says 82 posts in 2009.


As you note, he also made other deceptive backdated edits.

(my ID here is 217)

So you're saying you didn't buy the account?    (That's permitted on bitcointalk...)

[SirArthur]

(my ID here is 217)

So you're saying you didn't buy the account?    (That's permitted on bitcointalk...)

Nope, I didn't know it was. Still the same guy behind it since day 1 it was registered, over 10 years ago.
Also first Bitcoin casino owner. 
And coming back to show a small project I made for people's heirs, made me go on a nostalgia rampage. Like Dwdollar's first Bitcoin Exchange, bitcoinmarket.com (launched by 1st February 2011)

[nutildah]

...
As you note, he also made other deceptive backdated edits.

Thanks... my brain was a bit too scattered at the moment to remember all these tidbits.

Also first Bitcoin casino owner. 

I read a few of your posts and am inclined to believe you. Welcome back.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Even decent and intelligent people can be fooled

Absolutely, but I am still left wondering "How!?"

The story we have is that the verification was done on a computer which one of CSW's associates "purchased" that day. Why? Why could they not use the computer Andresen had with him? A "factory seal" proves absolutely nothing. There is no way Gavin does not know this. Even one of the largest hardware wallet manufacturers - Ledger - does not use tamper proof seals because they prove nothing. They did not verify the copy of Electrum they installed on this computer. This is "Basic usage 101". There are probably over ten thousand posts on this forum telling newbies to verify Electrum before using it. But Andresen of all people didn't know to do this? I just don't buy it. And then he wasn't allowed to keep the laptop or the USB drive afterwards? This is like a magician who refuses to let you examine his obviously rigged deck of cards.

There are just so many flaws in this set up that I don't understand how someone with Gavin's knowledge fell for it.

[gmaxwell]

My understanding is that Wright threw an hour long tantrum.  This is a common manipulation technique.

It still doesn't prevent the whole thing and the lack of a forceful retraction later all that explicable... but it's only finitely insane.

But Andresen of all people didn't know to do this?

I dunno, he usually thought security stuff was theatre.  This is also the person who tried to start a business where you send your random secrets to him to determine if they're really random or not (later made into a free 'public service' after the business failed to get investors).

As he said-- he was convinced before he ever got onto his flight.  That alone could have doomed the exercise.  Some people can be convinced going in and still make a good judgement, but many people couldn't.