Bitcoin Inventor Satoshi Nakamoto Outed By Newsweek 390
DoctorBit writes "According to today's Newsweek article, Satoshi Nakamoto is ... Satoshi Nakamoto — a 64-year-old Japanese-American former defense contractor living with his mother in a modest Temple City, California suburban home. According to the article, 'He is someone with a penchant for collecting model trains and a career shrouded in secrecy, having done classified work for major corporations and the U.S. military.' and 'Nakamoto's family describe him as extremely intelligent, moody and obsessively private, a man of few words who screens his phone calls, anonymizes his emails and, for most of his life, has been preoccupied with the two things for which Bitcoin has now become known: money and secrecy.' The article quotes him as responding when asked about bitcoin, 'I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it, ... It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection.' I imagine that he will now have to move and hire round-the-clock security for his own protection."
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Horrible Journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, they put this guys life in danger. Shame on them.
Hiding in plain sight. (Score:4, Insightful)
Kudos to him for not ever trying to get into the limelight about this.
Not sure what repercussions this will have for him and his family as persons, but it's kind of nice to see this sort of stuff can still happen :)
Guess he got taught well by the diverse companies insisting on secrecy!
Conspiracy nuts are going to love this one! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's now public that he's sitting on nearly half a billion dollars somewhere.
Setec Astronomy (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess the Privacy Act doesn't apply to individuals.
Gun + BC client = $1,000,000,000 (Score:5, Insightful)
Hope he takes the necessary precautions, though. . . Crypto-currencies are awesome. He deserves to spend the rest of his days in peace (For a crypto-genius, he could have picked a better pseudonym, though . .
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor Guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Horrible Journalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, they put this guys life in danger. Shame on them.
These are 'journalists', in the dreadful contemporary sense. If they thought that 'quiet, eccentric, mathematician brutally murdered in suspected cyber-revenge' would have an ROI greater than the legal exposure, they'd probably kill him themselves just to be first to the body...
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Protection from what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because if I can get him alone in a room I can get all of that money with no proof I have it. With banks involved it gets much more difficult to get away with stealing $500 million.
You've have to liquidate it and engage in some pretty serious money laundering through the banks to actually make use of the bitcoins in any meaningful way. Furthermore even if he does have 800K bitcoins he doesn't have $500M. To convert that many bitcoins to dollars would crash the market. When you hold that large a percentage of a market you can't sell without moving the market. The price would plummet if any significant amount was sold so while we can't tell exactly what it is worth you can be sure it is a LOT less than $500M.
Re:What impresses & baffles me (Score:4, Insightful)
What I find impressive and baffling is how people assign value to things that have no value for any purpose other than a means of exchange
I thought you were going to make some pithy remark that the U.S. dollar is little different from Bitcoin in that regard, but perhaps you haven't realizede that yet.
Re:Protection? (Score:4, Insightful)
If I punch him enough times, will a flood of shiny coins spew from his unconscious body?
Possibly. [xkcd.com]
Why is this Article Beign Taken Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no actual concrete evidence of any of the author's claims, just tons of speculation. Yet it's being treated like it's undeniably true.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
When Soros spends money on campaigns it's bad.
When Koch spends money on campaigns it's good.
Re:What impresses & baffles me (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not true at all.
The dollar has value. It has government backing, it has protection for consumers, it is globally recognized, and pretty stable.
That is more valuable then gold.
Re:Obvious Hoax (Score:4, Insightful)
Are we really supposed to believe that a Police Officer would know such geek trivia?
I have a friend who takes no interest in geek stuff, but he raised the topic with me last time I saw him. The Mt Gox incident made the national news. So yes, it's perfectly feasible a police officer had heard of them.
Re:Gun + BC client = $1,000,000,000 (Score:4, Insightful)
-Crypto-currencies can still be awesome without "long term inherent stability" (are you sure you are a "geek?")
-You do realize that math covers everything in our universe and BEYOND. Accordingly, I would be careful about what constraints you put on it. . . as it is statistically more likely that your mind is just creating artificial constraints.
Irregardless, thanks for the links.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is, it can be tough to know which kind you've got until it's too late.
Re:"It's been turned over to other people" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical anti-Bitcoin bullshit.
Wikipedia: A pyramid scheme is an unsustainable business model that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public.
1) Where is the "promise" of payment or services that never gets fulfilled? Find a block and you get paid (in Bitcoin, sorry... a claim that Bitcoin isn't "real" doesn't hold water here).
2) Where is the "enrollment" of other people in the scheme. I mine, I've never recruited anyone into a "scheme".
3) Bitcoins have value. As a group people have assigned value to them. The fact I can go to an exchange and get money based on a bitcoin proves that. Just because the product is digital doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
If you think it's a scam I can respect that, but write something that says why you think it is a scam. Don't come out and yell buzzwords like '"pyramid scheme" and "ponzi scheme" without justifying how it fits in to the accepted definition of the term.
Re:"It's been turned over to other people" ? (Score:4, Insightful)
He means developers. He doesn't contribute to development of code in any way any more. Implementation flaws in the cryptography are someone else's problem.
I wasn't aware this was unethical... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was not aware it was inherently considered unethical journalism to uncover those who wish to remain anonymous. Peeling back anonymity can help shed light on the reasons somebody does what they did. Background, motiviations, current involvement, etc. are certainly newsworthy things to examine.
And why is his life in danger?
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about GP's experience, but any time I have explained anything to a reporter, it has come out printed as something completely twisted from it's original meaning. Case in point: told reporter "our technology has flown on Space Shuttle missions", printed in story: "Company Vice President says "their technology is going to the Moon!"" with the implication that the company stock is going to "rocket up" in value.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even better: Why was his privacy violated by Newsweek in the first place?
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
He's not sitting on anything but 800,000 internet fun bucks until he cashes them into real money.
I think you mean until he caches them into United States fun bucks..