Skip to main content

The New Satoshi Text I

Prevailing bitcoin logo


Those of us who care about the identity of the mysterious fellow, or combine, known as Satoshi Nakamoto have had something new to talk about in recent days.

For those who don't care, you may be excused.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, here are the basics in one graf: From October 2008 to December 2010 a person or persons calling himself/themselves Satoshi Nakamoto developed bitcoin, authored a paper explaining it to the world, and engaged in discussions about it with a (then small) circle of interested parties. This was the start of something big. Bitcoin gave rise to a slew of other cryptos, and the underlying tech, the blockchain, has found and is still finding uses far beyond the issue of cryptocurrency use or value. Some people believe that the creation of Bitcoin was and is as big a deal as, say, the creation of the worldwide web.

So who is he? And might he be planning a comeback in some form? Or has the comeback itself already happened and fizzled (in December 2015)? More on that possibility in Part II.

For now, the news is that there is a new text to puzzle over. A website, the Nakamotofamilyfoundation.org has appeared, and offers a new excerpt from what is said to be a forthcoming book, or two volume set, by THE Satoshi. It purports to tell the true origin story of bitcoin.

So: is it real or a fake?

Probably a fake. The English idioms have shifted from British to American, there are typos that the original Satoshi (who was scrupulous in such matters) would surely have deterged before showing the text to the world, etc.

What is curious is the intensity of the reaction. Assuming that it is a fake, it is an amusing something to talk about, something that helps get one's mind off of an orange and sociopathic American Pres and the other things one might be obsessing about these days. But the reaction has been along the lines of "it's a fake, and THAT is atrocious -- how dare anyone pretend to be SN!!!"

Well, they dare because they dare. It isn't all that daring and it's been done before without untoward consequence (once, most amusingly, by a Japanese man who actually IS named Satoshi Nakamoto but who turned out not to be THE Satoshi Nakamoto.)

A writer at bitcoin.com says: "The trouble with analysing the work of supposed Satoshis is that it simply encourages more copycats, like fixating on school shooters."  THAT is the kind of overwrought reaction I'm talking about folks. School shooters? Really?

Related thoughts, and some quotes from the new probably-fake text, (which is itself the product of an interesting mind) tomorrow.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...
9 comments
Read more

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...
17 comments
Read more

Recent Controversies Involving Nassim Taleb, Part I

I've written about Nassim Taleb on earlier occasions in this blog. I'll let you do the search yourself, dear reader, for the full background. The short answer to the question "who is Taleb?" is this: he is a 57 year old man born in Lebanon, educated in France, who has been both a hedge fund manager and a derivatives trader. He retired from active participation from the financial world sometime between 2004 and 2006, and has been a full-time writer and provocateur ever since. Taleb's writings for the general public began where one might expect -- in the field where he had made his money -- and he explained certain financial issues to a broad audiences in a very dramatic non-technical way. Since then, he has widened has fields of study, writing about just about everything, applying the intellectual tools he honed in that earlier work. As you might have gather from the above, I respect Taleb, though I have sometimes been critical of him when my own writing ab...
4 comments
Read more