[adastra22]

Absolutely insane.

(1) It's not Peter Todd. Anyone who knows Peter Todd and/or was around in the early days, can clearly tell Satoshi and Peter are not the same person.

(2) No good comes from speculation over the identity of Satoshi. When someone living is named, their life becomes absolute hell and the security risk imposed on them is very real. When someone dead is proposed, that hellish experience is passed to their family and heirs.

(3) It's not Peter Todd.

[staplers]

It's incredibly dangerous of these "journalists". Putting targets on people's back as well as possibly being slander.

Any bitcoin oldheads know it's not Peter Todd based on tons of behavioral, timestamped, and logistical evidence. The actual leading candidate is Len Sassaman if you look objectively at the evidence.

[neilv]

> It's incredibly dangerous of these "journalists". Putting targets on people's back [...] The actual leading candidate is [named other individual/family target]

Am I misunderstanding something, or do you want to edit that?

[mepian]

That person is already dead, and already widely discussed (including here on HN a few days ago) as a candidate.

[adastra22]

The person being dead just means their surviving family and heirs are the target instead. It's irresponsible to finger anyone as Satoshi.

[benterix]

> The person being dead just means their surviving family and heirs are the target instead.

Which logically makes little sense TBH in this case in particular, but yeah thugs might not be particularly reasonable.

[monero-xmr]

It's definitely Hal Finney. The fact that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto lived a few minutes away from him, and Hal was a marathon runner who could have easily seen his mailbox, and also that Satoshi disappeared when Hal's ALS became overwhelming, is all the evidence you need.

[nullc]

Please don't accuse Hal of being Satoshi, these accusations have resulted in his family being threatened and extorted.

[adastra22]

It is definitely not Hal Finney. Hal’s wife has been through enough.

[paulpauper]

it's not any of them

[Mistletoe]

>HBO’s theory relies on a message from Peter Todd claiming to be the ‘world’s leading expert on how to sacrifice your bitcoins’

I just can't imagine the real Satoshi saying something this stupid.

[petertodd]

That quote actually comes from an early technical conversation I was having about proof-of-sacrifice. Specifically, a conversation lamenting the fact that we kept on inventing neat tricks faster than we could actually use them - by "world's leading expert" I was making fun of the fact that I was technically the world's leading expert in something relatively simple and obvious to Bitcoin experts... yet even I hadn't actually put the technique into practice in a production application.

If you freeze-frame the film at the right point and actually read the full conversation, this is obvious. I don't have it handy. But some people posted screenshots on Twitter (which HBO may have taken down via DMCA... they were getting video clips taken down too).

These days some stuff actually uses proof-of-sacrifice in production. The best example I think being Joinmarket: https://github.com/JoinMarket-Org/joinmarket-clientserver/bl...

[adastra22]

Also they didn't bother to ask Peter the story behind this? There is a story regarding an entirely different pot of coins.

[r721]

From CNN story:

>In a statement to CNN, Todd denied that the post was supposed to be written by Satoshi, calling it “a coincidence.”

>“I was simply pointing out a minor correction to what Satoshi wrote,” Todd told CNN in a statement. “Note that the bitcointalk forum has the ability to edit posts, so it doesn’t even make that much sense that Satoshi would follow up with another message rather than just editing the original to correct the mistake.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/08/investing/satoshi-nakamot...

[adastra22]

I was talking about the "expert on how to sacrifice your bitcoins" thing.

[r721]

Ah, I wasn't sure where the quote was from (it's not in the OP article?), so assumed it's from that Bitcointalk post. Apparently it's from some chat log:

>Hoback's theory relies on a chat log message written by Todd in which he claims to be the "world's leading expert on how to sacrifice your bitcoins ... I've done one such sacrifice and I did it by hand," Todd wrote.

>...

>"It's ludicrous," Todd told Hoback, also denying he's John Dillon. "This is going to be very funny when you put this into the documentary and a bunch of bitcoiners watch it."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/10/08/who-i...

[petertodd]

> No good comes from speculation over the identity of Satoshi. When someone living is named, their life becomes absolute hell and the security risk imposed on them is very real. When someone dead is proposed, that hellish experience is passed to their family and heirs.

Indeed.

Cullen should know better: his previous project was a documentary on the QAnon conspiracies, which have managed to get people hurt due to crazies looking for these conspiracies. Cullen's evidence is hopelessly coincidence based... exactly the kind of shoddy evidence that fuels conspiracies like QAnon.

Personally I suspect he made the accusation against me simply to create media interest. In particular, by making an accusation against someone who wasn't a leading contender, myself. I haven't seen the film yet myself. But friends of mine have, and said that other than the Satoshi nonsense it was a reasonable documentary about Bitcoin. Problem is, it's hard to build interest in that.

Anyway, hopefully this just blows over. But we'll see. I already took some precautions re: security just in case...

[benterix]

> I already took some precautions re: security just in case...

Shouldn't you be able to sue HBO for forcing you to take unnecessary expenses?

[midmagico]

The massive amount of additional logic and thought about Satoshi from OG'ers (e.g. |}ruid etc) that have come out in response to this terrible effort, IMO is partly the purpose of the doco.

[scarab92]

Just another reminder that journalists aren’t experts in any domain other than journalism.

Stop looking to them for credible analysis.

[tommiegannert]

Journalists are supposed to know that (since they are journalism experts,) and use domain experts for their analysis.

[alchemist1e9]

> No good comes from speculation over the identity of Satoshi.

As Bitcoin gains market value the issue of Satoshi’s coins is becoming more and more serious.

It’s not wildly understood yet but Bitcoin will go fully dark in the future, how to do this, especially with help of L2 systems, is well known in the deep technical circles.

I think all libertarian capitalists believe money should be private. However Satoshi will eventually be the wealthiest human to ever exist and if that wealth is 100% dark it raises some tricky issues.

[mvdtnz]

> No good comes from speculation over the identity of Satoshi. When someone living is named, their life becomes absolute hell and the security risk imposed on them is very real. When someone dead is proposed, that hellish experience is passed to their family and heirs.

Not a good reason. The person who developed bitcoin is responsible for billions (maybe trillions) of dollars of fraud and crime. They are responsible for a ludicrous amount of waste and carbon output. They should be held to account by the public.

[voltaireodactyl]

By this measure, one would be compelled to start with the banks. Which is not to say I’m opposed in theory, just that I hope such sentiments are applied equally.