Do you think Satoshi worked for the NSA?

[BlackHatCoiner]

It is pretty hard to invent all of this all on your own with no external help.

It is pretty infeasible, actually. Satoshi did not invent Bitcoin, he implemented it (he sort of invented some internal parts of it though, don't get me wrong). The core ideas behind Bitcoin were already presented before 2009. Wei Dai's b-money demonstrated the public ledger, the use of digital signatures between pseudonymous entities, even smart contracts. Adam Back came up with Proof-of-Work. Finally, Nick Szabo's bit gold was presented as a model that would eliminate trusted third parties, and talked about precious metals and their disadvantage on transferals (which was even implemented with the help of Hal Finney's RPOW).

Bitcoin is the killing combination of these polymaths. I refuse to believe that one person came up with all of these; especially when they were publicly available for any hobbyist interested to read.

[1714734057]

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[1714734057]

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[franky1]

backhatcoiner wants to make his core god(core brand name (blockstream administrerd: adam back)) be the inventor not satoshi (facepalm)

satoshi was one person who used the satoshi name = satoshi is 1 person
satoshi wrote the first version, adam back did not
adam back did not write any code for bitcoin 0_AD-200X_AD

and here is an analogy
if a caveman invented the wheel does not mean a caveman invented the first car
if a Egyptian's invented glass does not mean Egyptian's invented the first car

also adam backs hashcash is not the exact same as bitcoins PoW

satoshi took inspiration and idea's from many things and tweaked them, emphasis: changed them
..and brought them together in his(satoshis) unique way to fit together as something new..
thus a new invention(much like a wheel is not a car)(much like a rubber and metal wheel is not a stone wheel)
 
thus satoshi invented bitcoin and
adam backs idea is inspired, but not actually in it. not one line of code wrote by adam back of hashcash was in bitcoin.
hashcash used a different SHA, different way to churn nonce.
the data content being hashed is not about email
the end result requirement is different format and requirement and length

directly to blackhatcoiner and acolytes that sound like him:
stop imagining core founder adam back as your god.. he did not invent bitcoin. he was not even coding bitcoin when the first versions of bitcoin were released.
you will not get rich by showing core devotion.. you infact decided to leave this forum when your mixer junk spam adverts stopped financing you, but came back trying to get a pay day by now spam adverts of gambling

if you need to earn via sigspam, wise up that years of cultish ass kissing didnt pay, they didnt even message you in this forum asking/demanding you stay. they let you leave or didnt realise you left.. wake up to those facts.. years of blind cultish loyalty did not reap you any rewards

you really have been brainwashed into a cult.. try to escape it or you will become as bad as the CSW believers

[BlackHatCoiner]

Did I say Adam Back invented anything apart from Hashcash Proof-of-Work? I know you're brain dead, but at least try to interpret before insulting.

[franky1]

Did I say Adam Back invented anything apart from Hashcash Proof-of-Work? I know you're brain dead, but at least try to interpret before insulting.

yes adam back done hashcash, but even that is not the first utilisation of proof of work
and adams hashcash proof of work is not in bitcoin

satoshi used it as a inspiration but not a direct implementation
you have been via years of your post history been cult scripting core which is a brand name founded by blockstream team CEO adam back

seems i can join the dots of history more then you can

i see you edited post to lean to sound less adam back wishfull candidate
you still foolishly think satoshi didnt invent bitcoin...(facepalm)

for clarity:
Wei Dai's did not write code for first version of bitcoin nor wrote the whitepaper
Adam Back did not write code for first version of bitcoin nor wrote the whitepaper
Nick Szabo's did not write code for first version of bitcoin nor wrote the whitepaper
hal finney did not write code for first version of bitcoin nor wrote the whitepaper
they were partial inspirations, but satoshi took parts, changed things and patched things together into a novel(new) invention none of the other people came up with independently nor collectively before satoshi.. satoshi invented bitcoin. end of story

a caveman did not create the first Ford car.. henry Ford did,, yes a car has wheels, but not the same type as caveman wheels
cavemen did not invent or collaborate to create the Ford car

[9TONNN]

The question of whether Bitcoin was created by the NSA has popped up several times. Some believe that Satoshi was an NSA agent.

We know that the secret documents Edward Snowden made public made interesting revelations. Among them are the backdoors the NSA inserted in Pseudorandom Number Generators. PRNGs can be intentionally weakened to allow backdoor access, enabling an entity with knowledge of the backdoors to predict the outputs of weak generators. Any system relying on such PRNGs would thus be insecure.

The NSA has looked for ways to decrypt encrypted data to gain access to it. They managed to do that by compromising the Dual EC DRBG algorithm, which was thought to be secure. In a different example, the NSA reportedly paid $10 million to the encryption company RSA to use a weak encryption algorithm, which the NSA had a backdoor to. It was for a protocol that was certified in the US by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

We know from other sources that the NSA and the UK's GCHQ have the tools to decrypt emails, online banking accounts, etc. A US program paid tech companies millions to favor their weak RNGs and insert intentional weaknesses that the government can exploit. The agencies also cooperate with ISPs and telecommunication companies.

The NSA has also exploited internet cable taps and tried to find ways to decrypt data from Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, Facebook, etc. Security agencies have ways to break the encryption of fiber-optic internet cables.

When Satoshi created Bitcoin, they could have used a certified method to achieve randomness. One of those that turned out later to be backdoored and weak. Instead, they used an uncertified method in ECDSA and secp256k1 for key generation.

One might wonder if this was just a coincidence or a choice made by someone who knew about the backdoors in certified RNGs. Did Satoshi have insider knowledge about potentially vulnerable algorithms, or did they make their own conclusions that certified encryption wasn't safe based on their programming and cryptographic knowledge?

Insecurities in certain certified systems were already found as early as 2007/2008. It could well be that Satoshi knew about this and had nothing to do with the NSA.

I don't think Bitcoin was created by the NSA or a similar agency. I also don't think Satoshi was an NSA operative in any form. I believe he thoroughly studied encryption algorithms and cryptography before choosing what key generation method to adopt for Bitcoin.

But it’s an interesting idea. What do you think? Was Satoshi in the NSA or just a knowledgeable programmer who appeared at the right time?


Sources and further reading:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1alb982/saw_this_video_was_wondering_what_you_guys_think/
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html
https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5231006/nsa-paid-10-million-for-a-back-door-into-rsa-encryption-according-to
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security

These are all wild unfounded speculations. Even if he worked for NSA, he was obviously a rebel. He did not create Bitcoin because his NSA overlords financed its creation or issued commands to him. And he could be reading your post here and laughing out loud LOL!

[m2017]

15 votes, all no.

These voices mean nothing, because these are the opinions of people (based on guesses) who don't have reliable (complete) insider information about what organization (if he worked) Satoshi worked for.

Personally, I don’t know whether  Satoshi worked for the NSA. My vote was NO, which also doesn't mean it couldn't happen.

The question of this topic remains (perhaps forever) classified as “unknown”.

Let's say bitcoin is a project created by the NSA or some government services. Are you interested in the historical aspect (getting to the bottom of the truth) or are you worried about the future of the BTC-project?

[Pmalek]

And if Satoshi worked for the NSA i think it would be harder for him to hide his identity, because NSA should have a record to his previous work, and it could be easily linked to his real identity.

If he worked for a secret agency, it might have been on something completely unrelated, but he had the needed clearances to discover and learn the information he needed to know about weak encryption algorithms. Something like Snowden who had access to plenty of information because it was required for the systems he worked on.   


I deleted PrivacyG post by mistake and informed the user via PM. I didn't pay attention and clicked on the wrong button. Feel free to post it again mate.
Here is the whole post in quotes:

Well.  Since there is no evidence for any thing about Satoshi other than that he was very likely an English man.  There are many things to speculate on and about.

I sometimes wonder whether Satoshi was the pseudonym for one single person or for a group of people.  Or maybe he was one person who initiated what we know today as Bitcoin but was helped for the most part by many programmers who wanted to build this kind of payment system.

Then you can also speculate on the subject more conspiracy ish.  What if Satoshi and Bitcoin were experiment project code names and we were the test subjects.  What if we still are.  If there is one thing I am almost entirely sure about, it is that if Satoshi is just one person then they are a VERY intelligent person.  It is pretty hard to invent all of this all on your own with no external help.  If they are a group then I rather not know who they are and live my life believing they wanted our best, not our worst.

I do not know what to believe.  Due to how complex Bitcoin is and how well made it was from the start I tend to think it is NOT a single person.  If it is, then it is likely they were part of a Three Letter Agency and decided to part ways and give us an option to Freedom knowing what was coming for all of us and for our Privacy.

Best answer is that I am sincerely confused.  He may be an agent of NSA.  It may be NSA themselves.  Or maybe not.

After all.  We are all Satoshi, right!

Or maybe he was one person who initiated what we know today as Bitcoin but was helped for the most part by many programmers who wanted to build this kind of payment system.

Yes, that is a possibility. Satoshi might have been the person who was the anonymous spokesperson for a group of developers who never spoke a work themselves but worked together.

<Snip>

Please don't quote an entire OP when replying in someone's thread. It looks bad and is completely unnecessary. You can quote a part of it it if your reply is directed to a specific part of the text. Otherwise, just write a standard new post like anyone else. I would appreciate if you go back and edit the post and remove the quoted OP. Thanks!

[PrivacyG]

No need to worry, Pmalek.  I will repost the message below.

I agree, if it was a Secret Agency member then they were probably some body with intentions similar to Snowden.  If it was a GROUP who was part of a Secret Agency then I would be more skeptical about the intentions.

However I really doubt there was any malicious intention behind this experiment, because after all Bitcoin was initially just an experiment.  If they intended to do any thing malicious then they very likely failed their scopes by downplaying how big Bitcoin could grow with the right community.  Like I said though.  Very unlikely.  Look at pretty much any well known and deep rooted person like politicians or institutions and how they talk about Bitcoin.  They all have no clue what this is all about, even one decade and a half later.  If they are pretending, they need an Oscar award for how well they handled it so far.

-----

Well.  Since there is no evidence for any thing about Satoshi other than that he was very likely an English man.  There are many things to speculate on and about.

I sometimes wonder whether Satoshi was the pseudonym for one single person or for a group of people.  Or maybe he was one person who initiated what we know today as Bitcoin but was helped for the most part by many programmers who wanted to build this kind of payment system.

Then you can also speculate on the subject more conspiracy ish.  What if Satoshi and Bitcoin were experiment project code names and we were the test subjects.  What if we still are.  If there is one thing I am almost entirely sure about, it is that if Satoshi is just one person then they are a VERY intelligent person.  It is pretty hard to invent all of this all on your own with no external help.  If they are a group then I rather not know who they are and live my life believing they wanted our best, not our worst.

I do not know what to believe.  Due to how complex Bitcoin is and how well made it was from the start I tend to think it is NOT a single person.  If it is, then it is likely they were part of a Three Letter Agency and decided to part ways and give us an option to Freedom knowing what was coming for all of us and for our Privacy.

Best answer is that I am sincerely confused.  He may be an agent of NSA.  It may be NSA themselves.  Or maybe not.

After all.  We are all Satoshi, right!

[franky1]

I sometimes wonder whether Satoshi was the pseudonym for one single person or for a group of people.  Or maybe he was one person who initiated what we know today as Bitcoin but was helped for the most part by many programmers who wanted to build this kind of payment system.

the pseudonym was used by 1 person

satoshi got inspired to make digital money from the cypherpunks but never teamed up with them and never interacted with them as a team before releasing bitcoin..
IE when people like nick szabo, wei dai, adam back and such first heard about bitcoin(first contact) via white paper. their conversations were NEVER "oh yea we talked before, i remember, that thing we teamed up on" it was ALWAYS, from all those cited (not verbatim) basically "this guy popped up and cited us in our paper and asked permission if we were ok to be cited, and we said fine, no problem" like it was a surprise first contact

because they admitted they never heard of it before..
.. some were sceptical, some brushed it off as probably not going to work, some forgot about the whitepaper/first contact till years later, and some got intrigued and wanted to learn more about it for the first time.. all of which were after the first contact of the white paper release, where by only afterwards they started asking questions about it, some days later, some months some years later.. none before and no released communications even hint, suggest, insinuate or subtly suggest pre involvement

and yes you if you care to look at all publicly released stuff easily available to find via google of the many sites that collated all early interactions, you too can read it all and come to the same conclusions

yes satoshi got inspired by many things but those things do not mean those cited actually wrote code for bitcoin pre january 2009
even hashcash didnt end up in core code, even hals rpow didnt.. yes inspired, but satoshi changed things and patched things together and used inspirations in a different way than the intended use of the inspired usecase.. and thats what made bitcoin so unique and un-thought of before.. hense why its an invention and not a copy of someones previous work

[atamism]

I am pretty sure he works independently. I think he is just like Elon, Jack, Jeff, Gates, and every single person who invented something that went success. I hope that one day Satoshi will reveal his identity so we know who's behind the Bitcoin. Only time will tell, we will just wait and wait for his revelation. We all have our opinion and theory about who's behind the Bitcoin and we we're just lucky that we know how this work.

[PrivacyG]

the pseudonym was used by 1 person

satoshi got inspired to make digital money from the cypherpunks but never teamed up with them and never interacted with them as a team before releasing bitcoin..

This is the story we all know.  This thread was meant to provoke speculation on the subject.

It is like you are explaining to me what the Government said about a classified project.  Most likely they are only sharing a very small portion of the truth, if any of it.  The story we all know is that Satoshi was one person, but do you have proof of it.  I could say any thing, you could as well.  Does not mean it is automatically the truth.

What if Bitcoin was a classified experiment about which we will only hear after decades?

Anyway.  I am not sure why you seem annoyed at this Thread, it is just a speculative matter for which no body has any proof other than what Satoshi ever said on the Forum or through the Emails.

-----

I hope that one day Satoshi will reveal his identity so we know who's behind the Bitcoin.

I hope not.  I really hope the truth never comes out.  No matter if Satoshi was a person or a group, an institution or what ever, the best thing they could do is present themselves as a NEUTRAL identity.  If some body comes public about it then things can change drastically for Bitcoin.  Not to even mention the safety of that person which would be under serious danger.

But if Satoshi comes out and reveals their identity.  If they have a history of being particularly Democrat sided then things would change.  If they were Republican things would change.  If they were from Iran things would change.  Why do this, the best thing that happened was that he never had a side.  The only side Satoshi ever showed was that their purpose was to free the people.

[Pmalek]

I hope that one day Satoshi will reveal his identity so we know who's behind the Bitcoin. Only time will tell, we will just wait and wait for his revelation.

I don't thing we will ever hear that from whoever was behind the pseudonym satoshi. Maybe another party reveals something we never knew or saw before, but I don't think satoshi will. I don't even see a reason why they would reveal their identity now after so many years. Doing so can only cause problems, confusion, and maybe even fear if it was an invention by someone the community dislikes. Bitcoin has come a long way without the community and general public knowing who satoshi is, and I see no reason to change that. 

[pinggoki]

I am pretty sure he works independently. I think he is just like Elon, Jack, Jeff, Gates, and every single person who invented something that went success. I hope that one day Satoshi will reveal his identity so we know who's behind the Bitcoin. Only time will tell, we will just wait and wait for his revelation. We all have our opinion and theory about who's behind the Bitcoin and we we're just lucky that we know how this work.

Your examples didn't match the criteria for working independently, Elon Musk has help from a lot of people and most of them are working on a company and they've got a resource to back them up so technically, they're not even working independently if they've got a funding, Satoshi's the only one that's building something from scratch and got no backing or something, maybe help from the codes and forging connections but that's all there is to his help. Regarding him working for the NSA, I think that it's plausible that he could be because we've seen a glimpse of what the NSA does with the Snowden leaks on the NSA spying on every American citizen with their phones and computers but I don't think that he's created bitcoin without the clearance to create bitcoin from the NSA, most likely a side project that got too big and somewhere along the way, Satoshi probably quit the office and focused on bitcoin.

[franky1]

the pseudonym was used by 1 person

satoshi got inspired to make digital money from the cypherpunks but never teamed up with them and never interacted with them as a team before releasing bitcoin..

This is the story we all know.  This thread was meant to provoke speculation on the subject.

It is like you are explaining to me what the Government said about a classified project.  Most likely they are only sharing a very small portion of the truth, if any of it.  The story we all know is that Satoshi was one person, but do you have proof of it.  I could say any thing, you could as well.  Does not mean it is automatically the truth.

What if Bitcoin was a classified experiment about which we will only hear after decades?

Anyway.  I am not sure why you seem annoyed at this Thread, it is just a speculative matter for which no body has any proof other than what Satoshi ever said on the Forum or through the Emails.

classified.. open source.. .. sounds like a contradiction...
open source debunks the classified notion, by the very essence of open source.. and debunks the back-door notion of the early versions of bitcoin

anyways
when this topic was made by a user that has had years to look at all the communication records.. but then doesnt use that information.. to then pretend theres an opening for speculation... and then the annoying part is when cultish idiots then want to subtly hint/introduce a notion that other people invented bitcoin.. its almost like the stupidity of CSW drama

when people have had years to look at things but still then ask stuff hoping to cause speculation.. it shows they have not done their research and so are trying to open up a conversation that needs not open.. especially when there are idiots on this forum that use any opening to promote their preferred cult leader as the real satoshi...

its annoying because all the communications information is available in a quick google search, something that takes a person less time to research(should they dare), than it takes to write a post pretending there is speculation to be had, to then wait for responses to then cause more speculation
which has in the past attempts at doing this, spiralled into stupid games and claims of other people being satoshi
which then require months of un-spiralling the drama by having to then spoonfeed idiots the information the idiots chose to ignore in the first place

[stompix]

I don’t think Satoshi was in NSA plainly because i think it would be hard to be famous but at the same time anonymous when you are working for a government agency.

Name one guy you know that works for the NSA !
See how easy is for them to keep being anonymous?  

He did not create Bitcoin because his NSA overlords financed its creation or issued commands to him. And he could be reading your post here and laughing out loud LOL!

Or maybe some guys from the NSA are reading this now and they are high-fiving each other while congratulating, hey, we fooled another one!  

Poll results so far showing 10 users voting NO and nobody voting YES!

20-2, denial is strong in this crowd!  

But I think that the results are not really what people think and more what they wish it would be like, the halvening is near, the price has skyrocketed, everyone is pouring money into it, there is absolutely nothing negative around I've heard in months, not one tiny thing and now imagine Haugh comes in front of the congress with a signed message with Satoshi's key saying yeah, it was us all along!

 

I always love these "secret" meetings where there is a guy taking photos and everyone is smiling at the camera for a picture nobody was supposed to see...

[Synchronice]

I just have a question, what did the US government do to find Satoshi Nakamoto? Did they contact people who were in touch with Satoshi? Did they contact to Theymos, Sirius or Cobra? Satoshi is a very mysterious for me. I have a feeling like government isn't interested in him, probably? But I am very surprised that governments didn't try to find him earlier because it's impossible to not see the threat of Bitcoin for governments in financial system but I am also surprised that Tor project exist. Their existence doesn't make sense for me in a world where governments want control.

We can't say anything about Satoshi because he is very unknown person. We can say that he is a single individual and back it up with arguments but we can also say that there was a team behind Satoshi and we can back it up too. We can say that Bitcoin is a project with the aim to gain financial independence but on another hand, there are enough arguments to say that Bitcoin is the project of certain government because its blockchain gives you the possibility to track everyone if you are advanced enough (which the creator could be).

[titular]

...but I am also surprised that Tor project exist. Their existence doesn't make sense for me in a world where governments want control.

Development of TOR was heavily funded by the United States Navy. TOR is used by government assets all around the world to ensure secure communication in areas where it may be dangerous to do so. The initial goal of the project was to develop a technology that could protect government communications and intelligence information from being intercepted or traced back by adversaries.

While Tor had its roots in military-funded research, its evolution into a widely-used privacy tool is the result of collaboration and contributions from the global community, emphasizing the broader applications of the technology beyond its original military context.

If the utilization of TOR were exclusively restricted to government assets, it would be plausible for adversaries to infer that a connection made through TOR originates from a foreign government. Hence, the imperative arose to disseminate this technology publicly, thereby rendering the associated network traffic indiscernible from that of an ordinary citizen.

[Doan9269]

Satoshi might not have been in NSA, but I'm sure satoshi was one that had many connections and must have known this, satoshi had meetings with many persons before the creation of bitcoin like Adam strange, so he must have also had some idea about those backdoor and weak algorithms, what I think is that the person of satoshi might not have been that of just a technical person but also someone influential in a way and if satoshi really had some insider knowledge about nasa's algorithm then he must have been a person of some kind of status.

Well said, he may not have a direct connection with the NSA but he has been around with them or having a direct or indirect links that connects them in the past from research and technology findings they all must have shared in the past, we can get more about this we we closely read through the history of bitcoin and who Satoshi Nakamoto is.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I am no conspiracy theorist by any means, and I try to think about things as critically as I can without being as pessimistic as I feel, BUT I've always had a suspicion about Satoshi and the creation of bitcoin--specifically, I've always thought he's not an individual but a group of people, and in either case he or they work for some government agency.  The NSA is possible, but there are so many branches of the government that might be interested in creating a form of money like bitcoin that it's hard to say.

Bitcoin was launched in 2009, which was right around the time that the entire economy was in jeopardy because of the housing/banking crisis.  That could be a coincidence, but combined with the fact that Satoshi just vanished and nobody anywhere has been able to figure out who he is....yeah, that leaves me suspicious.

[franky1]

Bitcoin was launched in 2009, which was right around the time that the entire economy was in jeopardy because of the housing/banking crisis.  That could be a coincidence,

so you think bitcoin was less likely due to the banking crisis.. but more likely an NSA plot
..
might want to check the genesis block "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks."
suggests his motives were related to the crisis of 2008.. he didnt quote