More evidence that Bitcoin was created by the US government

[legiteum]

Hence I think it's more plausible that the secret got shared among at least a small group of people.

That's even less plausible. There's a saying, "three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead."

That's true for normal people, but not people working in an intelligence agency or other top-secret facility. There are surely thousands--perhaps tens of thousands--of secrets that governments across the world hold very tightly among small groups or even pretty big ones. I bet there many, many secrets that the public doesn't know that large groups within intelligence agencies know.

Imagine you knew the truth about Satoshi: would it be worth risking prison to tell anybody? It would be no different than revealing a secret that could make you a lot of money--but this secret wouldn't be worth anything (except impressing somebody at a party or something).

Hundreds of people within the CIA/NSA/DARPA/etc. could know about the secret of Satoshi and nobody would know about it.

Also, there are many "open secrets" that people within at the government unofficially "know" but don't tell anybody officially. The Satoshi secret could be like this.

[nullius]

Holy fork, is this thread still ongoing? 

Hundreds of people within the CIA/NSA/DARPA/etc. could know about the secret of Satoshi and nobody would know about it.

Why don’t you ask Gavin.

The outer quotes link to posts of mine that provide more historical context:

Subject: Gavin will visit the CIA

I want to get this out in the open because it is the kind of thing that will generate conspiracy theories:  I'm going to give a presentation about Bitcoin at CIA headquarters in June at an emerging technologies conference for the US intelligence community.

While you’re at it, ask Mike Hearn how he got this idea at almost exactly the same time:

Subject: Freezing BitCoin addresses by regulating miners

From time to time governments freeze the assets of people or organizations they believe to be criminal. [...] BitCoins apparent inability to do this will certainly make law enforcement uncomfortable with the concept.

But in reality, by the time BitCoin is large enough for this to be a real issue it will be quite possible to freeze bitcoins by requiring miners to exclude transactions from blacklisted addresses.

It was an antecedent to this:

One of most commonly raised issues with Bitcoin is that of crime and punishment. Over the past 40 years our societies have, through both fair means and foul, built an integrated anti-money laundering system that attempts to let governments trace the proceeds of crime.

[...] Blacklist providers maintain sets of outputs that are blacklisted or tainted in some way, for instance because the owner reported them stolen or because it’s believed they are owned by some criminal enterprise. [...]

As for Gavin, he later publicly endorsed Faketoshi.  Hmmm.

⚠︎ Cross-reference to Reputation: legiteum (u=3597964) and Haypenny.net

[Yablee0]

No government will create a system that can kill its corrupt practices, that is why its a fallacy to believe that the US government owns or created bitcoin.

That is the undiluted fact bro. Is like trying to fight or combating what (bad system) you are actually benefiting from and it's almost impossible to believe. However, the stress of trying to figure out the country that invented bitcoin in to an existence isn't that neccesary in my opinion because even if you do, what is the essence. The most important thing here is that Satoshi has brought smiles on our faces and give us the reason to be happy once again in our financial life's. All thanks to him.

[Jet Cash]

The US banks and the US government are not the top of the tree. I believe that Bitcoin was created by the owners of the central banks to experiment and fine tune crypto products to allow them to lose massive government debts. The transaction confirmation time, and the cap on the number of Bitcoin available was designed to ensure that it could never become a global currency for daily use.

[avp2306]

The US banks and the US government are not the top of the tree. I believe that Bitcoin was created by the owners of the central banks to experiment and fine tune crypto products to allow them to lose massive government debts. The transaction confirmation time, and the cap on the number of Bitcoin available was designed to ensure that it could never become a global currency for daily use.

This is pure theory, but I like the way how you frame this speculation.

Base on research there's no actual evidence that entities creates Bitcoin, there's no single track that points out and I wonder on where you get that idea.

But well I think this is what we can do for now, because I think we cannot find out who truly create Bitcoin. It seems the real creator, is really is so genius on hiding its track. That's why even if decade pass, still no one reveals his true identity.

[BlackHatCoiner]

There are surely thousands--perhaps tens of thousands--of secrets that governments across the world hold very tightly among small groups or even pretty big ones. I bet there many, many secrets that the public doesn't know that large groups within intelligence agencies know.

I would believe it, if I were a conspiracy theorist.  

Imagine you knew the truth about Satoshi: would it be worth risking prison to tell anybody?

No, but people have risked their lives for far less than what's being sitting on supposedly a CIA drive. And it's not just "normal people" who've risked their lives, even people in authority positions. (Especially people in authority positions.)

The US banks and the US government are not the top of the tree. I believe that Bitcoin was created by the owners of the central banks to experiment and fine tune crypto products to allow them to lose massive government debts.

That doesn't make sense. Why would the owners of the central banks want to lose the massive advantage of drowning nations into debt? That's the entire business model they practice since their inception.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

That doesn't make sense. Why would the owners of the central banks want to lose the massive advantage of drowning nations into debt? That's the entire business model they practice since their inception.

They have ability and rights to print more money and people who make such money printing decisions are in a very good positions in their professions as well as have good social financial status. They are not affected too negatively as they can even take advantage of it because they know about what's coming much more earlier than outsiders.

People who are most vulnerable money printing and inflation are people who don't have too good social financial status, and usually will struggle with jobs and life when the nation and world is in recession.

[legiteum]

There are surely thousands--perhaps tens of thousands--of secrets that governments across the world hold very tightly among small groups or even pretty big ones. I bet there many, many secrets that the public doesn't know that large groups within intelligence agencies know.

I would believe it, if I were a conspiracy theorist.  

Huh? You don't believe governments keep secrets? Seriously? Then why were so many people arrested for revealing those secrets?

Why don't you go knock on the door to the CIA and ask them if you can have a tour?   

Imagine you knew the truth about Satoshi: would it be worth risking prison to tell anybody?

No, but people have risked their lives for far less than what's being sitting on supposedly a CIA drive. And it's not just "normal people" who've risked their lives, even people in authority positions. (Especially people in authority positions.)

People have risked their lives to reveal the truths about negative things governments have done, or about shameful secrets, or about secret military plans, etc. Nobody would risk their life to reveal what is essentially a piece of gossip that has no impact on anything (except a few folks at bitcointalk.org who would have their world view shattered ).

[BlackHatCoiner]

Huh? You don't believe governments keep secrets? Seriously? Then why were so many people arrested for revealing those secrets?

What are you talking about? The governments are run by completely normal human beings, with normal jobs, and a completely fair judicial system. If you believe a cabal of a particular religion controls the government, then I guess you believe all sorts of things... 

Nobody would risk their life to reveal what is essentially a piece of gossip that has no impact on anything

Nice strawman, but they would risk their lives for Satoshi's coins, not gossip of who Satoshi is.

[legiteum]

Huh? You don't believe governments keep secrets? Seriously? Then why were so many people arrested for revealing those secrets?

What are you talking about? The governments are run by completely normal human beings, with normal jobs, and a completely fair judicial system. If you believe a cabal of a particular religion controls the government, then I guess you believe all sorts of things... 

Yes, we agree to disagree about "the Jews running the US financial system" and all that. Moving on...

Nobody would risk their life to reveal what is essentially a piece of gossip that has no impact on anything

Nice strawman, but they would risk their lives for Satoshi's coins, not gossip of who Satoshi is.

Again, there's no chance somebody would try to steal $80 billion (or even $80 thousand) from the CIA. That's suicide.

And again, it's likely that more than one person knows about the Satoshi Project, so there are lots of eyes one the money.

(Indeed, this would explain why certain departments in the CIA met with known people in the Bitcoin community--perhaps this was the department in charge of making sure nobody stole anything, and they needed a technical primer. It would be great to find out what those people actually talked about, and who they talked to, but they surely are legally bound to silence so we'll never know).

[BlackHatCoiner]

Funny how I am the one portrayed as being a conspiracy theorist, while you make the extraordinary claim that an intelligence agency created Bitcoin, when you simply lack the evidence to support it.

We have no evidence that the CIA, DARPA, NSA or any other intelligence agency from another country (btw, the US is not the only country on the map) engaged in the creation of an anarchocapitalist cryptocurrency with vastly opposed interests to the central banking system. That is the extraordinary claim. You just feel that reality bends on that conclusion, because you have a conflict of interest to make Bitcoin look worse than it really is.

What we do know with certainty is that many crypto-enthusiasts, mathematicians and computer scientists were writing about cryptocurrency as a concept long before Bitcoin was a thing. Eventually someone would make it, and it makes a lot of sense that the person who made it, because it is a crypto-currency (crypto = κρύβω = hidden), wanted to remain hidden as well.

That's it. That's the story we know. There are plenty of reasons why this person's majority coins remained unspent, with two of them being to remain anonymous or simply passing away, both of which are completely fair and logical to assert.

[legiteum]

We have no evidence that the CIA, DARPA, NSA or any other intelligence agency from another country (btw, the US is not the only country on the map) engaged in the creation [Bitcoin]

We have no direct evidence, but there is circumstantial evidence. There is no direct evidence of any theory at this time.

This isn't a "conspiracy theory" because no "conspiracy" is asserted here (indeed, the theory being present is rather banal: that a US worker or group accidentally created Bitcoin).

Many people here are making the same cognitive mistake, which has a few different names and forms:

• Hindsight bias — Believing an outcome was predictable or obvious because you now know what happened.
• Presentism — Interpreting or judging past events through the assumptions, values, or knowledge of the present.
• Anachronistic reasoning — Applying information, concepts, or assumptions to a historical situation when they weren't available or applicable at the time.
• Retrospective rationalization — Constructing an explanation for a past event based on what is known today rather than what was known then.
• Outcome bias — Judging the quality of a past decision based on its eventual outcome rather than the information available when the decision was made.

In short, nobody knew what Bitcoin would become when Bitcoin was first coded. It was just a software project that people had every reason to expect would amount to nothing at all, or a very narrow curiosity at best. Hence the question is not, "why would XYZ create Bitcoin and its $1T market cap?", but rather, "who would start a small software project?".

[2stout]

It seems more implausible than not that the government created Bitcoin.  However, if the government did create Bitcoin, then it appears some entities went rogue, commandeered the project, and transformed the vision and some goals of what the government may have had in mind.

[BlackHatCoiner]

We have no direct evidence, but there is circumstantial evidence. There is no direct evidence of any theory at this time.

The "circumstantial evidence" in the OP is simply ridiculous, no offense. You consider circumstantial evidence the fact that the US government has many employees. That is as ridiculous as claiming that Microsoft created Bitcoin, because it has so many thousands of employees who could have done it.

You then arrogantly assert that Satoshi has not spent a single sat, which is provably incorrect, as there are coins we know are definitely his, that are spent, such as: https://mempool.space/tx/f4184fc596403b9d638783cf57adfe4c75c605f6356fbc91338530e9831e9e16#vin=0.

This isn't a "conspiracy theory" because no "conspiracy" is asserted here (indeed, the theory being present is rather banal: that a US worker or group accidentally created Bitcoin).

Yes, it is. A conspiracy is a secret plan made by a group of people to do something that is either illegal, unethical or deceptive, and that's exactly the point you're trying to make; that there is a secret objective behind Bitcoin. No, the idea that a US worker "accidentally" made it is completely ridiculous because (1) anyone studying the work of Satoshi can see that this was a very deliberate work and (2) if it was an experiment from the CIA, it was especially not accidental.

In short, nobody knew what Bitcoin would become when Bitcoin was first coded.

Or maybe they did. Satoshi was comparing Bitcoin with gold, and claiming that the volume of transactions would either be really high in 2030, or there wouldn't be any volume at all. Hal Finney had predicted that 1 BTC could go as high as $10 million, if the world took it seriously. And many other predictions by people who applied reasoning and became wealthy. Just because you failed to see the value proposition when you figured Bitcoin out, it doesn't mean the rest of us did.