After the release of the Bitcoin Whitepaper

[aoluain]

Just thinking recently while on a long drive - After the Bitcoin Whitepaper was released late in 2008
is it known if any other scientific experts of the time got their hands on it and what they thought of it?

Scientific experts other than those on the Cypherpunk mailing list of which the whitepaper was sent to.

We know there was plenty of backlash, negativity and attack towards Bitcoin but surely there must have
been mathematicians and scientists who examined it and were enthrawled and captivated and thought
what a groundbreaking idea and something which could shake the financial world in the future?

The earliest publication with credible commentry on the brilliance of Bitcoin I can finnd is this from 2011 >

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/10/the-crypto-currency

Bitcoin, however, was doomed if the code was unreliable. Earlier this year, Dan Kaminsky, a leading Internet-security researcher,
investigated the currency and was sure he would find major weaknesses. Kaminsky is famous among hackers for discovering, in 2008,
a fundamental flaw in the Internet which would have allowed a skilled coder to take over any Web site or even to shut down the Internet.
Kaminsky alerted the Department of Homeland Security and executives at Microsoft and Cisco to the problem and worked with them to
patch it. He is one of the most adept practitioners of “penetration testing,” the art of compromising the security of computer systems at
the behest of owners who want to know their vulnerabilities. Bitcoin, he felt, was an easy target.

“When I first looked at the code, I was sure I was going to be able to break it,” Kaminsky said, noting that the programming style was
dense and inscrutable. “The way the whole thing was formatted was insane. Only the most paranoid, painstaking coder in the world could
avoid making mistakes.”

Kaminsky lives in Seattle, but, while visiting family in San Francisco in July, he retreated to the basement of his mother’s house to work
on his bitcoin attacks. In a windowless room jammed with computers, Kaminsky paced around talking to himself, trying to build a mental
picture of the bitcoin network. He quickly identified nine ways to compromise the system and scoured Nakamoto’s code for an insertion
point for his first attack. But when he found the right spot, there was a message waiting for him. “Attack Removed,” it said. The same thing
happened over and over, infuriating Kaminsky. “I came up with beautiful bugs,” he said. “But every time I went after the code there was
a line that addressed the problem.”

He was like a burglar who was certain that he could break into a bank by digging a tunnel, drilling through a wall, or climbing down a vent,
and on each attempt he discovered a freshly poured cement barrier with a sign telling him to go home. “I’ve never seen anything like it,”
Kaminsky said, still in awe.

Kaminsky ticked off the skills Nakamoto would need to pull it off. “He’s a world-class programmer, with a deep understanding of the C++
programming language,” he said. “He understands economics, cryptography, and peer-to-peer networking.”

“Either there’s a team of people who worked on this,” Kaminsky said, “or this guy is a genius.”

[Alpha Marine]

Most times, we are too engulfed with the price of Bitcoin, we don't really understand and appreciate the genius of it. I don't understand code, but I don't need to have a full understanding of code or programming language to appreciate the work that was done in Bitcoin Core.
The mere fact that it is a system that is very transparent, yet enhances privacy, is genius. Before Bitcoin, every form of privacy meant being closed off. No one else could see or know anything about what you do, but with Bitcoin, every transaction is open in the blockchain, yet the person who made the transaction can still be private. And this is just one thing about it, and a lesser feature at that. It's so incredible.

“Either there’s a team of people who worked on this,” Kaminsky said, “or this guy is a genius.”

Even if it's a team of people, it is still genius.

[Catenaccio]

“Either there’s a team of people who worked on this,” Kaminsky said, “or this guy is a genius.”

Even if it's a team of people, it is still genius.

Bitcoin is not perfect and it was improved by Satoshi Nakamoto, Gavin Andresen and other Bitcoin developers but the project was launched in genius way which changed the world and laid solid foundation for blockchain industry as well as later application in societies.

Satoshi Nakamoto - a person, a team of people or an institution - is/ are truly genius and the Bitcoin founder did not only think, but also actually put decent efforts on development of Bitcoin.

Satoshi's lesson.

Satoshi's lesson is that you don't need to be the next Einstein in order to change the world. Nor do you need to have much money, or influence with the world's "movers & shakers". You just need to put in the effort. Satoshi, probably just an ordinary hobbyist like anyone here, saw that something was lacking in the Universe, and he fought tooth-and-nail for 2+ years until this imperfection was corrected. This is what makes Satoshi and his work my greatest inspiration.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, probably not. I believe that even most of the Cypherpunks sort of ignored/were full of skepticism towards the Bitcoin White-Paper because Satoshi was someone who wasn't known in that community.

Although, there were three famous individuals, that you obviously already know, who has shown their interest - Hal Finney, Adam Back, Wei Dai.

[tbct_mt2]

OP, probably not. I believe that even most of the Cypherpunks sort of ignored/were full of skepticism towards the Bitcoin White-Paper because Satoshi was someone who wasn't known in that community.

Although, there were three famous individuals, that you obviously already know, who has shown their interest - Hal Finney, Adam Back, Wei Dai.

Hal Finney is the person who run Bitcoin (likely first one after Satoshi Nakamoto) and received a first Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto.

theymos felt like Hal Finney is a best candidate of Satoshi Nakamoto.

My current feeling on Satoshi's identity is:
 - Sassaman is a very bad candidate. If this is their conclusion, then they totally failed to do proper research.
 - 50% chance it's someone nobody's ever heard of, and nobody will ever figure it out
 - 35% chance it's Hal Finney. (Over time, I've moved more probability into this category.)
 - 10% chance it's someone else in the Bitcoin-verse
 - 5% chance it's a group within the CIA

Adam Back and Wei Dai created their projects before Bitcoin but failed.
Bitcoin prehistory tree.

1997 Adam Back, HashCash, DOS counter-measure w/ proof-of-fork
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Back

1998 Wei Dai ''B-Money'' - decentralized database to record txs and using a type of proof-of-work
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/B-money

[legiteum]

“Either there’s a team of people who worked on this,” Kaminsky said, “or this guy is a genius.”

A team of people, along with code review and various roles (viz. a programmer, a communicator who ran the "Satoshi" alias, an infosec expert) always made a lot of sense to describe "Satoshi".

More evidence, in my view, that Bitcoin was created by an agency of the US government like the CIA, NSA, or DARPA...

[Son Of Blockchain (SOB)]

OP, probably not. I believe that even most of the Cypherpunks sort of ignored/were full of skepticism towards the Bitcoin White-Paper because Satoshi was someone who wasn't known in that community.

Although, there were three famous individuals, that you obviously already know, who has shown their interest - Hal Finney, Adam Back, Wei Dai.

It's normal for people to be skeptical about something they don't fully trust, even most of us where a bit skeptical about Bitcoin before we got to understand/trust the process so it's understandable if some of Cypherpunks were skeptical about it too.
 But i believe they later picked intrest along the line especially toward late 2010 or by 2011 as for Hal Finney, the was more futuristic about Bitcoin among others maybe that's why he's the most recognized of those names you mentioned.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, probably not. I believe that even most of the Cypherpunks sort of ignored/were full of skepticism towards the Bitcoin White-Paper because Satoshi was someone who wasn't known in that community.

Although, there were three famous individuals, that you obviously already know, who has shown their interest - Hal Finney, Adam Back, Wei Dai.

Hal Finney is the person who run Bitcoin (likely first one after Satoshi Nakamoto) and received a first Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto.

theymos felt like Hal Finney is a best candidate of Satoshi Nakamoto.

My current feeling on Satoshi's identity is:
 - Sassaman is a very bad candidate. If this is their conclusion, then they totally failed to do proper research.
 - 50% chance it's someone nobody's ever heard of, and nobody will ever figure it out
 - 35% chance it's Hal Finney. (Over time, I've moved more probability into this category.)
 - 10% chance it's someone else in the Bitcoin-verse
 - 5% chance it's a group within the CIA

Adam Back and Wei Dai created their projects before Bitcoin but failed.
Bitcoin prehistory tree.

1997 Adam Back, HashCash, DOS counter-measure w/ proof-of-fork
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Back

1998 Wei Dai ''B-Money'' - decentralized database to record txs and using a type of proof-of-work
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/B-money

It's probably those developers - Hal Finney, Adam Back, Wei Dai - who might be the people behind "Team Satoshi", no? Although, I also have a personal belief that one of them could also include Peter Todd, the outsider of the the group who probably was the originator of using Proof Of Work as a mechanism to make it hard to append the ledger.

[Ucy]

The most likely way he tried to hack it was to double-spend, and other possible way was to redo the Proof of Work. A simple checks and balances by the nodes would have prevented doublespending, and it would be almost impossible for him to become the longest chain after changing the blocks contents

[dzungmobile]

The most likely way he tried to hack it was to double-spend, and other possible way was to redo the Proof of Work. A simple checks and balances by the nodes would have prevented doublespending, and it would be almost impossible for him to become the longest chain after changing the blocks contents

I have never know that Hal Finney tried to do double-spend or attack the Bitcoin Proof of Work blockchain.

It has been many years since 2009, Hal Finney passed away too, so it's unlikely to be able to find any traces now. The most possible is from addresses used by Hal Finney and transaction history.

Payment No. 1: A Closer Look at the Very First Bitcoin Transfer.

[Ucy]

The most likely way he tried to hack it was to double-spend, and other possible way was to redo the Proof of Work. A simple checks and balances by the nodes would have prevented doublespending, and it would be almost impossible for him to become the longest chain after changing the blocks contents

I have never know that Hal Finney tried to do double-spend or attack the Bitcoin Proof of Work blockchain.

It has been many years since 2009, Hal Finney passed away too, so it's unlikely to be able to find any traces now. The most possible is from addresses used by Hal Finney and transaction history.

Payment No. 1: A Closer Look at the Very First Bitcoin Transfer.

You may have confused this thread with this one about Hal Finney, assuming it's still available: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5586653.0

That post of mine you quoted was about the hacker Dan Kaminsky not Hal Finney.

[BlackHatCoiner]

It is true that Satoshi understood economics, programming and peer-to-peer networking, and it did take a glimpse of brilliance to make this work out. He was a brilliant person, in my opinion, but I think people overestimate what it was needed to create Bitcoin.

Everything, except one thing, was already published and thoroughly discussed in the crypto community back then, from digital signatures to proof of work. What Satoshi thought, that nobody else did, was the difficulty adjustment. This is what distinguishes Bitcoin from other failed projects, in my opinion. And of course, the effort this man put into the project. Further proof that hard work beats all.

[aoluain]

OP, probably not. I believe that even most of the Cypherpunks sort of ignored/were full of skepticism towards the Bitcoin White-Paper because Satoshi was someone who wasn't known in that community.

Although, there were three famous individuals, that you obviously already know, who has shown their interest - Hal Finney, Adam Back, Wei Dai.

I can imagine some Cypherpunks being skeptical but I cannot imagine the majority.

For mathematicians and cryptographers the math is there surely many many specialists
ran the numbers, checked the code and realised it was a very viable project - and thats
just the cypherpunk movement.

When Bitcoin launched and was running there had to be many other skeptical people
who checked the code purely out of curiosity to prove and discover weaknesses?

Surely it didnt take someone over 2 years to publically prove in main stream media
that the project was rock solid?

[Alphakilo]

The most likely way he tried to hack it was to double-spend, and other possible way was to redo the Proof of Work. A simple checks and balances by the nodes would have prevented doublespending, and it would be almost impossible for him to become the longest chain after changing the blocks contents

I have never know that Hal Finney tried to do double-spend or attack the Bitcoin Proof of Work blockchain.

It has been many years since 2009, Hal Finney passed away too, so it's unlikely to be able to find any traces now. The most possible is from addresses used by Hal Finney and transaction history.

Payment No. 1: A Closer Look at the Very First Bitcoin Transfer.

You may have confused this thread with this one about Hal Finney, assuming it's still available: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5586653.0

That post of mine you quoted was about the hacker Dan Kaminsky not Hal Finney.

It would interest you to know that Hal Finney also known as The "Graybeard" Genius was among the first, if not the first person to see the white paper and he was so captivated by it that he mined his own block and received the very first transaction from Satoshi.
We also have Nick Szabo, Gavin Anderson, Michael Clear who were stunned by the brilliance of the white paper and even tried it out themselves.

It was Dan Kaminsky that tried to hack into the Blockchain but discovered along with other brains in the tech community that it was a pure genius program that was the real deal.


https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/cef/items/663083/de-?hl=en-US#

[Wind_FURY]

OP, probably not. I believe that even most of the Cypherpunks sort of ignored/were full of skepticism towards the Bitcoin White-Paper because Satoshi was someone who wasn't known in that community.

Although, there were three famous individuals, that you obviously already know, who has shown their interest - Hal Finney, Adam Back, Wei Dai.

I can imagine some Cypherpunks being skeptical but I cannot imagine the majority.

Actually, it probably was the majority. There were already a few attempts to build a digital currency system before the Bitcoin White-Paper was written - E-Gold/DigiCash, which failed and that probably made the Cypherpunk community very cynical with those newer proposals, including Bitcoin.

For mathematicians and cryptographers the math is there surely many many specialists
ran the numbers, checked the code and realised it was a very viable project - and thats
just the cypherpunk movement.

When Bitcoin launched and was running there had to be many other skeptical people
who checked the code purely out of curiosity to prove and discover weaknesses?

Surely it didnt take someone over 2 years to publically prove in main stream media
that the project was rock solid?

What numbers? There was a mere White-Paper in 2008, which the majority of the Cypherpunk community probably ignored.