Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Ha, I don't think this has any value as evidence, but it's kind of funny that in a comment on one of the eventually-postdated blog posts (originally April 2008), Nick explained that the mechanics of the bit gold market would be nonobvious to most people and therefore the idea could use a demonstration project, and asked, "Anybody want to help me code one up?"

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets.ht...




That's evidence against Satoshi=Szabo; IIRC, somewhere Satoshi says he started coding up the prototype in 2007, so if Szabo is suggesting someone write it in 2008...


If I saw strong evidence Szabo wrote some of Satoshi's words (and I haven't yet!), then maybe someone took him up in Apr 2008, they pretty quickly refined some things and got 0.1 out the door, Szabo contributed some text, and they changed the post date to after Bitcoin's release/threw in some British spellings/made incorrect claims about when work started [or the implementer really had started earlier, or something] to add noise for anyone trying to trace Satoshi back to actual people.

Still, that all kind of assumes there was 11-dimensional chess going on to conceal who worked on Bitcoin, and I think the reality was likely simpler.

However, that scenario would allow for some of Szabo's post-Bitcoin statements to be sincere even if he was involved: could be true that he hasn't audited the code and that he's not entirely sure if certain bit gold -> Bitcoin changes are features or bugs, since any refiner/implementer presumably had some independence and collaborators never agree on everything. And Szabo being involved is at least a saner notion than previous ones: we at least know he found proof-of-work e-gold interesting.

But I'm speaking without having dug deeply into what they both wrote, which would probably probably a prereq for developing useful priors. I don't think I know much here, and I certainly don't think the comment alone is evidence for Satoshi=Szabo (or Satoshi-involved-Szabo).


Or it could be intentional misdirection, as with "favour". Not that I'm particularly invested in Satoshi==Szabo, but if I were interested in deflecting suspicion, that would be one obvious-looking way to do it.


Another thought 'cause I can't stop myself: if Satoshi is a collaboration, anyone outing themselves as part of it is making it harder for others to keep their roles secret. So if Nick + friend(s) were Satoshi, you couldn't well expect him to talk about it.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: