Newsweek out on a wire with a Bitcoin blockbuster
Newsweek wanted a scoop for its relaunch cover story, and boy did it deliver: it uncovered the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of bitcoin. Who then promptly came out and denied everything. Which means that one of the two is wrong: either Nakamoto is lying through his teeth, or Newsweek has made what is probably the biggest and most embarrassing blunder in its 81-year history.
But before we try to work out what the answer is, it’s important to separate out the various different questions:
Is Dorian Nakamoto the inventor of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto?
Do we, and/or Newsweek, have enough evidence to conclude, with certainty, that Dorian Nakamoto is the inventor of bitcoin?
Is it reasonable to believe that Dorian Nakamoto is the inventor of bitcoin?
My tentative answers to the three questions are “we don’t know”; no; and yes.
One way to look at this problem is to try to calculate probabilities, and do some kind of Bayesian analysis of the question, given that either Dorian is Satoshi, or he isn’t. (To make matters even more complicated, Dorian’s given name is, actually, Satoshi. But you know what I mean.) But here’s the problem: if you believe either of the two possibilities, you have to believe in a reasonably long series of improbable propositions. Call it the Satoshi Paradox: the probability that Dorian is Satoshi would seem to be very small, and the the probability that Dorian is not Satoshi would seem to be just as small — and yet, somehow, when you add the two probabilities together, the total needs to come to something close to 100%.
The place to start is the Newsweek article, which brooks no doubt about the matter, and which is told using all the power of narrative journalism. The author, Leah McGrath Goodman, has constructed her 4,700-word article as a case for the prosecution, taking us with her on her quest for evidence and ultimately trying to persuade us that there can be no doubt: Dorian is Satoshi.
Goodman adduces lots of evidence, starting with the crazy coincidence of Satoshi’s name. Dorian’s name is Satoshi Nakamoto. He is an accomplished engineer and mathematician: “brilliant”, according to his brother. He was happy to correspond with Goodman until she asked him about bitcoin — at which point he stopped replying to emails and even called the cops on her. Dorian’s brother even predicted his response to Goodman’s article: “He’ll deny everything. He’ll never admit to starting Bitcoin.”
Goodman says that Dorian, “for most of his life, has been preoccupied with the two things for which Bitcoin has now become known: money and secrecy”. He’s a libertarian, whose daughter says that he is “very wary of the government, taxes and people in charge”. He’s 64, which would help explain slightly old-fashioned aspects of Satoshi, like his use of reverse Polish notation and his worrying about saving disk space. And then there’s the smoking gun — the quote that he gave to Goodman when she arrived at his doorstep.
This fits exactly with what we know about Satoshi: that he was deeply involved in bitcoin at the beginning, but has had basically nothing to do with it in recent years. It’s well short of an outright confession, of course — but if you add up all of the circumstantial evidence, it’s pretty hard to believe that everything is some bizarre coincidence. Goodman has presented a lot of pieces of the puzzle — and they fit elegantly together, at least at first glance.
On the other hand, even within the article there are signs that it’s not as clear cut as all that. There’s Goodman’s admission, in the article, that she “plainly needed to talk to Satoshi Nakamoto face to face” — something she never really did, except for a few quick words spoken in front of police officers while he was trying to make her go away. Goodman also quotes Gavin Andresen, the person most publicly associated with the development of bitcoin, as saying that even in the early days, Satoshi “went to great lengths to protect his anonymity”. Which hardly squares with the thesis that he was using his real name.
Then there are the duff notes in the piece. “This is the guy who created Bitcoin? It looks like he’s living a pretty humble life.” That, supposedly, is a verbatim quote from a Temple City cop: it’s possible that a cop uttered those words, but that doesn’t stop them from sounding like very bad expository dialogue.
Remember that the pseudonym theory was not a mere theory, up until yesterday — it was almost universally accepted as the truth. In terms of Bayesian priors, you need very strong evidence to be persuaded that “Satoshi Nakamoto” is not a pseudonym. And this argument doesn’t even come close.
There’s also the whole question of Satoshi’s English, where Goodman can be seen placing a very hard thumb on the scales. Dorian’s English is not good: you can see that in his Amazon reviews, or in the letter he sent about a proposed Los Angeles rail project: “good secruity system against usage of rail as a get away means from the low income generated theives/criminals from area of east LA et. al must be also put in place regardless of the rail passage chosen.”
That kind of language can be seen too in Dorian’s email correspondence with Goodman: “I do machining myself, manual lathe, mill, surface grinders.” Goodman uses this as evidence for her case: she characterizes Satoshi’s original bitcoin proposal as being “somewhat stiffly written”. She also says, reading the original bitcoin paper, that “the punctuation in the proposal is also consistent with how Dorian S. Nakamoto writes, with double spaces after periods and other format quirks.”
Newsweek wanted a scoop for its relaunch cover story, and boy did it deliver: it uncovered the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of bitcoin. Who then promptly came out and denied everything. Which means that one of the two is wrong: either Nakamoto is lying through his teeth, or Newsweek has made what is probably the biggest and most embarrassing blunder in its 81-year history.
But before we try to work out what the answer is, it’s important to separate out the various different questions:
Is Dorian Nakamoto the inventor of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto?
Do we, and/or Newsweek, have enough evidence to conclude, with certainty, that Dorian Nakamoto is the inventor of bitcoin?
Is it reasonable to believe that Dorian Nakamoto is the inventor of bitcoin?
My tentative answers to the three questions are “we don’t know”; no; and yes.
One way to look at this problem is to try to calculate probabilities, and do some kind of Bayesian analysis of the question, given that either Dorian is Satoshi, or he isn’t. (To make matters even more complicated, Dorian’s given name is, actually, Satoshi. But you know what I mean.) But here’s the problem: if you believe either of the two possibilities, you have to believe in a reasonably long series of improbable propositions. Call it the Satoshi Paradox: the probability that Dorian is Satoshi would seem to be very small, and the the probability that Dorian is not Satoshi would seem to be just as small — and yet, somehow, when you add the two probabilities together, the total needs to come to something close to 100%.
The place to start is the Newsweek article, which brooks no doubt about the matter, and which is told using all the power of narrative journalism. The author, Leah McGrath Goodman, has constructed her 4,700-word article as a case for the prosecution, taking us with her on her quest for evidence and ultimately trying to persuade us that there can be no doubt: Dorian is Satoshi.
Goodman adduces lots of evidence, starting with the crazy coincidence of Satoshi’s name. Dorian’s name is Satoshi Nakamoto. He is an accomplished engineer and mathematician: “brilliant”, according to his brother. He was happy to correspond with Goodman until she asked him about bitcoin — at which point he stopped replying to emails and even called the cops on her. Dorian’s brother even predicted his response to Goodman’s article: “He’ll deny everything. He’ll never admit to starting Bitcoin.”
Goodman says that Dorian, “for most of his life, has been preoccupied with the two things for which Bitcoin has now become known: money and secrecy”. He’s a libertarian, whose daughter says that he is “very wary of the government, taxes and people in charge”. He’s 64, which would help explain slightly old-fashioned aspects of Satoshi, like his use of reverse Polish notation and his worrying about saving disk space. And then there’s the smoking gun — the quote that he gave to Goodman when she arrived at his doorstep.
This fits exactly with what we know about Satoshi: that he was deeply involved in bitcoin at the beginning, but has had basically nothing to do with it in recent years. It’s well short of an outright confession, of course — but if you add up all of the circumstantial evidence, it’s pretty hard to believe that everything is some bizarre coincidence. Goodman has presented a lot of pieces of the puzzle — and they fit elegantly together, at least at first glance.
On the other hand, even within the article there are signs that it’s not as clear cut as all that. There’s Goodman’s admission, in the article, that she “plainly needed to talk to Satoshi Nakamoto face to face” — something she never really did, except for a few quick words spoken in front of police officers while he was trying to make her go away. Goodman also quotes Gavin Andresen, the person most publicly associated with the development of bitcoin, as saying that even in the early days, Satoshi “went to great lengths to protect his anonymity”. Which hardly squares with the thesis that he was using his real name.
Then there are the duff notes in the piece. “This is the guy who created Bitcoin? It looks like he’s living a pretty humble life.” That, supposedly, is a verbatim quote from a Temple City cop: it’s possible that a cop uttered those words, but that doesn’t stop them from sounding like very bad expository dialogue.
Remember that the pseudonym theory was not a mere theory, up until yesterday — it was almost universally accepted as the truth. In terms of Bayesian priors, you need very strong evidence to be persuaded that “Satoshi Nakamoto” is not a pseudonym. And this argument doesn’t even come close.
There’s also the whole question of Satoshi’s English, where Goodman can be seen placing a very hard thumb on the scales. Dorian’s English is not good: you can see that in his Amazon reviews, or in the letter he sent about a proposed Los Angeles rail project: “good secruity system against usage of rail as a get away means from the low income generated theives/criminals from area of east LA et. al must be also put in place regardless of the rail passage chosen.”
That kind of language can be seen too in Dorian’s email correspondence with Goodman: “I do machining myself, manual lathe, mill, surface grinders.” Goodman uses this as evidence for her case: she characterizes Satoshi’s original bitcoin proposal as being “somewhat stiffly written”. She also says, reading the original bitcoin paper, that “the punctuation in the proposal is also consistent with how Dorian S. Nakamoto writes, with double spaces after periods and other format quirks.”
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