[clemensley]

I do not understand why everybody is hating the guy so much. Listen to what he sais. He does not want Bitcoin to be used for buying drugs and child pornography. He wants to use it to make companies more accountable towards their users and governments more accountable towards their constituents. What's so terrible about that?

Then there is his claim to be Satoshi. At this point, nobody knows if that is true or not. Yet everybody is acting as if they _knew_ he is a liar and a fraud. That seems to be the justification for hate. What happened to innocent until proven guilty?

My take is: I do not know if he is Satoshi or not. I also do not care. I listen to want he thinks about Bitcoin and I like what I hear.

[jnbiche]

There are very few situations in which a person who claims to be a previously anonymous individual could prove their bona fides without a shadow of a doubt.

And this is one of those situations. There are multiple ways that the real Satoshi could prove their identity, but somehow, Craig Wright has either lost of of them, or they're locked up in some strange escrow with a super-secret board of lawyers or some such nonsense.

Occam's Razor. If ever there was a good application of the principle, it's here.

Also, Craig Wright doesn't have the technical understanding to have written the Bitcoin implementation. Listen to him speak. If you're honest with yourself, and if you code, you'll realize that he's likely never written much running code at all, much less a full implementation of a complex cryptographic and network protocol.

But these are the kinds of guys who unfortunately make it past interviews on the strength of their "dazzle'em with bullshit" approach to interviewing, and that have caused the current situation where most of us have to spend months reviewing our DS and algorithms notes before new interviews.

[SkyMarshal]

>Also, Craig Wright doesn't have the technical understanding to have written the Bitcoin implementation. Listen to him speak. If you're honest with yourself, and if you code, you'll realize that he's likely never written much running code at all, much less a full implementation of a complex cryptographic and network protocol.

This is an important observation. Craig gives himself away every time he presents at a conference. His talks just throw up a bunch impressive technical jargon and graphics, but then completely fail to weave it all together into a coherent whole, leaving only a disjointed mess.

It fools people who aren't watching closely and thinking critically. But Satoshi Nakamoto being possibly one of the greatest connectors and integrators of disparate technical ideas in our time, Craig Wright he is not.

[Lucadg]

He's Satoshi but he lost the private key:)

[bdcravens]

> Yet everybody is acting as if they _knew_ he is a liar and a fraud

Most of his proof has been systematically proven to be forged or unverified.

> That seems to be the justification for hate.

You're confusing hate with lack of trust.

> What happened to innocent until proven guilty?

It's very much playing itself out in front of you. "Innocent" isn't the same thing as lack of accusation. In the court of public opinion: He's accused of making fraudulent claims. He defends himself. His arguments are shown to be invalid.

I'm sure Bernie Madoff had some good ideas and nice things to say.

[clemensley]

You are stating a popular opinion, but it's one that I do not share.

> Most of his proof has been systematically proven to be forged or unverified.

If someone fails to prove A that does not mean that (not A) is true

> You're confusing hate with lack of trust.

You are right, hate is a very strong word that I should not have used in this context.

> It's very much playing itself out in front of you. "Innocent" isn't the same thing as lack of accusation. In the court of public opinion: He's accused of making fraudulent claims. He defends himself. His arguments are shown to be invalid.

I'm really not that interested in what the court of public opinion thinks, I'm more interested in the truth. The truth is that I don't know if he is Satoshi or not, neither do you or anybody else here. Yet everybody is assuming that without question. The word fraud occurs 21 times in this threat, in almost all cases without qualification. I would expect more from the HN community.

[bdcravens]

Have you spent any amount of time reviewing the claims against his "proof"? We're talking about purchasing backdated companies(ie, the Tulip Trust), referencing products that didn't exist at the time they were allegedly used, sharing PDFs with obvious edits, etc.

Here's a good analysis of Craig's own testimony from last week and the inconsistencies:

https://blog.wizsec.jp/2019/07/kleiman-v-craig-wright-part-3...

> I'm more interested in the truth

The only way he is telling the truth is if an enormous number of claims is a massive conspiracy theory.

> The truth is that I don't know if he is Satoshi or not

You don't know I'm not Satoshi. I don't have to prove it:

> If someone fails to prove A that does not mean that (not A) is true

> I would expect more from the HN community.

True. We do have a habit of hero worship (ie Jobs, Musk, etc) so perhaps we should similarly believe Wright just because he said to.

[Kaveren]

you're very gullible to not take a side here. the idea that the same man responsible for something quite libertarian (pseudononymous distributed currency) would sue someone for saying he isn't satoshi in a court of law is insanity.

not to mention satoshi himself wished people wouldn't obsess over who he is, and rather think more about the larger team of people behind bitcoin's development, according to a post of his.

fraudulent proof is proof of fraud. you have to play mental mind games to believe there's a case for him being satoshi. all it takes is 30 seconds of basic logical thinking.

people who believe he could be satoshi are the reason the cryptocurrency community is so awful.

[drcode]

You enjoy his incoherent free association of tech terms every time he speaks? Or is it just that the rest of us can't appreciate his genious-level ideas?

[cocktailpeanuts]

it's actually that you can't appreciate his genius level ideas.

[BubRoss]

Which genius level idea specifically? I would love for someone to get technical here. The guy who claims to be Satoshi copied and pasted a hello world tutorial off the internet to show his C++ knowledge.

[bdcravens]

Someone posted a lesson he taught on distributed computing a few years ago - turns out the slides were all quoting Intel's Fortran docs (without crediting Intel per their copyright - kind of ironic)

[wickoff]

The controversy began with him using his wealth to sue random people on Twitter for claiming he was a fraud. Small accounts without much influence. He is not acting in good faith.

[bdcravens]

Not really his wealth. The wealth of his backer, Calvin Ayre (the guy who pled guilty for violating gambling laws)

[BubRoss]

Innocent until proven guilty is when the state is going to imprison you and dictate every moment of your life.

If I said I invented cold fusion, would you ask me to prove it first, or give me 300 million in venture capital?

[ajkjk]

Saying you don't know at this point is like saying "he is or he isn't, so there's a 50% chance". Yeah, he might be. But it's not even odds, that's for sure.

[chvid]

If it becomes widely acceptable that this man invented bitcoin then a big myth is gone and the bubble is even likelier to burst.

He is not particular good in public appearances but to claim that he is an obvious fraud and he possesses no technical knowledge is just wrong. Also he did convince a few very knowledgable technical people.