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Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Could Be Unmasked at 64B Florida Trial

by GBiT on 11/13/21, 3:57 PM with 21 comments

  • by bartaxyz on 11/13/21, 8:39 PM

    I sincerely hope that we'll never know Satoshi Nakamoto true identity. It's been so freeing for the Bitcoin community to not have this sort of real figure, but mostly an idea of one. It doesn't tweet, it doesn't have good and/or bad takes. It doesn't have a face you could like or dislike. To me, and many others, it's neutral.

  • by nathanaldensr on 11/13/21, 4:51 PM

    Meh. Wake me up when "Satoshi" decides to create a transaction on the ledger. Until then, it's all just claims.

  • by nikcub on 11/13/21, 5:14 PM

    This is a rather elaborate con that is being poorly covered in a lot of media, largely because it is complicated to understand if you haven't been following it closely.

    Both sides in the case before the courts here agree that Craig created Bitcoin and mined the Satoshi coins - the question is if he was in partnership with (now-deceased) Dave Kleiman and if the later is owed 50% of the ~1M Bitcoin.

    The trial won't do much to "unmask" who Satoshi is since that isn't really what they're probing (the judge presiding has said as much)

    Better court coverage:

    https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/11/04/in-craig-wright-t...

    Timeline of the Wright affair:

    https://mylegacykit.medium.com/faketoshi-the-early-years-par...

    My own post from when Craig first made these claim:

    https://nikcub.me/posts/craig-wright-is-not-satoshi-nakamoto...

    tl;dr on how we got here. Craig had a number of companies in Australia and made tax refunds against R&D investment, sales taxes paid. The tax office queried those refund and concession claims since they were so large (larger than what Google make in Australia and they're notably the largest). He couldn't provide hard receipts of the investment/spend in real dollars so claimed the money spent was in Bitcoin he mined because he created it.

    He claimed that he purchased two SGI supercomputers using Bitcoin (he even faked Top500 entries for them (!)). SGI deny they sold him two super-computers but said he may have purchased them on the grey market. He never had a straight answer on where the super-computers were located.

    The tax office didn't believe him, raided his home - he left Australia for the UK. Craig telling a small number of people he was Satoshi steadily leaked to more people (intentionally or not). He then through his network managed to convince somebody to purchase his "rights" to Bitcoin for $1.5M and they started a company called nChain around that. nChain wanted him to "come out" as Satoshi and provide proof. That all fell apart (despite convincing _some_ notable Bitcoin community members) and he backed away and started his own fork - Bitcoin SV

    I expect the trial will award to the Kleiman estate since there's an entire paper trail of Wright claiming to have mined together with him. Question is how the award is handled with present value of Bitcoin, past value, if it's in USD etc.

    There's a whole lot more - it would take a long book cover it all.

  • by detaro on 11/13/21, 4:49 PM

    https://archive.md/NRbwx

    TL;DR: Craig Wright keeps claiming he is Satoshi. Some dead guys family claims their guy did create Bitcoin together with Wright, and Wright should please cough up half of Satoshi's bitcoins.

  • by 37ef_ced3 on 11/13/21, 4:43 PM

    Adam Back is Satoshi Nakamoto. No?

    http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/

  • by 79Haines on 11/13/21, 9:12 PM

    I bet it is comforting because if it is true, CSW is SN and has a boatload of coins (heard anywhere from ~850k to 3,000k including ones bought on the cheap in 2011) it’s catastrophic for BTC. The best scenario for BTC is that SN came and appeared, created the money machine, and was never heard from again. Like a Devine spirit. That’s what’s always been troubling about BTC…this SN guy is out there somewhere.

  • by karaterobot on 11/13/21, 4:46 PM

  • by defcon on 11/13/21, 5:36 PM

    The fact that Craig paid for bitcoin.org and reported Bitcoin in his taxes in 2009 is pretty telling, especially the early correspondence verified by multiple parties. I think at this point there is no question that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. He has signed messages with blocks 1-9 and there has been a ton of Satoshi era BTC moving in the past month. Him signing or making transactions as himself would invalidate the fact that these BTC are controlled within trusts. He himself may not actually have the private keys to sign, and that doesn't prove anything in and of itself.

  • by 79Haines on 11/13/21, 6:00 PM

    Oops autocorrect typo…When can the trusts move anything? Let’s say he wins, when do the trusts move something? I think everyone just wants to see some coins period to finally resolve this matter. Will coins move period or is this just a big charade? For BSV to survive and for more people not to jump BSV ship, they have to move. Craig is always so cryptic in his messages and seems to make a lot of noise around things that don’t really matter as much as this key point.

  • by bigaloysius on 11/14/21, 5:20 AM

    The real creator of bitcoin died 7 years ago. There will never be definitive proof it was him, but those of us who knew him knew that it was him, and that’s enough for us.

  • by 79Haines on 11/13/21, 5:56 PM

    When can the trusts move anything? Let’s say he wins, when don’t he trusts move something. I think everyone just wants to see some coins period to finally resolve this matter.

  • by vzaliva on 11/13/21, 4:48 PM

    Anybody care to elaborate for the rest of us who do not have WJS subscription?

  • by Natsu on 11/13/21, 4:45 PM

    The blurb says that someone claimed that someone else has control over the 64B in bitcoins in a lawsuit. Is there any reason to actually believe them behind the paywall? Because people say wacky stuff in lawsuits all the time (see also: the Kraken) and it doesn't mean anything at all.