Title pretty much says it all - I wrote a lot about crypto during 2017, and this was the first little piece I put together. Would love to hear your thoughts on the subject and/or any constructive criticism! I do have about 10 other pieces on varying subjects in the cryptosphere that I'd be glad to share if anyone is interested. Enjoy!
(please note this was written in 2017 and has not been edited since)
Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto?
In early 2009 a whitepaper emerged, posted in a cryptography newsletter by someone unknown to veterans of the community, someone claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto (4), (7). This whitepaper aimed to harness the power of cryptography by coupling it with new technology called the blockchain in order to create a trustless, decentralized form of electronic currency… and it really worked.
You’d likely have been called crazy if you predicted that in less than 10 years the price of this currency would soar to over $20,000… but you’d have been right. It also might have seemed unlikely for you to claim that an open source project, run by no central authority, single person, or group, could stay on track and true to its purpose, but you’d have been right again. All of this was no coincidence – it took an incredible amount of restraint, foresight, and you guessed it – secrecy.
There were many who helped along the way, instrumental to the development of Bitcoin, but it all started with one man or group working under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. This movement didn’t quite come out of the blue – rather, it was a continuation of ideas birthed in the early 90’s by a group called the Cypherpunks, an anarchistic and exclusive bunch who dreamed of a world without government interference. This exclusivity is the single biggest clue as to the true identity(ies) of Satoshi Nakamoto. With that in mind, let’s delve a little deeper into the Cypherpunk movement.
Cypherpunks
Things began with a monthly meeting held in the Bay Area, jokingly self-proclaimed as the “cypherpunks”, a combination of the words cipher and cyberpunk. It eventually evolved into a mailing list, but never broke a couple thousand subscriptions, remaining relatively small. “At its peak, it was a very active forum with technical discussion ranging over mathematics, cryptography, computer science, political and philosophical discussion, personal arguments and attacks, etc., with some spam thrown in” (1). With a focus on personal privacy and staying off the grid, they continued onward with this sentiment. Eric Hughes summarized their movement in his Cypherpunk’s Manifesto, saying that, "privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. ... We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy ... We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any...Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and...we're going to write it." (6).
The list of key players in the initial group of Cypherpunks is relatively short, but with some names you may recognize and some ideals that will define some easily-drawn parallels. Many of these characters had their own incarnation of what would become Bitcoin, like Nick Szabo, creator of Bit Gold (a mechanism he designed for a decentralized cryptocurrency that never came to fruition). There was also Wei Dai, creator of the first scarcity-based digital currency B-Money, who is credited in the original Bitcoin whitepaper, Adam Back, creator of Hashcash, and David Chaum, creator of another currency – digicash. Eric Hughes, aforementioned author of The Cypherpunk’s Manifesto and forefather of the movement was another staple of their cause. Other notable figures include Tim May and John Gilmore of the Cypherpunk mailing list, early Bitcoin adopter and developer of PGP Hal Finney, Phil Zimmerman, creator of PGP, and finally, perhaps the biggest name today: Julian Assange of WikiLeaks (1), (2), (3), (5). All of these great minds came together with a shared interest in using technology to give power to the people.
It is important to note that there were very few people who had knowledge of these small projects from the 1990’s, like Hashcash, Bit Gold, and B-Money, because the themes and even the sources Satoshi cited in his whitepaper point directly to this small group in California (4). Interestingly (but unsurprisingly) every person on this list has systematically denied being Satoshi himself, but the anonymity of Mr. Nakamoto is not only intentional, but painstaking. This concept of a faceless creator lends itself to the notion of Bitcoin as an independent entity, free of any single school of thought and completely decentralized by nature. The way the Bitcoin ecosystem is designed makes the designer essentially irrelevant. It is truly a remarkable orchestration, but it doesn’t satiate the curiosity of those of us who are so intrigued by its beauty.
The Usual Suspects
With this small pool of intelligent Cypherpunks in mind, let’s take a look at the circumstantial evidence available to us and go from there. To try and narrow Satoshi Nakamoto’s origins geographically, a Swiss coder and active Bitcoin community member named Stefan Thomas “graphed the timestamps for each of Nakamoto’s 500-plus bitcoin forum posts; the resulting chart showed a steep decline to almost no posts” between the hours of 9pm and 3am WST. “Because this pattern held true even on Saturdays and Sundays, it suggested that the lull was occurring when Nakamoto was asleep, rather than at work.” (7), which wouldn’t really lend itself to Nakamoto being a Californian with a conventional sleep schedule, since post frequency increases outward from 3am. In Great Britain these hours seem a little more sensible however, and would put his period of inactivity between the hours of 5am and 11am GMT.
Other evidence also points to Nakamoto being from the U.K. In addition to using common British/Canadian spellings like “colour” and “optimise” (7) he used terms like “bloody difficult” (7). Another clue: embedded in the source code is “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”, (4) referring to the London Times. Naturally, this implies he was at least a regular reader of the publication.
Now, let’s take a moment to compare our two biggest clues. First, it is unlikely that anyone outside of the initial Cryptosphere created Bitcoin, given their knowledge of past projects. Secondly there seems to be a decent amount of evidence pointing to Commonwealth origin. Beyond that, we have very little to go off of. Conjecture can only get you so far, but what if Satoshi Nakamoto is exactly who he says he is?
“I Am Satoshi Nakamoto”
In early 2016, an Australian man named Craig Steven Wright shocked the world of cryptocurrency when he publicly claimed that he was Nakamoto himself, and that he had the original PGP key to prove it (8). An author and computer scientist by trade, it seemed remotely plausible, but things took an interesting turn once his ”…claim was corroborated by Bitcoin foundation founding director Jon Matonis in a blog post, stating "For cryptographic proof in my presence, Craig signed and verified a message using the private key from block #1 newly-generated coins and from block #9 newly-generated coins (the first transaction to Hal Finney)” (8). This was big – as much as his proclamation was considered a hoax beforehand, there was no way to fake access to Nakamoto’s GPG key. It was the ultimate proof.
...Astoundingly, after catapulting himself into the spotlight, Craig Wright responded with the following: “I believed that I could do this. I believed that I could put the years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot. When the rumours began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this. I know that this weakness will cause great damage to those that have supported me, and particularly to Jon Matonis and Gavin Anderson. I can only hope that their honour and credibility is not irreparably tainted by my actions. They were not deceived, but I know that the world will never believe that now. I can only say I’m sorry. And goodbye.” After this, Gavin Anderson retracted his claim that Wright was the true Nakamoto, and the mystery only felt compounded.
There have been others who fit the bill, but all have denied their involvement. There were Finnish economic sociologist Dr. Vili Lehdonvirta, and Irish cryptography student Michael Clear, both inquiried by New Yorker columnist Joshua Davis. Each of the original Cypher punks have been accused, with Nick Szabo even being matched using stylometric analysis – but all have declined. Hal Finney, recipient of the very first bitcoin transaction was approached with the big question in the late stages of his debilitating fight with ALS. He reportedly seemed amused, but declined his further involvement.
“The art of hiding is making people think you are someone else.” - Charlie Shrem
In Conclusion
The fact of the matter is that we will likely never know. In the infamous words of Charlie Shrem, “The art of hiding is making people think you are someone else” (9). As I stated before, the beauty of Bitcoin is that its architecture makes its creator of no importance. Satoshi Nakamoto went to great lengths to ensure the discretion of his identity, and this has had a profound impact on the evolution of Bitcoin. Owing to this fact, it has truly manifested itself as the currency of the people, uncontrolled by any government, entity, or single man’s idea. That’s the thing about Bitcoin – what’s truly fascinating is not from where it came, but to where it will go.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk
- https://www.theverge.com/2013/3/7/4036040/cypherpunks-julian-assange-wikileaks-encryption-surveillance-dystopia
- https://www.coindesk.com/the-rise-of-the-cypherpunks/
- https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann
- https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html
- https://www.wired.com/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Steven_Wright
- https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-bitcoin-arrests/update-3-prominent-bitcoin-entrepreneur-charged-with-money-laundering-idUSL2N0L10YG20140127
No comments:
Post a Comment