Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
by
death_wish
on 27/06/2022, 18:22:55 UTC
If you were Satoshi, what would be the benefit of claiming that in public (think it through at least twice before replying)? When someone gives a reasonable answer to that question it might be worth at least put their claims to test, which is pretty simple, just move Satoshi's stash of BTC, end of story.

If by “Satoshi’s stash of BTC”, you mean some huge amount, then you are referring to the so-called “Patoshi” coins.  Nobody knows if those are Satoshi’s; I tend to think not.  (Why would Satoshi himself use mining software that behaved differently than the Bitcoin software he published?)  It can’t be proved either way, unless Satoshi or Patoshi steps forward.

The threshold test for anyone who claims to be Satoshi is authentication with a digital signature from one of Satoshi’s known keys:  His PGP key, or the key for one of the Bitcoin addresses definitively known to be Satoshi’s.  Not moving coins that may or may not be Satoshi’s, and that may coincidentally move while some random scammer claims they did it.

By “authentication”, I mean signing a message with substance similar to this:

Code:
2022-06-26: I, [name of claimant], am Satoshi Nakamoto.

I don’t ask someone’s motives before demanding that.  If the claimant refuses (as Craig Wright has), then his motives are obvious:  He is an imposter.



To illustrate the dangers of relying on faulty assumptions about the ownership of early coins:

[...] under oath Craig wright provided a list of the bitcoin holdings he claims he mined as satoshi... thousands of early addresses. ... and as soon as the list was published the owner(s) of 145 of the addresses, controlling 7250 BTC, signed a message saying those addresses didn't belong to Wright and that Wright was a fraud.

IIRC, those coins have not been moved.  Their owner(s) evidently follow the news, and still have the keys.

The content of the signed message, which you should verify for yourself (see above link):

Quote
"Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud. He doesn't have the keys used to sign this message.

The Lightning Network is a significant achievement. However, we need to continue work on improving on-chain capacity.

Unfortunately, the solution is not to just change a constant in the code or to allow powerful participants to force out others.

We are all Satoshi"

https://www.blockchain.com/it/btc/address/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa

For a signature, or to “move his stash” as you said?  The Genesis coinbase itself can’t be moved; it is not sent to that address, but rather, in P2PK to a public key that people convert to that P2PKH address as an anachronism.

I would be very interested in seeing a signature.  The public key for the sender/change in this P2PK tx is another good candidate, IMO:
https://blockstream.info/tx/f4184fc596403b9d638783cf57adfe4c75c605f6356fbc91338530e9831e9e16?expand

As a general note, I would suggest that Satoshi should avoid revealing the public keys of any of his early P2PKH addresses for which the public keys have not been revealed.  If he wants to claim his identity, then I suggest that he should sign with keys that are already revealed—so that he can prove in zero knowledge that he can sign with keys that have never been revealed.  As a precaution, this permanently preserves his ability to authenticate his identity after a potential Quantum Computing Apocalypse.  (Off the top of my head, I don’t know of any strongly-evidenced Satoshi P2PKH addresses for which public keys have never been revealed.)

The smart thing to do, the thing that every well-informed cypherpunk would expect from the real Satoshi, is for Satoshi to re-introduce himself in a message signed with this key:

https://bitcointalk.org/Satoshi_Nakamoto.asc
Code:
pub   dsa1024/0x18C09E865EC948A1 2008-10-30 [SC]
      Key fingerprint = DE4E FCA3 E1AB 9E41 CE96  CECB 18C0 9E86 5EC9 48A1
uid                   [  full  ] Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>
sub   elg2048/0xCF1857E6D6AAA69F 2008-10-30 [E]

DSA1024 is weak by today’s standards—not “breakable”, but it lacks security margin.  Those who are extremely cautious may perhaps worry about what alphabet-soup agencies may be able to do with it.  Nonetheless, I am talking about a threshold question.  If you can sign with this key, then I take you seriously—I start to think that you are probably Satoshi.

If you don’t present upfront a message signed with Satoshi’s PGP key and/or known wallet keys, then bugger off.  I have no time to waste on liars.