[WalterBright]

My money (er, bitcoin) is on Hal Finney. I knew Hal from occupying the dorm room next to mine at Caltech. Being Satoshi is just the kind of elaborate prank Hal would have loved. Besides, I've never met anyone as smart as Hal, and I've met a lot of smart people.

In his last interview (when he could no longer speak) he was asked if he was Satoshi, and he just grinned.

As for where the missing bitcoins are, my bitcoin is placed on the wallet just being thrown out with an old computer, discarded on a floppy disk, etc.

[killerstorm]

Please take a look at Bitcoin 0.1 code and at Hal Finney RPOW code.

Hal Finney's RPOW - professional UNIX-style C code, with code organized into client/server/common, clearly separated functions, etc.

Bitcoin 0.1: Win32 GUI C++ code, no separation between core and GUI. No CLI, no RPC API, only Windows GUI. No directories, just a bunch of files.

Do you think Hal Finney would unlearn everything he knew about code organization to develop his Magnum Opus? Something which should become world currency, runs only on Windows and cannot be automated?

[xwolfi]

It's like people always imagine aliens would appear in the middle of NYC.

Maybe Satoshi is a South African student in Glasgow, who moved back with his family to Germany and is shaking his head at BTC's evolution now that he grew up beyond "bruh banks bad" ?

He did an overly inefficient distributed linked list, which is replicated thousands of times by smaller projects to yield exactly the same value (the "bruh banks bad" value)

[rtrdea]

Banks are bad

[xwolfi]

Banks are like tigers: they eat gazelles and they sleep under the sun.

I mean, banks are just banks, what's bad maybe is people expecting them to do more than store your wealth for a fee ?

[perseusmandate]

Why do you think Hal would have been Satoshi but then also been the first developer using his real name?

[shawnz]

Perhaps he didn't really care to maintain the anonymity, but still wanted plausible deniability over the ownership of his fortune

[WalterBright]

A prank. Just think, a Japanese pseudonym that used british spelling. Hal loved a good prank. I also don't recall him being prideful in the way of ensuring he received credit for things.

[mantap]

This is well trodden ground but the genesis block message plus the distinctly British style of his writing convinces me that Satoshi has some connection with the UK.

[WalterBright]

The British style is simply using the words flat, maths, etc. I wouldn't underestimate Hal's ability to do such an easy misdirection. I've only spent a few days in Britain before starting to talk like that.

Using word frequency analysis to determine authorship goes back at least to the 1970s.

[nanagojo]

But, in his announcement he spelt "decentralized". Which isn't the British way.

[mantap]

Actually this is a common misconception. BrE allows either -ise or -ize, whereas AmE only permits -ize. The -ize spelling in BrE is called "oxford spelling" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling

[londons_explore]

When I write code or here on HN, I try to use Americanisms... But when writing longer form or official things, I use British English.

I doubt I'm the only one.

[nodesocket]

I thought that Hal denied being Satoshi in his final days?

[WalterBright]

My recollection of his last interview is he didn't respond other than grinning.

[DINKDINK]

Would you please either cite the source for your recollection or retract it? Hal had always denied being bitcoin's author:

   "he confirmed that he had corresponded with Bitcoin's creator, but denied any connection to the invention of Bitcoin"[1]

Hal's family has had to endure threats of violence because people surmise they have control over millions of bitcoins. To fuel that speculation puts a very large, very violent target on their back. They deserve more respect -- especially because of the selfless contributions Hal made to cryptography and the cypherpunk movement.

[1] >In the mean time, I emailed Finney a few times. When I didn't hear back--he's been mostly absent from the Internet as his paralysis deepens--I called his wife, Fran, who now works as Finney's full-time caregiver. She explained her husband's medical situation, and patiently relayed my questions to him. Using his eyebrows and eye movements, as she described to me over the phone, he confirmed that he had corresponded with Bitcoin's creator, but denied any connection to the invention of Bitcoin or the Dorian Nakamoto Newsweek had named, just as he would when I visited a week later. "For all Hal knew, Satoshi Nakamoto could have been next door, or he could have been in Japan," Fran said.

source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/03/25/satosh...