Who is this Nick Szabo fellow and what are they all about?

[jdbtracker]

I thought I'd ask, considering what they have written, is it informative. What can we tell about their opinions and where could these opinions of emerged from?

[Elwar]

He's a coach for Louisiana.

[Clegg]

What has who written about him? I think your best bet is to just google about him. Is he satoshi? Who knows. Only he can answer that.

[Flashman]

Szabo is a displaced Vulcan who had to use a jedi mind trick to get Satoshi to mind meld with him after he got overloaded with crypto information from the device the Ancients left in Antarctica... or something like that.

[franky1]

nick szabo is one of a dozen+ people that for decades have been trying to create a new form of electronic money. nick is not satoshi, but satoshi did utilize idea's of nick, hal finney, wai, and others and it has been noted that satoshi alone had the mindset to seamlessly join the individual idea's into one perfect protocol.

although hal finney, nick szabo and others use to talk to each other on the cyberpunks forum nick did not continue along the bitcoin path (chatting on this forum) even when satoshi, hal finney and others did move across. which leads me to believe that nick gave up trying to invent money, when satoshi reached the finish line first. (tail between his ass, in my opinion)

so any theories that nick is satoshi, or hal finney or any of the other cyberpunk team is satoshi, can easily be denied purely on the history and evidence that has come to light that their grammar, messages, and actions show that they are all different people and not satoshi.

it is like saying that god made US bank notes because reference to christian religion can be found on a bank note "in god we trust". and also the bank notes own trust is being aimed at that of god.. but we all know god has nothing to do with money, unless god = Government Of Dumbass's.

so do not automatically assume nick szabo is satoshi simply because part of bitcoin protocol utilises szabo's idea.. nor should we say that bitcoin was NSA purely because 256sha was invented by NSA. or that hal finney or wai are satoshi purely on their slices of the protocol.

satoshi was a simple individual that created the white paper and only utilised the other peoples idea's to form his own idea, with his own concepts that joined it all together.

only feeble minds will find the smallest straw and exaggerate it into something large, whilst never looking beyond that straw. so look beyond the simple evidence and look deeper.

[Sefton]

Are you talking about this book: http://www.ibtimes.com/new-book-claims-nick-szabo-true-bitcoin-creator-researcher-denies-establishing-1722395

[jdbtracker]

I am pretty sure we cannot truly know the answer of who this person really is, but should we care? I personally don't; I just want to know their mind.

And I've already read it so, I just want to find out what the people of this forum think.

[L.Detweiler]

I am pretty sure we cannot truly know the answer of who this person really is, but should we care? I personally don't; I just want to know their mind.

And I've already read it so, I just want to find out what the people of this forum think.

History:

-1992 The Cypherpunks create an anonymous mailer for like-minded users to share ideas.(Eric Hughes, Tim May, Hal Finney, Wei Dai, Nick Szabo, Adam Back, Ray Dillenger, etc….)
https://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.txt
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/10/msg00759.html

-1995 Tim May posts a call to the Cypherpunks to create a decentralised electronic currency.
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1995/09/msg00964.html

-1995 Nick Szabo answers Tim’s call(He also has smart contracts to include once it gets going)
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1995/09/msg01303.html

1996 Wei Dai PipeNet 1.1
http://www.weidai.com/pipenet.txt

-1997 Tim Mays Anonymous Digital Cash paper.
http://osaka.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/tcmay.htm

1997 Adam Backs “Hashash”
http://www.hashcash.org/

- 1998 Wei Dai elaborates on Tim’s idea for a digital currency and called it “Bmoney”.(It reads like the beginning idea of BitGold/Bitcoin)
http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt

-1998 Szabo had a simular more detailed idea “BitGold” soon after Dai’s paper and he worked relentlessly on making that idea work.
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/intrapoly.html
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1995/09/msg00988.htmle

-1999 Szabo mentions bitgold and talk of a special “ASIC” type chip that could be used for mining.
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/intrapoly.html

-2001 Tim May explains a system like BitGold/Bitcoin would have to be released anonymous:
https://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks@lne.com/msg00080.html

- 2004 Hal Finney’s “RPOW” was the missing piece of the puzzle. “RPOW” was added on top of Adam Back’s “HashCash”. (The solution for the Byzantine General’s Problem which allows BitGold/Bitcoin to be completed)
http://cryptome.org/rpow.htm

-2004 Wei Dai’s c++ library
http://www.cryptopp.com/

-2005 Nick Szabo publishes BitGold paper.
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html?m=1

2007 Szabo Blogging about two ideas. BitGold and Scarce Objects(finite supply like Bitcoin)
Note: These two ideas put together is Bitcoin.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070625154046/http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20070618142414/http://szabo.best.vwh.net/scarce.html

2007 Satoshi (at a later date) says he started putting Bitcoin together.
http://m.benzinga.com/article/3563567

-2008 Szabo calls out to the cypherpunk types for help to finalize coding BitGold and run a test net a few months before the white paper gets published online.
*Szabo’s post for assistance:
“Bitgold would greatly benefit from a demonstration, an experimental market (with e.g. a trusted third party substituted for the complex security that would be needed for a real system). Anybody want to help me code one up?”
https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2013/12/

-Satoshi Nakamoto appears out of thin air and introduces Bitcoin right in the middle of the economic crisis that was saturated in the news at that time and then disappears.

*“Szabo has extensively studied British history for his legal and monetary theories (it’s hard to miss this if you’ve read his essays), so I do not regard the Britishisms as a point against Szabo”. ~ gwern

*Ray Dillenger (Bear) quote: “Look, (Satoshi) was a construction made explicitly for the purpose of launching Bitcoin……That purpose is fulfilled.  The person who created (Satoshi) has no further need for him.  Thus ends the story”.

*Hal Finney quote: “How do you find someone who has spent a lifetime covering his tracks?…For some, he was a guardian angel. others, a ghost, who never quite fit in…What’s the S stand for?”

[Alonzo Ewing]

Cypherpunks were thousands, not dozens.

[Taras]

Are you talking about this book: http://www.ibtimes.com/new-book-claims-nick-szabo-true-bitcoin-creator-researcher-denies-establishing-1722395

I think Hal Finney is much more likely to be Satoshi than Nick Szabo.

Unfortunately, if correct, then Satoshi is deceased

Satoshi's involvement has been fading at a similar rate to Hal's motor functions... Hmm...

[S.Boxx]

@ Taras

Nick Szabo: “(assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai)”…..Only Finney (RPOW) and Nakamoto were motivated enough to actually implement such a scheme”.

[ebliever]

so any theories that nick is satoshi, or hal finney or any of the other cyberpunk team is satoshi, can easily be denied purely on the history and evidence that has come to light that their grammar, messages, and actions show that they are all different people and not satoshi.

What I've read is the direct opposite. Do you have any links to any such analysis?

[Melbustus]

<excellent collection of resources>

I'll add a post Adam Back made on here two days ago after I asked about some of the early history (specifically the extent to which David Chaum had double-spending solved in the 80s/90s): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=856069.0

Also, Ray Dillinger recently commented on here about how 2.1e15 was chosen to be the number of base units in the bitcoin system: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=819656.msg9181746#msg9181746


As to Szabo being Satoshi? It's hard to read the BitGold paper, then Satoshi's whitepaper, then the MetzDowd thread and not feel like they've gotta be the same guy, but who knows... (FYI - I'm not on a Satoshi hunt (it doesn't matter who he is); I've just been researching the early history of crypto-money lately for academic reasons).

FWIW, some quotes from that first link posted by L.Detweiler:

In my limited experience creating Internet pseudonyms, I've been quite distracted by the continual need to avoid leaving pointers to my True Name lying around -- excess mail to/from my True Name, shared files, common peculiarities (eg misspellings in written text), traceable logins, etc.   The penet.fi site explicitly maintains a list of pointers to the original address.  All kinds of security controls -- crypto, access, information, inference -- have to be continually on my mind when using pseudonymous accounts.  The hazards are everywhere.  With our current tools it's practically impossible to maintain an active pseudonym for a long period of time against a sufficiently determined opponent, and quite a hassle to maintain even a modicum of decent security.  Pointers to info and/or tools to enable the establishment and maintenance of a net.nym, beyond the standard cypherpunks PGP/remailer fare with which I'm now familiar, greatly appreciated.  Especially nice would be a list of commercial net providers that allow pseudonymous accounts.

and

I've had several years to establish a net.reputation for "Nick Szabo", and it might take a long time for any of my pseudonyms to catch up.   Altruistic sponsorship requires trusted friends knowing the True Name, but that public sponsorship itself provides important clues pointing to that Name.

Both quotes from: http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/10/msg00759.html

[kingscrown]

some peopel say hes satoshi

[1986]

Are you talking about this book: http://www.ibtimes.com/new-book-claims-nick-szabo-true-bitcoin-creator-researcher-denies-establishing-1722395

I think Hal Finney is much more likely to be Satoshi than Nick Szabo.

Unfortunately, if correct, then Satoshi is deceased

Satoshi's involvement has been fading at a similar rate to Hal's motor functions... Hmm...

Maybe Satoshi was both Finney and Szabo. It's very possible that satoshi was more than one person or a group.

[drugs]

I wonder if we'll ever know or find out for certain. I also wonder if it would be a good or bad thing if they were ever exposed or came out voluntarily?

[Billbags]

Szabo’s blog is a vast encyclopedia of puzzle pieces that were being put together to solve the existing problems in his life long endeavor of implementing “BitGold”. His blogs cover everything, right down to the invention of the time keeping devices that changed our culture, and the value of it, up until Satoshi creating Bitcoin, and even beyond that with his vision and realization of smart contracts. Szabo’s research includes an extreme amount of past history and technology that allows him to explain what we have here today so well.
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/?m=1
https://mobile.twitter.com/nickszabo4

Nick Szabo describes the entire significant history of law right up until the Non-Delegation doctrine and it’s implications that are above our National Constitutions.  He taught us all how to be lawyers, because you need this to be free.
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/delegation.pdf

Szabo has access to study and research information that is not easily accessed(or understood well) by the common man. He studies this knowledge and writes papers in layman's terms that he publishes in public for free so every man(both ritch and poor) can have access to the true knowledge and history of mankind. Szabo's work enables us to truely understand our past and our future.

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/

http://web.archive.org/web/20070618142414/http://szabo.best.vwh.net/scarce.html

http://szabo.best.vwh.net/ttps.html

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets.html?m=1

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-long.html?m=1

http://unenumerated.blogspot.ca/2008/06/commodity-hysteria-overview.html?m=1

[LiteCoinGuy]

Szabo is a displaced Vulcan who had to use a jedi mind trick to get Satoshi to mind meld with him after he got overloaded with crypto information from the device the Ancients left in Antarctica... or something like that.

(by the way: iam pretty sure that it was not just one guy who invented this.)

[roslinpl]

Those hunts for Satoshi are for me a great resource of the history and I always love to read those threads where people are sharing a lot of great links which contains such a fascinating informations.

I don't really care who is Satoshi because this information is not as important as Bitcoin itself. 

Thanks for another great set of texts to read. 

♥BTC

[Flashman]

I don't really care who is Satoshi because this information is not as important as Bitcoin itself. 

Me either, I could probably answer to my own satisfaction if I wanted to burn up a month on it, have a few ways to metaphorically triangulate as it were. Mostly the obsession with it from others amuses me. I judge Satoshi's child on it's own merits. I don't see the purpose, really, unless one wants to attempt a pathetic denigration of bitcoin itself by a logically invalid ad hominem. It's like refusing to acknowledge the existence of an orphan until the poor kid produces it's parents.



I'll misquote Trinity...

Haxx0r: I know why you're here, noob. I know what you've been doing... why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You're looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn't really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It's the question that drives us, noob. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did.

noob: What is Bitcoin?

Haxx0r: The answer is out there, noob, and it's looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.