Hal Finney was not Satosi Nakamoto

[ChiBitCTy]

None of you have any actually real clue as this is still a complete unknown, and in fact the likelihood that Satoshi was just one person is also absolutely impossible to prove. I’ve read every article ever written about this topic and there’s still no definitive way to make the call one way or another.  Who knows though, and I’m glad Satoshis identity is uknown. Way better that way.

[m2017]

He really is not, just because the man exist when satoshi still exist and disappear almost the same time/year doesn't mean they are the same person, they are totally different story and different person

This is probably a simple coincidence that will haunt the minds of the BTC-community for a long time, on the basis of which many will subsequently try to build a connection between these two persons. Or maybe this was Satoshi ’s way of covering his tracks?

Whoever Satoshi actually is — if I'd like anyone to be Satoshi, it would most probably be this guy. Haven't really done a deep dive on Hal(because I find it a bit unnecessary), but I don't think i've read anything negative about him. He just sounds like an optimistic tech person.

Probably, it is precisely this positive image of Hal that allows us to think of him as the creator of the bitcoin, along with his technical interests and some coincidences. Even if he is not Satoshi, this doesn't diminish his contribution to the bitcoin's development and his name is forever inscribed in the history of the bitcoin.

[darkv0rt3x]

My personal opinion is that Satoshi Nakamoto is not a single person. I think that even the brightest person couldn't have so much knowledge in so many fields to create something that is very close to perfection in conceptual terms. I mean, everything in Bitcoin is there for a reason and not only technical reasons like math, cryptography, but also financial, economical, ideological. The latter, I mean in terms of privacy, sovereignty, etc.

One would need to master all these subjects to be able to design something like Bitcoin. This is my reasoning about Satoshi not being a single person!

[icalical]

Just read the article and the proof is undeniable, tho to be honest I never think that Hal Finney was Satoshi. But I tend to disagree to the author when he said he is sure that Satoshi is a single person, the only proof is a active schedule, but that same daily schedule could also mean that they work in the same office hours.

I honestly feel this CW drama is a setup by the enforcement agencies to lure the actual Satoshi out.

I never think it this way but this could be a possibility,

[vjudeu]

I mean, everything in Bitcoin is there for a reason and not only technical reasons like math, cryptography, but also financial, economical, ideological.

True, but many times, some things are designed in that way, and not another, not because Satoshi was a God, and designed it with his brilliant mind. Many times, it was the case, because there was simply no better option at that time. However, he was not a genius. Because, if you take everything we know in 2023, and try to start from scratch, by releasing a better altcoin, then you would implement it in a completely different way, for many reasons.

For example, Satoshi started with "<pubkey> OP_CHECKSIG". Then, when he designed Script, he added "OP_DUP OP_HASH160 <address> OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG". Why he added hashing in this place? To make the public key shorter! That was the main reason, maybe even the only reason! And now, imagine what we have in Taproot: everything is pubkey-based, without any hashing, and if you want a Script, you have TapScript, that is just committed to this particular public key.

Which means, Satoshi could end up with P2PK (which is more compatible with the whitepaper by the way, because no Script is described there), apply all of that for compressed public keys only, and just append some "commitment" field, if for a particular public key, that OP_CHECKSIG returned zero. Or, even better, if OP_CHECKSIG-based things were already set, and he didn't want to touch it, he could always require a single public key, and a valid signature for that, and then restrict spending the coin, by optionally adding the commitment to that. Then, if someone wanted Script-only path, everything could be committed just to the base point, and then the commitment could restrict the way how that particular coin could be spent. Then, we could end up with a single address type, and never introduce any new one, and everything would be always hidden under P2PK umbrella, exactly in the same way, as things are currently hidden under P2TR umbrella.

I think that even the brightest person couldn't have so much knowledge in so many fields to create something that is very close to perfection in conceptual terms.

Why? It is similar to learning different languages. If you know only your native language, then speaking or writing differently seems extremely hard. If you know two languages, you start getting to the point, where you can see similarities between them. If you speak three, four, and even more languages, then you start to see the whole tree of languages, and you can mix different words from different cultures, and you understand the whole etymology between single words.

The same is true in case of technical skills. Also, you should note that Satoshi probably knew less than you could expect. He didn't know about compressed keys. Which means, he knew, how to use public key cryptography, but was not an ultimate expert in that topic, and could not create some new elliptic curve from scratch. He knew about hashing, and he knew how to use a hash function, but imported for example existing SHA-1 implementation anyway, instead of rolling his own, optimized and multithreaded version, and tweaking it for the purpose of Hashcash.

My personal opinion is that Satoshi Nakamoto is not a single person.

Have you ever tried to manage a group of people? Even with two people, keeping a secret is extremely hard. I am currently a part of the group with Garlo Nicon, and some others. Guess what: if we would decide to write all messages from a single account, that would be extremely hard. Even though there are many topics, where we both agree, there are many of them, where we want to go in completely different directions.

And then, imagine Satoshi group, that would contain two people. Not three, not five, just two. One person wants to scale in one way, and another wants to do that in another way. Or one wants to name it "e-cash", and another thinks about "bit-coin". One thinks about creating a Script in a way, where each case would be handled separately, and another thinks about creating a separate language to describe the predicate.

The list of issues goes on and on. I can give you endless examples. Next one: some member of the group may want to stick with SHA-1, because it was battle-tested in Hashcash, and because it is shorter than SHA-256, while someone else could want SHA-256. And someone else could propose RIPEMD-160 as a compromise, because it is not "as weak as SHA-1", and not "as large as SHA-256".

So, if you still believe, that Satoshi was not alone, think about this thought experiment: take two Core developers, and find such a pair of people, that could form a group, that will think identically in all technical issues, and will take identical decisions in every single case. Imagine that the group started from 2007, and disappeared in 2010. Which means, you have to keep the group united for at least three years.

“Hal could have been one member of a group.”

Sure, but Occam's Razor again. As Benjamin Franklin noted: “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” In all my time researching Satoshi, I've yet to come across any evidence suggesting it was a group. If it was a group, then they all operated on the same sleep schedule, consistent across code commits, emails, and forum posts.

[panganib999]

Whoever Satoshi actually is — if I'd like anyone to be Satoshi, it would most probably be this guy. Haven't really done a deep dive on Hal(because I find it a bit unnecessary), but I don't think i've read anything negative about him. He just sounds like an optimistic tech person.

He is. He's been the greatest guy to ever touch bitcoin except for Satoshi. Only ever seen the vision that bitcoin could bring to the people and helped with building it along with Satoshi. I couldn't even figure out how these two have met and he prolly knew something about him that everyone didn't.

None of you have any actually real clue as this is still a complete unknown, and in fact the likelihood that Satoshi was just one person is also absolutely impossible to prove. I’ve read every article ever written about this topic and there’s still no definitive way to make the call one way or another.  Who knows though, and I’m glad Satoshis identity is uknown. Way better that way.

There's definitive evidence to say that Satoshi is a singular entity, and is not a collective as what a lot of people are speculating these past few years. Account access, signatures, the way they speak in this forum and beyond, those are just some of the surefire ways you could figure out if more than one person's acting as him. In any case I would agree, I'd rather have Satoshi's identity remain a mystery until bitcoin's end times than have it be revealed sooner and cause some media sensationalisation. There's a reason why he remained hidden all this years.

[sheenshane]

There's a reason why he remained hidden all this years.

IMO, that is the reason we should respect and stop digging into his/their identity, Satoshi chose this way to be anonymous for a good reason.
It remains unknown to this day, and there's no conclusive evidence linking Satoshi to Hal Finney.  But I think they are generally regarded as separate individuals who collaborated on the early development of Bitcoin.

For those who are claiming that they're Satoshi without any solid proof of their claim, I must rather believe with Hal Finney that close to Satoshi than them.

[BitDane]

I always believe Hal is not Satoshi.  One of the proof is their conversation.  A sane person will not talk to himself in a forum discussing about the development of a project.  Besides how can one ask for advise or suggestion to himself?

This thread: Bitcoin and me (Hal Finney)  clearly shows why Hal Finney is not Satoshi.

When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, he got a skeptical reception at best. Cryptographers have seen too many grand schemes by clueless noobs. They tend to have a knee jerk reaction.

I was more positive. I had long been interested in cryptographic payment schemes. Plus I was lucky enough to meet and extensively correspond with both Wei Dai and Nick Szabo, generally acknowledged to have created ideas that would be realized with Bitcoin. I had made an attempt to create my own proof of work based currency, called RPOW. So I found Bitcoin facinating.

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.

This is some of the content of the written message of Hal Finney on that thread.  We can see that he clearly stated in this that Satoshi is another person.

[garlonicon]

There's a reason why he remained hidden all this years.

I wonder if that reason is much simpler than many people think. Because they connect it with three-letter-agencies, with anonymity/pseudonymity, privacy, freedom, and other things like that. But the sad true is if you try to run any kind of Open Source project, there is a huge risk to feel bad, and be ashamed of your code. Especially, it is more true in case of blockchain-related development, because then, the whole history becomes really set in stone, and it is not only about being Open Source, but also about having all pieces of the history, to prove that the whole system is "honest". And that history can also contain some shadows, and you can feel bad, when you read your first posts, that are sometimes glorified, even if you currently completely disagree with that content, and you think you were gravenly mistaken.

I'd rather have Satoshi's identity remain a mystery until bitcoin's end times than have it be revealed sooner and cause some media sensationalisation.

Fortunately, all old traces of Satoshi, can become obsolete over time. Which is good, because the longer his identity will remain secret, the more chance there is, that nobody will be able to prove, that he is Satoshi. Because now, you cannot for example prove that you are Satoshi, by logging into this forum. This account is now permanently banned, so that path is totally closed. The same is true for many e-mail accounts. They simply expired, those domains, and accounts, are currently in different hands. Which means, you can no longer write some e-mail, and use the same account, which was used in the whitepaper. It is no longer possible.

And then, if you think about things like the public key from the Genesis Block, it may be broken in the future, when we will do the transition from secp256k1 into something else. Or, the GPG key, used by Satoshi, could be also broken, and then, no scammer will be able to use that method. Or, SHA-256 could be broken, so some signature from Satoshi could no longer be validated. In general, Satoshi used some cryptography, that was available in 2009. Which means, it could be totally obsolete for example in 2099, and then, as always, the history will be written by the winners, and nobody will be able to overwrite it anymore.

[yazher]

None of you have any actually real clue as this is still a complete unknown, and in fact the likelihood that Satoshi was just one person is also absolutely impossible to prove. I’ve read every article ever written about this topic and there’s still no definitive way to make the call one way or another.  Who knows though, and I’m glad Satoshis identity is uknown. Way better that way.

It will be unknown for a long time but possible that someone or a group will appear in the future claiming that they actually are Satoshi and they have some proofs to prove their claims. Nevertheless, no matter who will appear next time, they cannot do anything in terms of the flow of Bitcoin transactions because it is purely decentralized. Therefore, their appearance is just added to the facts and trivia in the list of historical facts about Bitcoin.

[kingvirtus09]

It seems like I've read this topic before in this forum; I just can't remember which section I read it in. Many thought that he might be Satoshi Nakamoto because of the skills that Hal Finney has and the good characteristics that he also has. But no one has been able to prove that he is indeed Nakamoto.

Then he is also one himself; he denied that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, and as far as I know, this person was suffering from a severe illness that caused him to stop what he was doing here. And even though he was the first to receive Bitcoin does not mean that he is Satoshi Nakamoto; of course not, that is not the case, is it?

Referrence: https://beincrypto.com/satoshi-nakamoto-unmasked-hal-finney-bitcoin/

[hd49728]

My personal opinion is that Satoshi Nakamoto is not a single person. I think that even the brightest person couldn't have so much knowledge in so many fields to create something that is very close to perfection in conceptual terms. I mean, everything in Bitcoin is there for a reason and not only technical reasons like math, cryptography, but also financial, economical, ideological. The latter, I mean in terms of privacy, sovereignty, etc.

One would need to master all these subjects to be able to design something like Bitcoin. This is my reasoning about Satoshi not being a single person!

Satoshi Nakamoto can be a single person or a group of people, a national force or whatever but the fact is Satoshi Nakamoto left Bitcointalk many years ago.

With this action, Bitcoin is handled by a new head moderator, theymos who is still a head moderator in 2023. The development of Bitcoin no longer relies on Satoshi Nakamoto's vision and it helps Bitcoin development becomes more decentralized without Satoshi Nakamoto impact.

It's better for Bitcoin if we see how Ethereum is centralized in hands of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum development depends too much on Vitalik Buterin's vision.

[shahzadafzal]

Tis article gathers a few hypothetical evidence that shows that Hal Finney could not be Satosi Nakamoto. The author also believes Satoshi Nakamoto is/was a single person.

https://blog.lopp.net/hal-finney-was-not-satoshi-nakamoto/

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/10/21/THSyG.png

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/10/21/THZKD.png


One more discussion about this is never too much I guess!

Of course Hal Finney is not Satosi Nakamoto... but Satoshi Nakamoto may be :p

One more discussion why not bring it on I love to discuss Satoshi and Bitcoin  

Well you can't prove or disprove it with certainty that he was not Satoshi..... but yes we have more evidences that he wasn't Satoshi.

We know Hal Finney was involved in the cypherpunk and cryptographic communities well before the release of Bitcoin. Also if I say so (may be someone won't like it) but for the matter of fact it's true that Hal Finney was a highly skilled cryptographer and developer, and he acknowledged in his early interactions with Satoshi Nakamoto that he didn't have a full grasp of certain aspects of Bitcoin's design. Also Satoshi Nakamoto stepped away from the Bitcoin project in 2010 but Hal continued to work on Bitcoin and communicate with the community (until he fell ill).

The most solid evidence that he was not Satoshi is from himself. He denied being Satoshi in multiple posts and interviews before his passing and it is a significant piece of evidence against his identity as Satoshi.

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.

While most of the points provide evidence against Hal Finney being Satoshi Nakamoto, remember, the true identity of Satoshi remains one of the great mysteries of our time. Who knows, maybe one day a clever AI will figure it out or Satoshi himself will emerge from the shadows with a 'ta-da!' and a wink. Until then, the legends (both Hal and Satoshi) lives on.

[Kakmakr]

he said, he thought Satoshi was some Japanese guy

He definitely was. I have many confirmations for that fact. First, start from "readme.txt" in "BitCoin v0.01 ALPHA" (yes, that 0.01 version is present here, which is also significant, and explains, why the magic number 100 is used as a version number separator). But in the "src" folder, there is another "readme.txt", and you can read there:

Code:

Compilers Supported
-------------------
MinGW GCC (v3.4.5)
Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 SP6

That second compiler was most likely used by Satoshi, because there were "std::min" and "std::max" issues in the source code, that were specific to "Visual C++" compiler. And, guess what, if you try to find that compiler, you will find this one: https://archive.org/details/microsoft-visual-c-6.0-standard-edition

Then, guess what: installing it on a non-Japanese Windows XP is a disaster, and ends up with displaying all of those characters as "?". Also, it explains "¥" character, that was present in paths, instead of slashes/backslashes.

If you don't believe me, then try to find another "Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 SP6" version anywhere: you will notice, that this Japanese version is the most popular one. And if you want to use it, you need a Japanese version of Windows, because in other cases, the whole installation process will be very painful.

Also, if you try to run "BitCoin" client on Windows XP, you will notice a lot of things. For example, that running more than one instance of "0.01" version is not that easy, as you could expect, because the port 8333 will be already used by the first instance, and the whole traffic management requires activating another "main" function, and some other changes like that, or some weird stuff like "port forwarding".

Also, by exploring more things, you can note that Windows XP with Japanese language version, was used on his physical machine, and no VirtualBox or other virtualization tool was there. But, first things first, installing the same compiler as Satoshi, the same tool for PDF as Satoshi, and other things like that, should give you enough proofs to start with. And if you need a proof that Satoshi really used those things, then explore file metadata, and note that if you want to fake everything, it is extremely painful to do that correctly, and it is then easier to just use the real tools without tampering with the data.

There are many Japanese people living in other countries and most of them can speak and write English..... and somebody as intelligent as Satoshi Nakamoto, might even speak more languages.

The fact that he was so pissed about the "Bailouts" makes me think that he might be from one of the Western countries, because it is closer to home. (I use a Male description .. but it can be a female or a group of people) 

[stwenhao]

somebody as intelligent as Satoshi Nakamoto, might even speak more languages

Yes, of course. The only thing I pointed out, is that he used software with Japanese language version, including his IDE, and his Operating System. And this alone is a huge hint, even if you finally conclude that he was from California, London, or other place. There is no contradiction. Also note that Satoshi used Tor, and even when it was not the case, he still might use private servers, to run his nodes 24/7 (yes, nodes, because you need more than one if you want to test anything, and you need at least two, if you want to start mining).

[darkv0rt3x]

My personal opinion is that Satoshi Nakamoto is not a single person. I think that even the brightest person couldn't have so much knowledge in so many fields to create something that is very close to perfection in conceptual terms. I mean, everything in Bitcoin is there for a reason and not only technical reasons like math, cryptography, but also financial, economical, ideological. The latter, I mean in terms of privacy, sovereignty, etc.

One would need to master all these subjects to be able to design something like Bitcoin. This is my reasoning about Satoshi not being a single person!

Satoshi Nakamoto can be a single person or a group of people, a national force or whatever but the fact is Satoshi Nakamoto left Bitcointalk many years ago.

With this action, Bitcoin is handled by a new head moderator, theymos who is still a head moderator in 2023. The development of Bitcoin no longer relies on Satoshi Nakamoto's vision and it helps Bitcoin development becomes more decentralized without Satoshi Nakamoto impact.

It's better for Bitcoin if we see how Ethereum is centralized in hands of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum development depends too much on Vitalik Buterin's vision.

Of course he/she/them can. I don't say otherwise. I just expressed my vision!
And as of today, we see that many people is contributing to Bitcoin, so that could be another clue for me to say that back in 2008/2009 a single person could not do it. Whoever moderates the forum seems unrelated to the discussion of who's Satoshi. Unless Theymos is Satoshi. :p

Tis article gathers a few hypothetical evidence that shows that Hal Finney could not be Satosi Nakamoto. The author also believes Satoshi Nakamoto is/was a single person.

https://blog.lopp.net/hal-finney-was-not-satoshi-nakamoto/

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/10/21/THSyG.png

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/10/21/THZKD.png


One more discussion about this is never too much I guess!

Of course Hal Finney is not Satosi Nakamoto... but Satoshi Nakamoto may be :p

One more discussion why not bring it on I love to discuss Satoshi and Bitcoin  

Well you can't prove or disprove it with certainty that he was not Satoshi..... but yes we have more evidences that he wasn't Satoshi.

We know Hal Finney was involved in the cypherpunk and cryptographic communities well before the release of Bitcoin. Also if I say so (may be someone won't like it) but for the matter of fact it's true that Hal Finney was a highly skilled cryptographer and developer, and he acknowledged in his early interactions with Satoshi Nakamoto that he didn't have a full grasp of certain aspects of Bitcoin's design. Also Satoshi Nakamoto stepped away from the Bitcoin project in 2010 but Hal continued to work on Bitcoin and communicate with the community (until he fell ill).

The most solid evidence that he was not Satoshi is from himself. He denied being Satoshi in multiple posts and interviews before his passing and it is a significant piece of evidence against his identity as Satoshi.

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.

While most of the points provide evidence against Hal Finney being Satoshi Nakamoto, remember, the true identity of Satoshi remains one of the great mysteries of our time. Who knows, maybe one day a clever AI will figure it out or Satoshi himself will emerge from the shadows with a 'ta-da!' and a wink. Until then, the legends (both Hal and Satoshi) lives on.

I'm not the one trying to prove anything. I just posted the link of someone else's work and gave my opinion. In my mind, Satoshi could not be a single person for the reasons I mentioned! But of course, it's only my vision. It worths nothing more than a singular person's words. That's all.
We seen some other bright minds to excel is very specific fields, like Nikola Tesla, Alan Turing and others. Not that they excel in many other fields like I think it was needed to create Bitcoin!

[Casdinyard]

Bless his soul but I knew from the get-go he couldn't be Satoshi Nakamoto. Hal Finney referred to him as a separate entity from himself, and while that may be some fickle evidence for other people, I think if you're playing two personalities to protect the other, at some point especially from the period of 2009-2012 you're bound to actually commit to some slip ups and mistakes which my pattern-loving brain wasn't able to find in any of Hal's internet interactions on the internet, as well as on Satoshi Nakamoto's side.

Satoshi's still out there, but I don't think it makes sense to still look for him. He's made it a point to not be contacted and reached anymore, it's about time we actually invest our efforts into something else more worthwhile.

[Z_MBFM]

Satoshi is satoshi and Hal Finney is Hal Finney they are totally different person. there have been various discussions and investigations on this in various places where no one has been able to prove that Hal Finney is satoshi. Bitcoin came into the market in 2009 now it is 2023 where even after 14 long years satoshi has not been found anywhere so I don't think satoshi will ever be seen in future or anyone will prove to be satoshi. so it is pointless to discuss these matter.

Like Bitcoin, Satoshi is a virtual thing only it is completely anonymous.  He might be walking around in front of everyone but no one could guess.  It may also happen that he dies before anyone knows anything about him.  Due to which his identity remains unknown yet