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How Bitcoin's Not So Secret Satoshi Nakamoto Was Discovered (Hint: Phone Book)
Newsweek claims to have identified the mysterious creator of Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto - long believed to be a pseudonym - was hunted down through searches, conversations, and national archives: "It was only while scouring a database that contained the registration cards of naturalized U.S. citizens that a Satoshi Nakamoto turned up whose profile and background offered a potential match. But it was not until after ordering his records from the National Archives and conducting many more interviews that a cohesive picture began to take shape."
Some remain skeptical that Newsweek have found him but making such a bold claim is aggressive and comments from Bitcoin lead developer Gavin Anderson suggest this is the real Satoshi.
Newsweek explains how they found him:
There are several Satoshi Nakamotos living in North America and beyond - both dead and alive - including a Ralph Lauren menswear designer in New York and another who died in Honolulu in 2008, according to the Social Security Index's Death Master File. There's even one on LinkedIn who claims to have started Bitcoin and is based in Japan. But none of these profiles seem to fit other known details and few of the leads proved credible.
Of course, there is also the chance "Satoshi Nakamoto" is a pseudonym, but that raises the question why someone who wishes to remain anonymous would choose such a distinctive name.
It was only while scouring a database that contained the registration cards of naturalized U.S. citizens that a Satoshi Nakamoto turned up whose profile and background offered a potential match.
But it was not until after ordering his records from the National Archives and conducting many more interviews that a cohesive picture began to take shape.
We suspect people will be a little disappointed that he is not wearing a cape and looks conventionally like a standard Japanese tourist (who lives in Temple City, CA)...
Not even his family knew...
But Liberty Blitzkrieg's Mike Krieger is modestly skeptical - though has some interesting perspective:
...
At the end of the day, since no one can really prove the story right or wrong, it’s certainly possible the magazine merely agreed that it sounded plausible enough and decided it was worth the risk given the page views it would generate.
I tend to have decent intuition on these things, and as I was reading it, something appeared to be off. Perhaps it was the writer’s style, or perhaps just the strangeness of this guy’s personality, but it read a bizarrely to me. The way the guy calls the cops when she shows up to his door. Why would the person who created Bitcoin respond in that way? Also, while on the surface it might seem clever to use your real name in an attempt to remain anonymous, it isn’t really. Everyone trying to figure out who you are will start with searches of Satoshi Nakamoto no matter how stupid it seems.
The one thing that is causing many to speculate that this story is accurate, is the following tweet from Bitcoin core developer Gavin Andresen:
I'm disappointed Newsweek decided to dox the Nakamoto family, and regret talking to Leah.
— Gavin Andresen (@gavinandresen) March 6, 2014
This definitely reads as if Gavin is confirming the article, but it is still unclear to me whether Gavin himself knew Satoshi’s identity, or if he was just communicating with a digital person while working on Bitcoin.
From my perspective, something seems off in this article.
Nevertheless, here are some excerpts, come to your own conclusion:
Two police officers from the Temple City, Calif., sheriff’s department flank him, looking puzzled. “So, what is it you want to ask this man about?” one of them asks me. “He thinks if he talks to you he’s going to get into trouble.”
“I don’t think he’s in any trouble,” I say. “I would like to ask him about Bitcoin. This man is Satoshi Nakamoto.”
“What?” The police officer balks. “This is the guy who created Bitcoin? It looks like he’s living a pretty humble life.”
Tacitly acknowledging his role in the Bitcoin project, he looks down, staring at the pavement and categorically refuses to answer questions.
Ok, this is the first sentence that reads strangely. How did he acknowledge his role? By staring down? Not convincing.
I’d come here to try to find out more about Nakamoto and his humble life. It seemed ludicrous that the man credited with inventing Bitcoin – the world’s most wildly successful digital currency, with transactions of nearly $500 million a day at its peak – would retreat to Los Angeles’s San Bernardino foothills, hole up in the family home and leave his estimated $400 million of Bitcoin riches untouched. It seemed similarly implausible that Nakamoto’s first response to my knocking at his door would be to call the cops. Now face to face, with two police officers as witnesses, Nakamoto’s responses to my questions about Bitcoin were careful but revealing.
Not only does it seem implausible, it seems absurd to me. You are just asking for attention and to be outed by doing that.
Far from leading to a Tokyo-based whiz kid using the name “Satoshi Nakamoto” as a cipher or pseudonym (a story repeated by everyone from Bitcoin’s rabid fans to The New Yorker), the trail followed by Newsweek led to a 64-year-old Japanese-American man whose name really is Satoshi Nakamoto. 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.
Nakamoto ceased responding to emails I’d sent him immediately after I began asking about Bitcoin. This was in late February. Before that, I’d also asked about his professional background, for which there is very little to be found in the public record. I only received evasive answers.
When he asked about my background, I told him I’d be happy to elaborate over the phone and called him to introduce myself. When there was no response, I asked his oldest son, Eric Nakamoto, 31, to reach out and see whether his father would talk about Bitcoin. The message came back he would not. Attempts through other family members also failed.
After that, Nakamoto disregarded my requests to speak by phone and did not return calls. The day I arrived at his modest, single-family home in southern California, his silver Toyota Corolla CE was parked in the driveway but he didn’t answer the door.
“My brother is an asshole. What you don’t know about him is that he’s worked on classified stuff. His life was a complete blank for a while. You’re not going to be able to get to him. He’ll deny everything. He’ll never admit to starting Bitcoin.”
For nearly a year, Andresen corresponded with the founder of Bitcoin a few times a week, often putting in 40-hour weeks refining the Bitcoin code. Throughout their correspondence, Nakamoto’s evasiveness was his hallmark, Andresen says.
In fact, he never even heard Nakamoto’s voice, because the founder of Bitcoin would not communicate by phone. Their interactions, he says, always took place by “email or private message on the Bitcointalk forum,” where enthusiasts meet online.
So does Gavin’s tweet mean anything if he didn’t actually know the identity himself?
“He was the kind of person who, if you made an honest mistake, he might call you an idiot and never speak to you again,” Andresen says. “Back then, it was not clear that creating Bitcoin might be a legal thing to do. He went to great lengths to protect his anonymity.”
“I got the impression that Satoshi was really doing it for political reasons,” says Andresen, who gets paid in Bitcoins – along with a half-dozen other Bitcoin core developers working everywhere from Silicon Valley to Switzerland – by the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit working to standardize the currency.
He doesn’t like the system we have today and wanted a different one that would be more equal. He did not like the notion of banks and bankers getting wealthy just because they hold the keys,” says Andresen.
Communication with Bitcoin’s founder was becoming less frequent by early 2011. Nakamoto stopped posting changes to the Bitcoin code and ignored conversations on the Bitcoin forum.
Andresen was unprepared, however, for Satoshi Nakamoto’s reaction to an email exchange between them on April 26, 2011.
“I wish you wouldn’t keep talking about me as a mysterious shadowy figure,” Nakamoto wrote to Andresen. “The press just turns that into a pirate currency angle. Maybe instead make it about the open source project and give more credit to your dev contributors; it helps motivate them.”
Andresen responded: “Yeah, I’m not happy with the ‘wacky pirate money’ tone, either.”
Then he told Nakamoto he’d accepted an invitation to speak at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters. “I hope that by talking directly to them and, more importantly, listening to their questions/concerns, they will think of Bitcoin the way I do – as a just-plain-better, more efficient, less-subject-to-political-whims money,” he said. “Not as an all-powerful black-market tool that will be used by anarchists to overthrow the System.”
From that moment, Satoshi Nakamoto stopped responding to emails and dropped off the map.
Descended from Samurai and the son of a Buddhist priest, Nakamoto was born in July 1949 in the city of Beppu, Japan, where he was brought up poor in the Buddhist tradition by his mother, Akiko. In 1959, after a divorce and remarriage, she immigrated to California, taking her three sons with her. Now age 93, she lives with Nakamoto in Temple City.
Of course, none of this puts to rest the biggest question of all – the one that only Satoshi Nakamoto himself can answer: What has kept him from spending his hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin, which he reaped when he launched the currency years ago? According to his family both he – and they – could really use the money.
Full article here.
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Strange timing. But I guess there never is a good time
"Of course, none of this puts to rest the biggest question of all – the one that only Satoshi Nakamoto himself can answer: What has kept him from spending his hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin, which he reaped when he launched the currency years ago? According to his family both he – and they – could really use the money"
C'mon, it's not that complex. He was employed by "someone" to do the design work. If you are under contract to create something, the something belongs to the party that contracted you. Ya know, like the NSA for example. Didn't you know they contract out a good bit of work to companies and individuals. Snowden comes to mind as a recent example. So, those "hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin" funded the NSA, or some other acronym. Well done to fonestar and his fellow bitcultists. You don't suppose the NSA would have specified a tracking method to identify all those authority defying bitcoin traitor's (from the .gov perspective) do you? Oh no, they would never do anything like that. This is just too frickin hilarious!!!!
Or he lost his password.
I think we can leave it to the fact that this real satoshi did the papers, the proof of concept.
That it was developed and brought to the INTERNET as Beta-Ware and probably the same people that GAVIN is working for has the first 1M BTC's. I don't think that SATOSHI#1 even got close to 2007 Post Beta.
The normal assholes above complain that internet satoshi is differnent than the REAL one, ... well of course he is, because the REAL Satoshi is a math/cryptography guy, and the folks that did the internet and brought it online like GAVIN are hackers, and CULTISTS.
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The entire story is finished.
There were not even any surprises, if you knew how this stuff actually works.
In fact going back to Satoshi's PAPER#1 he said ..
"BITCOIN will work if over 51% of the people were honest that play"
They were even honest from day one, but SATOSHI never was involved in the INTERNET online community of crooks, whores, pimps, an fuckheads.
THANK YOU SATOSHI NAKAMOTO
Something that caught my eye from this article is when Gavin Andresen mentions the last correspondence between him and Satoshi Nakamoto. Once Andresen mentions his desire to speak with the CIA, Satoshi bails on the project.
When someone mentions anything about speaking with the CIA, they already have, or worse, they're apart of the CIA.
My take is that the real Satoshi Nakamoto realized this and accepted the fact that his original intention with the Bitcoin project had been compromised. From there on out (2011), Bitcoin has been a CIA project, and a rather successful one at that. This could explain why Satoshi hasn't converted his Bitcoins, its current form disgusts him and he would rather not have anything to do with it. This is atleast how I would imagine a man with such an ambitious dream of severely crippling the banking system
Please, all those people have been compromised by some acronym .gov dept.
Whether at the university or coporate level, they all get some form of .gov funded grant.
The money comes from somewhere and the biggest moneypot of all is D.C.
these two observations are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
"He is very wary of government interference in general," she says. "When I was little, there was a game we used to play. He would say, 'Pretend the government agencies are coming after you.' And I would hide in the closet."
sound familiar?
+1 have shared that intuition ever since reading his entries to the bitcoin forum. the wikileaks posts nailed it for me.
I have worked with SPOOKS and DEEP folks my entire life.
We say and never forget this.
"ANYBODY THAT TELLS YOU HE'S CIA IS EITHER A LIAR, OR A TRAITOR"
This is pounded into your head from the DAY you come in to the day you leave, and even to your death you cannot discuss.
Even Satoshi's wife didn't know who he worked for or what he did.
Enough Said.
Gavin is a ZIO- WHORE that is using the NSA technology to ROB the world on the BEHALF of ZIO-NEO-CON, just another way for assholes to feed their pensions and passions.
The Future Of Money: Gold, CIA And BitcoinBubble Chronicles. Mystery Solved: Meet Satoshi Nakamoto - The Face Behind Bitcoin
One mystery is solved: Satoshi Nakamoto is found and another one: when this bubble will be finally over will be found soon. Warren Buffet has discussed it recently and dismissed Bitcoin as a currency, as a store of value it is not working very well for the latest buyers from the last Fall. It will be more and more difficult "to find another fool" to buy it at a higher price after all recent news about Mt. Gox bankruptcy, millions of lost Bitcoins and crucial technical fault in Bitcoin architecture allowing it to happen. Constant attacks from the Central Banks around the world will only add to the pressure on FIAT alternative. There is no "Gold 2.0" - there is only one real Gold and not so much of it left now.
After these revelations about Satoshi Nakamoto pedigree and his long history of working on highly classified projects you can think for yourself from what point in time NSA has been really involved in this project and what will be the implications on Bitcoin crowd of "freedom fighters" with further investigation reports coming out. The destiny of Bitcoin speculators we can learn from the history.
The normal BTC PUMP&DUMP crowd are already saying "THIS CANNOT BE OUR GOD"...
REALITY always has terrible conflicts with those tha live in the GAMING world.
"AUTUMN" did find reality until she found death.
Karpeles didn't find reality until he escaped from JAPAN.
I doubt that any of these BTC whores here will ever change their paradigm... they don't live in the real world.
And we can't forget that Al Gore invented the Internet. History is exactly that...his-story.
If it was her-story it would be the Vagina Monologues without end.
i am stealing this from a friend - but 'why $50 bucks to see the vagina monologues when you can talk to my penis for free?'
Tylers,
and now a murderer?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101472256
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reo7WbibxaQ
A bitcoin evangelist
Newsweek propaganda media desperation
'Members Only' jacket. Nice choice.
Anybody know where I can buy some model trains with bitcoin?
Trying to figure out how this matters at all....
whether he is or isn't whom they claim, it matters quite a bit to the man and his family actually, but since it's much too much to expect anyone to give a shit about any other anonymous human being at this point in our civilization, your response is not surprising.
now, should you be holding any bitcoin and he is whom they claim, it might matter to you quite a bitload should he decide to dump his holdings enmasse on coinbase one night while the western world is asleep as a nice little fuck you to the rest of the bitcoin community.
So that's what fonestar looks like.....
Next they'll find Yoshi Watanabe! or even two of them.
I feel a lot better about bitcoin with this new info, if confirmed
The creator(s) of bitcoin went to enormous lengths to disguise their true identity('s). If somebody is trying to disguise their true identity the last thing they would be using is their REAL NAME.
Reddit/r/bitcoin has compiled some compelling evidence against this being the real satoshi. Particulary comparisons between his posts on the bitcointalk forum and posts/reviews linked to Dorian S. Nakamoto elsewhere on the internet.
Anybody claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto needs to sign a message using the PGP key used on forums in 2010. Or sign with any of his Bitcoin address keys. Failing that it is safe to ignore all claimants. Sure, Bitcoin is controversial as all heck but "the media" has really lost it. (I know, keen grasp of the obvious, there.. reinforcing what we all already knew).
"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he told her. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
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Let's take this at face value, he did this work in 1997, and 1992, and wrapped it up in 2007, and it was turned over to anonymous NSA/CIA contractors who did all the 'talking' on the internet.
There are many 'satoshis' POST 2007, but there was only ONE pre 2007.
We are all Satoshi,... how's that?
Gee, folks! We appear to be getting rather NASTY? How about a rational discussion about the merits (or lack thereof) regading Bitcoin.
Personally, I have avoided Bitcoin. Why? As a former physician and currently a software programmer (20+ years), I view ANYTHING in the "cloud" as suspect. I simply do not consider anything on the internet as "secure", regardless of how widely distributed it is.
Consequently, I have invested my "catastrophic emergency money" in GOLD, with a small percentage in SILVER - all of which I have in my possession.
My reasoning: If there is a total economic collapse, I think people will be SCRAMBLING simply to feed themselves. So, after I have managed to get further out into rural areas and am in search of food (gun in hand, of course), I figure that IF anyone wishes to exchange something of value from me for a bit of food from them, I think they are more likely to accept gold or silver than to accept a Bitcoin. That is, even the power grid is even still working ...
Of course, they might wish something more immediately useful than gold, such as ammunition or tools or whatever else I am carrying. And if not, well, that is when the guns will come into play ...
Silly fools, the real Satoshi is a composite cybernetic organism formed from small garden-gnome drone-hybrids known as Satoshikins.
They convene on a regular basis to form the Satoshimon at secret locations arranged by their 2nd cousin: ya, you know who.
"Far from leading to a Tokyo-based whiz kid using the name “Satoshi Nakamoto” as a cipher or pseudonym (a story repeated by everyone from Bitcoin’s rabid fans to The New Yorker), the trail followed by Newsweek led to a 64-year-old Japanese-American man whose name really is Satoshi Nakamoto. 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."
Wait, wut?
Are you really using foxnews.com as a news source? AP has just discredited the Newsweek article claiming the mans involvement in bitcoin.
Next they're going to tell us they found the Yeti.
GAVIN is a first class asshole running the WASH-DC lobby to legitimize BITCOIN for the ZIO-
Telling that ISRAEL has pretty muched banned BTC, yet the SINGAPORE/JAPAN shops where biz is shutdown by corpese all leads back to ISRAEL.
Just another tool to separate 'real money' from stupid people.
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Yep the entire BTC TEAM is dissapointed, just some ugly SO-CAL MIL contractor is behind the NSA work,... what the fuck did you expect to find? Nolte or Tom Cruise?
Look at GAVIN uglier than shit, but a BILLIONAIRE on paper.
Satoshi was probably told to wait a long time to cash out his BTC, after it got 'legitimized'
Note it was mainly the UK-TELEGRAPH that got this story going worldwide, they (GAVIN) could have shut it down if it was JUST Newspeak.
Let's remember that NewsWeek(SPEAK) has been a MSM-CIA rag forever.
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Bitcoin is bullshit, and everyone behind it is the normal ugly guy working in some cubicle in some shitty building putting in his time for his GOLDEN PENSION package, from the NSA/CIA. Pure GOLD.
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Funny you guy's always argue GOLD VS BITCOIN.
Remember the average PENSION that guy's like "SATOSHI" get are worth $10 MILLION USD, if you had to buy it as an ANNUITY.
SATOSHI don't need money, he is set for life, by fucking the USA public.
Someone just logged into Satoshi Nakamoto's account on the P2P foundation website within the last hour, denying that Dorian is Satoshi. This is quite probably Satoshi that logged in, and this is the first login in three years (since Satoshi disappeared.)
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profile/SatoshiNakamoto
I won't believe it until he signs with a known key. The account profile or even the website may have been hacked. Still interesting, though!
Everybody pretty much knows the ASSHOLES on the web calling themselves 'Satoshi' are on the GAVIN(CIA/MOSSAD) payroll,
This NSA guy in California is RETIRED.
Leave him alone, let him play with his trains.
Anybody want to bet he dies?
If he talks anymore... he's a dead man.
Satoshi speaks...
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source
We need to create a
Satoshi-1
Satiosh-2
...
Satoshi-N
So we which fucking Satoshi they re talking about.
Certainly GAVIN controls 'WHO' is the REAL Satoshi at this point, the man who wrote the orginal paper, shit they don't even read or respect what he wrote.
The Satoshi Clones on the INTERNET, are just PIMPS & WHORE that destroyed the Original "Classic" Bitcoin.
AP just interviewed the guy for two hours and they're saying Newsweek is full o'shit. Here he is denying his involvement with bitcoin and going for his free lunch. Who said no free lunches?
http://instagram.com/p/lNv9-_QaNF
BITCOIN DEATH "MIS-ADVENTURE" Corpse found "NEAR" her home, ... now wouldn't a suicider want to be somewhere safe and pleasant?
SINGAPORE (AP) -- The CEO of a virtual currency exchange was found dead near her home in Singapore.
A police spokesman said Thursday that initial investigations indicated there was no suspicion of "foul play" in the Feb. 26 death, meaning officers do not suspect murder.
The spokesman said police found 28-year-old Autumn Radtke, an American, lying motionless near the apartment tower where she lived.
Police have so far classified the death as "unnatural," which can mean an accident, or misadventure.
A few months ago a "gallium arsenide" expert in high frequency MIL chips died in Singapore, it was clearly murder, but as always they called it "SUICIDE".
Seems as if High-Flyers like to live in Singapore, ... but its also a place full of the world's most shady characters.
The cops don't fuck with the TRIAD or YAKUZA, ... they're buying time for their pensions, and if you follow the Trail to the MAFIA in ASIA, you are a dead man.
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Bitcoin was setup in ASIA to FUCK Asians, and the ASIAN MAFIA has sent the "DEATH FISH" package back to the WEST saying "WE DONT WANT ANY BITCOIN".
Hmmm. Somebody just moved 180,000 BTC (about $120 million) from addresses many people trace back to Mt.Gox. 143 million days destroyed is a new record. Fees for moving this amount of money: 0.0000
https://blockchain.info/tx/4ee89f7cf824a85ad5f11d52604ffdebe9f01302bcea8ddec0af450f9185ddf1
I guess Goldbugs can get Goxxed, too
MSM Chase Satoshi May be Dead
Man believed to be Bitcoin founder denies ties, leads reporters on car chase
The Globe and Mail - 3 hours ago A Japanese American man thought to be the reclusive multi-millionaire father of Bitcoin emerged from a modest Southern California home and denied involvement with the digital currency before leading reporters on a freeway car chase to the local ... AP Exclusive: Man said to create bitcoin denies it San Francisco Chronicle 'Yes, my name is Satoshi Nakamoto, but I did not found Bitcoin' Irish ExaminerBITCOIN NSA FATHER - THE Denial Non-Denials have Begun
Let's see, yesterday he "Said I dont' work on BITCOIN anymore", Today he denies saying that, but Newspeak says he did.
He could be in BIG problems with the NSA now for admitting, but then the work was released in the public, and thereby not classified.
"Howard Huges" Group is responsible for a lot of NSA work and CIA in aviation going back to day one for CIA/NSA.
No doubt, this boy is real, but if he doesn't want to lose his pension he must deny, and forget about BTC, that's all in the hands of his Employers, HUGHES Aircraft.
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Nakamoto was credited by Bitcoin's chief scientist, Gavin Andresen, in working out the first codes behind the currency.
A man of few words who refused to discuss anything beyond the currency or even communicate outside of email, Nakamoto was described by his brother in the Newsweek article as "fickle and has very weird hobbies," including a penchant for model trains.
Japanese-born Nakamoto displayed an unusual aptitude for math as a child. He immigrated with his mother to California in 1959. He worked for defense and electronics company Hughes Aircraft, but never discussed work because much of it was classified, according to Newsweek interviews with several friends and relatives.
"He's very focused and eclectic in his way of thinking. Smart, intelligent, mathematics, engineering, computers. You name it, he can do it," Newsweek quoted Arthur Nakamoto, his younger brother, as saying.
Ur troll