Oddbean

Did you ever stop and *really* think about what it means to "do a Satoshi Nakamoto"? Context for my weird question: I have met many, many bitcoiners over the years. Many of them take a stab at keeping privacy by doing some combo of: not revealing name, not revealing location, not revealing face. Etc. So often, if I happen to meet them in person, they end up revealing the things that they were hiding online. Quite literally a mask came off (pre covid!) once we started drinking - a simple, funny anecdotal example of what I mean. Many complain about photos being taken, many focus on always using a pseudonym. I'm sure most people reading recognize these patterns of behaviour. I can see the purpose, up to a point, so this is not criticism. It's a little like me doing coinjoin "here and there" - you don't expect to defend yourself against a hyper powerful aggressor, only against a casual criminal looking for an easy score. But if you do want *real* defence against *strong* attackers, you have a huge problem. These half-measures will be useless, perhaps worse than that, if you get overconfident, because the determined investigator only needs *one* strand to pull on, and the measures I describe above, which are almost always rules only half-stuck to anyway, don't cut it, at all. Which brings me to my point: is it even possible to "go all the way"? Clearly it is; Satoshi Nakamoto is not the only person who's ever done it, but it's pretty damn rare at the very least. Imagine what it would mean. If you are engaged in a serious project, that takes let's say at least a year's worth of full time work, then you are going to do that for no reward. Not just, no money, people do that quite often when it comes to things they genuinely enjoy, but no recognition, no social context, not even "oh I won't bother you because I know you're busy with that project". Nobody will say that because nobody will know. Imagine doing a full, intense 8 hour day of work (more likely, split over many days) and knowing that there will *never* be a direct reward of any form, for that. And then doing it again, and again. What's more, you don't just "not get a reward". You have to do almost double the work, to ensure that at every step, every pushed commit or technical discussion, does not expose anything at the network trace level, or the language, vocabulary etc. Managing tricky pseudonym accounts, handling the headaches of Tor etc. I'm not trying to say it needs super-genius level tech skills, I'm trying to say it's a massive amount of effort. Could you do that? I daren't even ask the question of myself, because I'm almost sure it's a no. But to *imagine* where that kind of motivation would come from, that's what fascinates me.

And at which point do you decide to conceal this identity? I assume Satoshi was considering Bitcoin and discussing it with a close circle before the White Paper. Then they have to decide to stop or continue talking about it to avoid drawing suspicion. Or never talk about it in the first place. Pretty wild

You have a point, figuring out how to make that dividing line might be the hardest part. I think you see it in the Ross Ullbricht case, where he exposed an email address very early on, when he was asking a coding question, trying to build the website.

Yes. Did he just tootle off to Galt’s Gulch or what? How do you disentangle from the tentacles of the state so effectively? Was he/they such a visionary as to foresee the surveillance state so far in advance that he went rogue long before the necessity became imminent? We have been thinking of how to practically implement a doomsday plan. So many deets to consider.

All of the cypherpunks were aware of the oncoming surveillance state and worked to prevent it. Satoshi was likely lurking in that mailing list. And there were other groups before this, the history is really interesting. @Aaron van Wirdum did a great job describing all of the things leading to the creation of bitcoin in The Genesis Book

Absolutely without a doubt it’s wonderful Hence why I take off my Phoenix wings in public. #Satoshi understood that. https://image.nostr.build/5ada808f1b36cecec0a85d60e58937f37c1e77a5327f5d4c7854756c4a1ee908.jpg

If one speaks to some famous personalities, the loss of anonymity is the greatest loss, and irreplaceable, to them. I remember being a relative geeky nobody, and then married a very popular, cool guy, moved to his town and… instant microscope. The trade off is real.

Excellent points please read nostr:nevent1qqsz98ec75ktxje3zxwhzezntjxdqz542g6yajtk8jk9tqknsmm8l8qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzqe6msnl8tcsk4w28capcaegeefmh2dmdmuza4ha6vfut6qfwr4egqvzqqqqqqyzvv3g0

I think the half-measures, despite being overall ineffective against a strong attacker do serve to provide practice on what to do and lessons on what is needed to obtain privacy. And contrarily, they serve to humble you to the extraordinary difficulty of it.

Gigi fits the bill If the cap fits wear it Gigi is anonymous, covers his face, surely buys btc non kyc, self custody, cold storage the whole nine yards....but Is the celebrity of nostr 🤣🤣 Such a contradiction of ideals Like the guy wearing a hi-viz with camouflage trousers 👖 nostr:nevent1qqsz98ec75ktxje3zxwhzezntjxdqz542g6yajtk8jk9tqknsmm8l8qprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuumwdae8gtnnda3kjctvqgsxwkuyle67y94tj378gw8w2xw2wa6nwmwlqhddlwnz0z7sztsaw2qrqsqqqqqpr3wlw9

The anonymity overhead is multiple orders of magnitude higher in 2024 than it was in 2008. Hiding like rats under the floorboards is no longer an effective strategy. Human freedom is now dependent on cypherpunks becoming more powerful than the State.

I’ve often assumed that Satoshi would never have distributed the code in the first place w/o having at least 3 or 4 personally-controlled machines already running it in the emerging network. I don’t know this is the case, but it seems very sensible. If so, is that how Satoshi acquired those ~1million coins? If not - if that Satoshi block was a pure pre-mine - then isn’t it likely Satoshi acquired many coins just by being 3 or 4 or the first miners to legit mine Bitcoin? In which case, he/she/they likely were amply rewarded early on. For which I’d be delighted. Hopefully they didn’t sell when it hit $100.

No coins were premined; the newspaper headline in the genesis block serves the purpose of proving that. As to the oft-stated-as-fact 1 million, it's not a fact, it's a theory, one that was hotly debated when sergio lerner came up with it. People should be a bit more cautious about spreading it as fact, because of the danger it brings to whoever the real Satoshi is. But, people being people, it has spread everywhere.

Satoshi had to have been a capitalist, no socialistic free open source software dev can think of Bitcoin. It is highly likely that he mined a lot of blocks in those first 2 years. Besides it doesn't make sense to build a software and not run it yourself. He owns a lot of Bitcoin. I'm sure he mined several blocks after he disappeared. He is now enjoying his life spending his creation.

That fascinates me too @waxwing .. the mental toughness and discipline .. over a very long period .. to achieve that outcome which could never expect to be acknowledged by any respected peer or friend of Satoshi's Satoshi's act of disappearance was an incredible act and gift and a fundamental part of Bitcoin's wider (and unreproducable) story I hope wherever he/she/they is/are, that they managed to do a bit of anonymous mining later on and are safe, secure and joyful plebs everywhere, grateful 🧡

It's hard. I can't talk about my work in real life, and i can't talk about my life with the people i work with. I could get so much more done if i didn't try so hard to obfuscate everything i do. I don't think satoshi would've had to go to the lengths that we today have to go to, in order to retain privacy. I just finished a hackathon, and they wanted me to upload a youtube video showing my work: Oops, cant do that, sorry, it's totally impractical over TOR. Even still, it's worth it. In return for my effort i get the most perfect feeling of complete freedom to work on whatever i want to with no fear of persecution. I could publicly manage a bitcoin mixing service or a darknet market or a free speech discourse platform etc, and the worst that would happen is my web2 accounts might be taken down. If i ever feel like walking away from it all, it's as easy as deleting a few files.

Act of complete selflessness. Act for the sake of others, but also not only, for one’s own sake. Profoundly deep and worth questioning on altruistic philosophical grounds. Happy to ready more of your fascinating takes.

Paying taxes and watching your money inflate as the cost of everything go up, and being the last to get a pay raise is very similar as not getting a reward for your work, especially when all tje work you do is for the counterfeit class used to better enslave you are everyone else.

Agree, but do we really know that Satoshi's identity was strong against powerful attackers? He could be known by some government without him knowing it. He could also already be locked in a cage somewhere, or worse, without us knowing about it.

If they would advertise it, they would also let people know that there currently is no real privacy, which might get people working harder on privacy methods/tools. Maybe it's a stretch, but not totally implausible.