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Topic: Is Satoshi's real identity Trinity grad student Michael Clear? - page 2. (Read 6495 times)

sr. member
Activity: 338
Merit: 253
Man, SORRY I thought Ireland was in the UK. Geez. I changed the text to say "UK AND IRELAND". When are you guys going to capture the rest of your island, anyway? Just kidding.

I posted this because if there were any previous posts on this important New Yorker article they have been deleted so it needs to be reposted. For example, if you search on "New Yorker" only this one post comes up. All the old posts are gone. (Hmm, now I wonder who might be deleting posts and why....)

In any case the article is pretty interesting beyond the Satoshi identity research. For example, he describes visiting a bitcoin miner in Kentucky. Worth a read.
legendary
Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
This was already discussed in depth on this forum, but it now seems missing along with a bunch of other threads. Odd!

legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1000
Charlie 'Van Bitcoin' Shrem
At the Crypto 2011 conference, the key annual scholarly meeting on cryptology, there were nine attendees from the UK.

I would just like to point out that Ireland is NOT part of the United Kingdom. An important distinction, as hundreds of people in this country lost their lives fighting for independence from our British overlords in the the Irish war of Independence. I don't think anyone in the USA would take too kindly to someone dismissing the achievements of George Washington et al by referring to the USA a British colony.

Regarding the identity of Satoshi and the speculation on his potential Irish nationality, I wouldn't be surprised. We have some of the greatest thinkers in the world here in our Emerald Isle. And since we have known what it is like to be oppressed for over 800 years, we have a strong social distaste for unjustified authority. So it wouldn't surprise me to find out that a technology as economically and politically subversive as bitcoin was conceived of here, considering the abuses of power these institutions have gotten away with over the past few decades.

Whether or not it is the case remains to be seen. I personally doubt it, as the evidence is lacking.

Thank you for pointing that out, it's annoying to see when writers get these simple facts wrong. Kudos
sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 250
Just wondering, is he from North Ireland?

Judging by his surname, and the fact that he studied at a university in Dublin, it's unlikely.
sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 250
At the Crypto 2011 conference, the key annual scholarly meeting on cryptology, there were nine attendees from the UK.

I would just like to point out that Ireland is NOT part of the United Kingdom. An important distinction, as hundreds of people in this country lost their lives fighting for independence from our British overlords in the the Irish war of Independence. I don't think anyone in the USA would take too kindly to someone dismissing the achievements of George Washington et al by referring to the USA a British colony.

Regarding the identity of Satoshi and the speculation on his potential Irish nationality, I wouldn't be surprised. We have some of the greatest thinkers in the world here in our Emerald Isle. And since we have known what it is like to be oppressed for over 800 years, we have a strong social distaste for unjustified authority. So it wouldn't surprise me to find out that a technology as economically and politically subversive as bitcoin was conceived of here, considering the abuses of power these institutions have gotten away with over the past few decades.

Whether or not it is the case remains to be seen. I personally doubt it, as the evidence is lacking.
sr. member
Activity: 338
Merit: 253
Joshua Davis, a writer for the New Yorker, published an article therein on October 10th called "The Crypto-Currency" all about Bitcoin. You can get a copy from Cryptome (http://cryptome.org/0005/bitcoin-who.pdf). In the article he describes his efforts to identify Satoshi and came up with Michael Clear, a graduate student at Trinity in Dublin. Clear is reputed to be a brilliant cryptologist with advanced programming skills and an interest in economics and peer-to-peer networks who briefly worked at a bank in Ireland. According to Davis, Clear said he "likes to keep a low profile." Clear has neither confirmed or denied he is Satoshi. He has made a brief online statement regarding the article on his university home page:

http://www.scss.tcd.ie/~clearm/bitcoin.html

Notice there is no firm denial.

Davis focused on Clear because the writings from Satoshi show two things: use of English rather than American language and an advanced understanding of cryptology including knowledge of the latest academic results, an insider so to speak. At the Crypto 2011 conference, the key annual scholarly meeting on cryptology, there were nine attendees from the UK and Ireland. According to Davis, six of them were dismissive of bitcoin and two others had no programming capability. That left one person: 23-year-old Michael Clear.

According to the article Clear has published a paper on peer-to-peer networks and was the top student in CS at Trinity in 2008.

We have a new hero.



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