Blowing the lid off the CryptoNote/Bytecoin scam (with the exception of Monero)

[fudbuster]

Very interesting thread and kudos to the OP for the amount of effort he put into his analysis!

[1713965465]

1713965465

[1713965465]

1713965465

[1713965465]

1713965465

[bitcoinbear]

I was impressed by the amount of work you've put to compile everything in one place. While checking your claims regarding CryptoNote whitepaper, I noticed the same XMP timestamps and other evidence that you posted.

However, there is one thing that you did not check-out when I tried to repeat your experiment.  Van Saberhagen's public key on CryptoNote website cannot be used to validite the PDF. While checking, I got this message:

Some new surprising information was found on Bytecoin's website. It hosts a very similar whitepaper v.2, which turns out to be different if you study it carefully. What's more, van Saberhagen's public key matches on CryptoNote and Bytecoin websites. It seems that Bytecoin may hold a genuine Saberhagen whitepaper as it can be verified with the published public key - however since his identity remains unknown, we can only speculate.

I then decided to continue with experiment by comparing the paper found on Bytecoin with the one CryptoNote's website. For easier references I'll call them bcn-whitepaper and cn-whitepaper. The bcn-whitepaper will always goes first on the pictures unless explicitly stated otherwise.

When opening the bcn-whitepaper we can see the article structure.

Which is not the case for cn-whitepaper.

Opening the PDF we notice the valid signature inside:

The signature date on bcn-whitepaper is almost the same as on cn-whitepaper but slightly differs in size. This by itself, points that further discrepancies may exist between the two whitepapers. I decided to continue my investigation by studying the signature details (bcn - to the left, cn - to the right):

Everything looks quite the same with the exception of the SHA and MD5 fingerprints. Moving on to the XMP properties, we can see that they are also different.

Bcn-whitepaper holds perfectly clear signatures. The CreateDate is 2013 as it should be. The pdfTeX version x.x.13 also existed. There is totally nothing strange about these tags. Unlike the whitepaper from CryptoNote website that was studied before.

Apparently, Bytecoin's whitepaper is quite consistent in terms of timelines.

The remaining question is which whitepaper may have been the genuine one.

I would assume that having exactly the same van Saberhagen's public keys posted on both websites, it would not be unlikely that it really belongs to Saberhagen - particularly since both keys validate the bcn-whitepaper.

Also, upon a careful examination of Bytecoin's whitepaper I found a watermark, which is usually hard to identify. Here it is in the whitepaper (just after the Appendix):

Most may be unable to see it because it is non-selectable, can't be copied and is transparent. You might be able to see it as a small highlighted field (e.g. if you open it with Chrome).

It turns out that the watermark appears in the tooltip for that field. Here is the tooltip's content:

This is a PGP key perfectly matching public van Saberhagen's key published on both websites.

Hence, there is a PGP signature hidden in the Bytecoin's whitepaper, but there is no such watermark in the one found on CryptoNote's website.

Are these 2 documents anyhow different apart from that? I've checked with adobe document compare tools, and it seems that they're either complete copies, or have very minor indistinguishable differences like the following three. These formulas appear to be the same, but not to the compare tool:

My Conclusions

1. It is very likely the Bytecoin website hosts the genuine whitepaper.

2. The whitepaper published on CryptoNote's website may be a forgery. There is no PGP watermark and the author's PGP public key can't be used to validate the whitepaper.

3. Someone has duplicated the genuine whitepaper line by line for them to look the same - but failed at capturing some of its hidden elements.

4. Now let's move to whitepaper v.1 on CN website. As there is no signature to validate this whitepaper, the only relevant test is watermark. If it's inside, then the asumption on CryptoNote's conspiracy may hold. However, whitepaper v.1 doesn't have this watermark.

5. The problems with latex compilator problems, XMP meta tags, and invalid links may point to a forgery attempt, not van Saberhagen's actual activity.


Unclear questions for further research

1) What and why did we find two strange whitepapers on the CryptoNote website? A number of options may be valid. I assume it could be a mistake, a social engineering trap, hacked website or someone's attempt to discredit the technology? Who knows.

I'll point CryptoNote that they may have a wrong whitepaper. Maybe they will care to comment or take actions.

[CreationLayer]

Has there been any official notices from the developers?

[mmortal03]

Don't forget, from https://cryptonotefoundation.org/:

The Board

Chairman

Board members
 
Will be announced
 by August 2014

So, they have two weeks to come up with more pseudonyms, lol.

[Liquid71]

Well the entire Bytecoin thing has been exposed again and again. The OP has done it himself several times. The difference this time is he is now attacking the only other CN coin of significance which is Boolberry. It was announced in the BBR thread that it was soon going to be rebranded, which is a good idea.

But let's track this down a bit more.

it doesn't matter that Sabelnikov can shovel bullshit features into his poorly named cryptocurrency,

Monero is streets ahead, partly because of the way they're developing the currency, but mostly because the "core devs" or whatever they're called are made up of reasonably well-known people. That there are a bunch of them (6 or 7?) plus a bunch of other people contributing code means that they're sanity checking each other.

Yah that doesn't make it monero truthing at all because you know they are "core devs or whatever they are called", you know because he doesn't keep track of them as there aren't enough threads to keep track of what they are called.

And that fake fight stuff between amjuarez and zoidberg, genius stuff   it spilled over to the cryptonote forum. Very nice  


Monero is hands down the best CN coin, no doubt. But excessive fucking shilling and arrogance will kill it. Arrogance and fucktardness killed Litecoin. Everything that happened in Litecoin can be traced to the arrogance of the community. The short sightedness to think that they can be Bitcoin, and everything they did revolved around it.

I see similar characteristics building in Monero. Remember, it is about consensus and comes with congeniality amongst various other factors. You cannot simply repel others with short sightedness of shitting everything and everyone else into oblivion by force. Do NOT overshill and don't try hard to come off as only subtly trying to sell Monero. There is little to no subtlety left. It is coming off as desperation day by day.

This is why I don't own XMR or any CN coin. The Monero trolls are everywhere, every coin thread Cryptonote or not, and why the fuck would I want to buy a coin when current coin owners are so desperate they feel the need to troll so dam much. Even smooth trolling the Bytecoin thread so fucking hard and he's part of the Monero team..seriously where do you guys get the time to troll so much? And you're actually hurting XMR not helping, it's just making this whole cluster fuck surrounding Cryptonote coins worse.
My conclusion, Cryptonote coins are all FUBAR

[mmortal03]

This is why I don't own XMR or any CN coin. The Monero trolls are everywhere, every coin thread Cryptonote or not, and why the fuck would I want to buy a coin when current coin owners are so desperate they feel the need to troll so dam much. Even smooth trolling the Bytecoin thread so fucking hard and he's part of the Monero team..seriously where do you guys get the time to troll so much? And you're actually hurting XMR not helping, it's just making this whole cluster fuck surrounding Cryptonote coins worse.
My conclusion, Cryptonote coins are all FUBAR

My take has been that most of these trolls are plants by some other party to make Monero look bad. They are annoying to Monero supporters, too -- not just you.

[fluffypony]

This is why I don't own XMR or any CN coin. The Monero trolls are everywhere, every coin thread Cryptonote or not, and why the fuck would I want to buy a coin when current coin owners are so desperate they feel the need to troll so dam much. Even smooth trolling the Bytecoin thread so fucking hard and he's part of the Monero team..seriously where do you guys get the time to troll so much? And you're actually hurting XMR not helping, it's just making this whole cluster fuck surrounding Cryptonote coins worse.
My conclusion, Cryptonote coins are all FUBAR

The author of this post is NOT involved with Monero in any way. I cannot refute some or even most of his findings, but I certainly disagree with the vitriolic voracity with which it is delivered. He is exceedingly angry, and that is at odds with the way any members of the Monero core team view CryptoNote or Bytecoin.

I can only find the one comment that smooth made recently in the Bytecoin thread, and I don't think there is a fundamental problem with engaging cross-thread. We harbour no ill-will against Bytecoin, so to label a tongue-in-cheek comment as "trolling" is a bit of a stretch, don't you agree? I know it's a fine line, but I don't think we're being purposely obtuse or abrasive.

As to those involved with Monero who you label "Monero trolls", we simply cannot control anyone. People are going to say good things and bad things about Monero, and it is not our responsibility or in our best interest to attempt to stifle free speech. There will always be people that passionate like or passionately hate Monero, and that's a good thing, as it encourages intense debate. For those that cross the line to trolling or excessive pandering, I apologise for their behaviour on behalf of the core team. We do not condone it, but we are also not in a position to be able to stop it. Please accept my personal apology as well if the behaviour of anyone even peripherally involved with Monero has offended you in any way.

[Liquid71]

Well the entire Bytecoin thing has been exposed again and again. The OP has done it himself several times. The difference this time is he is now attacking the only other CN coin of significance which is Boolberry. It was announced in the BBR thread that it was soon going to be rebranded, which is a good idea.

But let's track this down a bit more.

it doesn't matter that Sabelnikov can shovel bullshit features into his poorly named cryptocurrency,

Monero is streets ahead, partly because of the way they're developing the currency, but mostly because the "core devs" or whatever they're called are made up of reasonably well-known people. That there are a bunch of them (6 or 7?) plus a bunch of other people contributing code means that they're sanity checking each other.

Yah that doesn't make it monero truthing at all because you know they are "core devs or whatever they are called", you know because he doesn't keep track of them as there aren't enough threads to keep track of what they are called.

And that fake fight stuff between amjuarez and zoidberg, genius stuff   it spilled over to the cryptonote forum. Very nice  


Monero is hands down the best CN coin, no doubt. But excessive fucking shilling and arrogance will kill it. Arrogance and fucktardness killed Litecoin. Everything that happened in Litecoin can be traced to the arrogance of the community. The short sightedness to think that they can be Bitcoin, and everything they did revolved around it.

I see similar characteristics building in Monero. Remember, it is about consensus and comes with congeniality amongst various other factors. You cannot simply repel others with short sightedness of shitting everything and everyone else into oblivion by force. Do NOT overshill and don't try hard to come off as only subtly trying to sell Monero. There is little to no subtlety left. It is coming off as desperation day by day.

Wow, someone's been reading my posts.

Regardless of Monero's merits...
The over-the-top hubris... and auto-Bitcoin status demanded by Monero Truthers is absurd...
Building and enforcing a silly mini-cult probably hurts more than it helps.

The coin is mired at 300K sats... 40% underwater for any typical investor using ave prices.

Also, if you are bringing promoters like McRisto on board...
Where is the f***king money... talk is cheap... spend $100K on some Devs already...
This is the fastest paced Space on earth with zero intellectual property protection.

As for BCN...
By my count the total volume on Polo has been about 5-6 billion at maybe ave 7-8 sats...
So even if you count all the clones... and even if these guys are expert traders and done half the volume...
We are talking at most maybe $100-200,000... which doesn't go a long way once you start splitting it up. 

Agreed, and even this thread which is about Cryptonote/BCN has turned into nothing more than a Monero circle jerk..

[smooth]

My take has been that most of these trolls are plants by some other party to make Monero look bad. They are annoying to Monero supporters, too -- not just you.

We can only speculate. It is a fact that there have been a lot of absurd cheerleader-type pro-Monero posts going up recently that we have nothing to do with. Usually they display a poor grasp of English grammar which ought to be a clue who is behind them, but in all honesty we just don't know. There may also be negative posts going up talking down about other coins, something we generally don't do (unless we have specific substantive criticisms). Treat them with similar skepticism.

[smooth]

This is why I don't own XMR or any CN coin. The Monero trolls are everywhere, every coin thread Cryptonote or not, and why the fuck would I want to buy a coin when current coin owners are so desperate they feel the need to troll so dam much. Even smooth trolling the Bytecoin thread so fucking hard and he's part of the Monero team

If you are referring to one post I made recently which was obviously intended as a joke, I plead guilty of having a sense of humor.

If you are referring to the posts I made there months ago when less was known about the scam, I was giving my opinion at the time on what was still an unclear but shady-looking sitatution (some of those comments were before I was involved with Monero and in fact led to my participation with Monero). In hindsight pretty much everything I said turned out to be correct. If it hadn't I'd be the first to post a correction or retraction, as I have done on other occasions (once recently with respect to BBR for example).

[ndrog]

My Conclusions

1. It is very likely the Bytecoin website hosts the genuine whitepaper.

2. The whitepaper published on CryptoNote's website may be a forgery. There is no PGP watermark and the author's PGP public key can't be used to validate the whitepaper.

3. Someone has duplicated the genuine whitepaper line by line for them to look the same - but failed at capturing some of its hidden elements.

4. Now let's move to whitepaper v.1 on CN website. As there is no signature to validate this whitepaper, the only relevant test is watermark. If it's inside, then the asumption on CryptoNote's conspiracy may hold. However, whitepaper v.1 doesn't have this watermark.

5. The problems with latex compilator problems, XMP meta tags, and invalid links may point to a forgery attempt, not van Saberhagen's actual activity.


Unclear questions for further research

1) What and why did we find two strange whitepapers on the CryptoNote website? A number of options may be valid. I assume it could be a mistake, a social engineering trap, hacked website or someone's attempt to discredit the technology? Who knows.

I'll point CryptoNote that they may have a wrong whitepaper. Maybe they will care to comment or take actions.
[/quote]

This is really good analytical research about the whitepapers.
There are indeed 2 possibilities here (IMO): It was a genuine mistake from the CN website (not really 100%, on this one) or it was a malicious act to try discredit the technology itself. Lets not forget that when competitors consider you  a threat and to their own interests, they will go in all lengths to discredit you.

[yAmAdA]

This is really good analytical research about the whitepapers.
There are indeed 2 possibilities here (IMO): It was a genuine mistake from the CN website (not really 100%, on this one) or it was a malicious act to try discredit the technology itself. Lets not forget that when competitors consider you  a threat and to their own interests, they will go in all lengths to discredit you.

But do BCN devs not also refer to the CN website? It would be strange for damaging material to be posted in that place.

Since some time has passed since the publication of the original analysis in this thread, the possibility of a "corrected" backdated whitepaper being posted on one or both of these sites should not be discounted.

[Brilliantrocket]

This CN debacle has more intrigue than Game of Thrones.

[fluffypony]

This CN debacle has more intrigue than Game of Thrones.

I know, right?

<popcorn.gif goes here>

:-P

[Liquid71]

This is why I don't own XMR or any CN coin. The Monero trolls are everywhere, every coin thread Cryptonote or not, and why the fuck would I want to buy a coin when current coin owners are so desperate they feel the need to troll so dam much. Even smooth trolling the Bytecoin thread so fucking hard and he's part of the Monero team

If you are referring to one post I made recently which was obviously intended as a joke, I plead guilty of having a sense of humor.

If you are referring to the posts I made there months ago when less was known about the scam, I was giving my opinion at the time on what was still an unclear but shady-looking sitatution (some of those comments were before I was involved with Monero and in fact led to my participation with Monero). In hindsight pretty much everything I said turned out to be correct. If it hadn't I'd be the first to post a correction or retraction, as I have done on other occasions (once recently with respect to BBR for example).

It was probably unfair to specifically target you smooth. Monero shills in general act as bad or worse than pump and dump coins. Even the DRK cult is more subtle with their hidden agenda than most Monero shills and DRK is a shit coin. To be fair I don't bother spending the time to read through other altcoin threads, but Cryptonote coins aren't just another Bitcoin alt clone, so I'm not used to reading through all the trolling and hidden agenda bullshit that goes on in these threads.

Please explain Bytecoin to our readers.

 we’ve mentioned before, CryptoNote team was not interested in building a currency. That is when Bytecoin developers took the lead. They are the team of top notch p2p and cryptocurrency developers, which have been contributing to the sphere for quite some time. They finalized our cryptographic and currency prototypes and coded a beautiful solution to represent CryptoNote.

By the way, Bytecoin was not the very first realization of CryptoNote, as there was a so-called “BetaNote”, which was used for a couple of months before the launch of Bytecoin to test whether the currency works as designed. This test coin was presented to a large number of influential people in educational, scientific, and gaming industries, who eventually became the first miners of Bytecoin. I believe this “circle of a few” affected the way the currency developed during the next year and why the information was slow to spread. It is not in the nature or business of these participants to post on the Web, so all the mining teams grew in number through word-of-mouth only.

Anyway, when the coin was launched, CryptoNote team gradually departed from Bytecoin team to finalize the white paper (which eventually became available in December 2012) and returned back to other projects. After nearly a year, the team gathered back to review the white paper, catch up with Bytecoin news and decide on our strategy.

It turned out that even though Bytecoin had grown and was indeed working as a currency (accepted at certain deep and dark web projects, circulating as a main local currency in one very large international research center, traded on small OTC exchanges), it lacked mass adoption. Ironically, the coin was simply under conventional business radars, while Bytecoin devs were wholly obsessed by the technology they were working on and didn’t pay much attention to spreading the word about it. That is when CryptoNote team decided to let the world know about the technology and promote new CryptoNote currencies, while ensuring that Bytecoin team (main contributing developers for CryptoNote) is still devoted to technology development.

http://bitcoinbarbie.com/cryptonote-open-source-technology-concept/

That entire response from Cryptonote in that arcticle is incoherent. First Crytonote was behind the technology and Bytecoin devs are the currency people, then by end of answer it's Cryptonote which is going to promote the currencies and Bytecoin the "main contributing developers for Crytonote"

And these Bytecoin devs are a "team of top notch p2p and cryptocurrency developers, which have been contributing to the sphere for quite some time" but didn't think a post on bitcointalk would help with the coins adoption  
And same with Crytonote, if they decided they wanted to "let the world know about the technology and promote new CryptoNote currencies" wouldn't a good place to start be an annoucment of some sort to the Bitcoin community? As far as I know the first mention here on the forums was an "accidental" discovery and nobody else involved with Bitcoin knew about it before that..

Thanks to whoever posted the link to that article because that is more convincing than anything else to me that BCN was all a lame attempt to dump an 80% premine. Hard to imagine it's Crytonotes sole intention for developing the protocol. And the other clones being called CN's scorched earth policy sounds more like Monero shills trying to protect their turf. It would also be nice to see Monero shills show some humility since they are (most likely) going to win the cryptonote coin space and profit nicely off of the work done by whomever the fuck developed the protocol. Not saying the Bytecoin guys aren't sucmbags, just saying them being scum doesn't make Monero devs walk on water..
For anyone willing to spend the time an unbiased cliff notes version of Cryptonote and the CN coins would probably help adoption of Monero and legit CN coins. All the controversy just chases people away. With all the pump and dump shills and underwater bagholders trolling these forums it's hard to believe someone with a hidden agenda claiming another coin is scam and their coin is gods gift to the world.

[eratta]

Added my Bitcoin donation address to the OP too. Your donations pay for the insane amounts of pizza and Monster I consume when researching this shit.

How about a Monero address?

[smooth]

For anyone willing to spend the time an unbiased cliff notes version of Cryptonote and the CN coins would probably help adoption of Monero and legit CN coins.

I know whatever I say will be perceived as biased, which is understandable, but the reality is, from the OP's work which I find to be completely credible (especially in connection with the other shady to outright deceptive stuff I saw myself on the Bytecoin thread before there even was a Monero), I don't at this point believe there are any other clearly legit CN coins besides Monero.

I said a few pages back that I'm not convinced about the whole Russian-guy/cryptozoidberg/BBR story. There are some connections there, but at the same time some of the pieces there don't entirely fit. I'm also not 100% sure about ducknote, although it smells a little fishy. But the others are all clearly coming out of the same fraudulent coin mill.

If there were some other untainted CN clone coins I would point them out. I just don't know of any.

You don't have to believe me though, read what the OP says (especially the "all tied up in a bow" section) and decide for yourself.

[Quanttek]

Alain sold the cryptonote.org-domain to a guy called "Gael Dames" on February 18, 2014. The bytecoin website was way earlier online, which can explain it a bit, that the whitepapers are probably copied badly over.

[smooth]

Alain sold the cryptonote.org-domain to a guy called "Gael Dames" on February 18, 2014. The bytecoin website was way earlier online, which can explain it a bit, that the whitepapers are probably copied badly over.

Interesting but I wonder if he could possibly be confusing cryptonote.com with cryptonote.org. That name is on the whois for cryptonote.com but the cryptonote.org site is using a private whois.

[me755]

This CN debacle has more intrigue than Game of Thrones.

It's more of Highlander type of thing, after all, there can be only one. Good luck with a new DRK. Oh, anyone into SILK? I've heard they are exception from the other scams!