Study Suggests Link Between Dread Pirate Roberts and Satoshi Nakamoto 172
wabrandsma writes "Two Israeli computer scientists say they may have uncovered a puzzling financial link between Ross William Ulbricht, the recently arrested operator of the Internet black market known as the Silk Road, and the secretive inventor of bitcoin, the anonymous online currency, used to make Silk Road purchases."
The interesting question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A link between DPR and an early Bitcoiner (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless if there was an official link, it is probably true that Bitcoin really took off when illegal/quasi-legal enterprises like Silk Road started using them. That's not to say Silk Road created Bitcoin or that all Bitcoin commerce is illegal, just that it would never have grown to real prominence without it.
Re:Correct Me If I'm Wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, I don't know the origin of Man's control of fire, nor who first did it, but I,m still quite happy to use it for keeping warm and smelting.
Re:A link between DPR and an early Bitcoiner (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the more interesting part is the fact that we have some decent mathematicians (in this case Adi Shamir among others) are setting about pulling the entire bitcoin transaction graph and doing some serious data-mining on it. The reported result sounds like a mildly interesting result that happened to pop up in the first pass.
Given the advanced tools available these days for graph mining (largely developed for social network analysis among other things) I suspect some rather more interesting results may start coming out soon. What may seem hard to track on an individual basis may fall somewhat more easily to powerful analysis tools that get to make use of the big picture. I bet there's some interesting info on cliques and exchanges that could be teased out by serious researchers with some decent compute power at their disposal. Pseudonymity may be even weaker than you might think.
And so the FUD begins (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is yet another attempt at spreading FUD around bitcoin for it is not a government regulated currency.
FTA:
"Although the authors state that they cannot prove that that account belongs to the person who created the bitcoin currency, it is widely believed that the first accounts belong to a person who identifies himself as “Satoshi Nakamoto,” but who has remained anonymous and has not been publicly heard from since 2010."
Weak and suggestive... but a perfect opportunity for the powers that be to try to stop Bitcoin from becoming a success.
Obviously these people have not understood that the the true value of Bitcoin lies not in it's function as a currency but in the validation mathematics of the blockchain that wrestles validation control out of the hands of the few and creates a distributed validation system...
The powers that be have much to gain from this FUD
Re:A link between DPR and an early Bitcoiner (Score:3, Insightful)
However it is a pretty sure sign that the US government is working on generating a publicly acceptable reason to launch an all out attack on bitcoin. Now might well be the opportune time to cash in those bitcoins before an NSA/CIA/SS (secret service) attack nullifies their value.
Re: The interesting question (Score:4, Insightful)
Just for shits and giggles, what if DPR and Satoshi were indeed in cahoots at the beginning, with DPR having the balls and skills to build a huge black market and Satoshi providing him with the means to make it work?
Have you read the details of how DPR got caught? Satoshi may be some kind of genius, but if Ross Ulbricht really is DPR then he definitely does not have the skills to run any kind of criminal enterprise. As for balls, stupidity can convince a person to do all kinds of things.
Re: The interesting question (Score:5, Insightful)
Satoshi effectively anticipated all kinds of attacks on bitcoin. Ulbricht co-lo'ed Silk Road in San Franscisco (USA).
'nuff said.
Re:Weasel Words: (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the US government will probably try to find a way to do just that. If they can allege a link between Satoshi and DPR-or-Ulbrich, that gives them a better excuse to try to pry information out of anybody involved with Bitcoin, either through legal process in the US or through possibly-illegal wiretapping overseas.
Re:A link between DPR and an early Bitcoiner (Score:3, Insightful)
>it is a scam
Nope.
>Once the governments shut down
And how are they going to do that? It's decentralised, and there are hundreds of clones (LTC for example).
>the illegal transactions
In some jurisdictions. Other jurisdictions rule these transactions are completely legal. If the buyer, the seller, and the marketplace are in a jurisdiction where their actions are legal, what right does the government of another sovereign body have to stop these transactions?
Bitcoin does matter. It may not matter to you, but it matters. It won't bring down the US dollar, but it matters.
Take your moronic FUD elsewhere please.