Bitcoin has been around for more than a decade now, but Satoshi's identity remains a mystery.
Many are still looking to find the truth, but only a handful of people think of the consequences this solution could bring.
Many are still looking to find the truth, but only a handful of people think of the consequences this solution could bring.
THE CREATION OF BITCOIN brought upon various opinions, initially mostly negative especially as the darknet quickly became the narrative of its existence and real purpose. Before the usage of Bitcoin for criminal activity, only few knew about it and Bitcointalk, the main forum for the king of cryptocurrencies, has proven not to be pro-crimes along its journey of existence.
Ross Ulbricht launched The Silk Road back in 2011, when Bitcoin was still known by only few. Using Tor for anonymity and Bitcoin for payments, Ulbricht was able to create a completely censor-free and anonymous website. However, that was only under the ideal usage of it. In fact, Ulbricht, known under the name of "Dread Pirate Roberts", had probably made a few mistakes that cost his privacy, his site and finally - his freedom.
Although The Silk Road did allow criminal activity to happen under an anonymous identity, according to FBI, a CAPTCHA service leaked the real IP under which the uncensored website was running. This, together with a lot of research done by intel agencies, led to the finding of Ulbricht as the owner of it.
However, the finding of Ross Ulbricht by the FBI has sparked controversies as some started to believe that FBI has actually found Ulbricht's identity illegally unlike they made the story look. According to WIRED, something is missing from the story of finding his identity:
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As bureau agent Christopher Tarbell describes it, he and another agent discovered the Silk Road's IP address in June of 2013. According to Tarbell's somewhat cryptic account, the two agents entered "miscellaneous" data into its login page and found that its CAPTCHA—the garbled collection of letters and numbers used to filter out spam bots—was loading from an address not connected to any Tor "node," (...) the CAPTCHA data was coming directly from a data center in Iceland, the true location of the server hosting the Silk Road.
But that account of the discovery alone doesn't add up, says Runa Sandvik (...). She says the Silk Road's CAPTCHA was hosted on the same server as the rest of the Silk Road. And that would mean all of it was accessible only through Tor's network of obfuscating bounced connections. If some element of the site were accessible through a direct connection, that would represent a significant flaw in Tor itself (...). "The way [the FBI] describe how they found the real IP address doesn’t make sense to anyone who knows a lot about Tor and how web application security works," Sandvik says. "There's definitely something missing here."
(...)
Just a month earlier, Cubrilovic points out, a Reddit user had posted that he or she had found a vulnerability that would allow a similar attack in the Silk Road's login page. And that early May date matches up with a footnote in the FBI's statement that mentions an earlier "leak" of the Silk Road's IP address.
But that account of the discovery alone doesn't add up, says Runa Sandvik (...). She says the Silk Road's CAPTCHA was hosted on the same server as the rest of the Silk Road. And that would mean all of it was accessible only through Tor's network of obfuscating bounced connections. If some element of the site were accessible through a direct connection, that would represent a significant flaw in Tor itself (...). "The way [the FBI] describe how they found the real IP address doesn’t make sense to anyone who knows a lot about Tor and how web application security works," Sandvik says. "There's definitely something missing here."
(...)
Just a month earlier, Cubrilovic points out, a Reddit user had posted that he or she had found a vulnerability that would allow a similar attack in the Silk Road's login page. And that early May date matches up with a footnote in the FBI's statement that mentions an earlier "leak" of the Silk Road's IP address.
Does this mean that the FBI has illegally found who Ulbricht is? Anyways, the thing is that, although The Silk Road did indeed help illicit activity operate, I do believe that its existence helped Bitcoin grow up faster and gave it a big spark of hope overall. In all honesty, many of us have actually started researching Bitcoin and Tor starting from the moment we heard of either its insane price growth, the darknet or both.
SATOSHI'S DISAPPEARANCE remains a mystery. Although he mostly operated on clearnet websites to communicate unlike Ulbricht, intel agencies are acting as if they don't have a single idea about who the real identity of Bitcoin's creator truly is. Considering the FBI, NSA and CIA have been able to unlock some great mysteries out there, is it really possible that Satoshi has always operated under the 100% ideal conditions so that not even the best agency out there could get to 'crack the code'?
Controversy about the FBI is not only linked to The Silk Road's case. Only last year did we hear about a former FBI lawyer being accused of altering documents in order to initiate surveillance in Trump's 2016 campaign. According to PJ Media,
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Horowitz reportedly found that the FBI employee who modified the FISA document falsely stated that he had “documentation to back up a claim he had made in discussions with the Justice Department about the factual basis” for the FISA warrant application, the Post reported. Then, the FBI employee allegedly “altered an email” to substantiate his inaccurate version of events. The employee has since been forced out of the bureau.
(...)
Newly released text messages involving text messages between Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page revealed that Page (...) had apparently made “edits” to the so-called “302” witness report in the case(...). Page told Strzok on February 10, 2017 that she “gave my edits to Bill to put on your desk.”
(...)
Newly released text messages involving text messages between Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page revealed that Page (...) had apparently made “edits” to the so-called “302” witness report in the case(...). Page told Strzok on February 10, 2017 that she “gave my edits to Bill to put on your desk.”
It obviously doesn't stop here. There are lots of conspriacies surrounding events such as UFOs, JFK's death, Hitler's alleged suicide, 9/11 and many other large-scale events that have not been yet declassified or, if they have, appear to have potentially critical missing information without which the dots cannot be connected. This is conspiracy now, but we have to ask ourselves: once (if ever) someone comes up and proves to be the real Satoshi, how and why do we trust him? What if the so-called "real Satoshi" is a false prophet of Bitcoin, willing to destroy it?
CRAIG WRIGHT is the perfect anti-example of Satoshi. If he was the real one, all he would've proved is that unlike many thought, Satoshi was a liar full of bullshit and, apparently, full of himself. Wright tried forging documents, falsifying e-mails and recently even f***ed up by declaring he owns the address containing Mt. Gox's hacked balances. But what else did he try to do?
Wright launched Bitcoin SV, as in "Satoshi's Vision", as a currency that supposedly follows the real Satoshi's vision unlike what we consider today to be Bitcoin. However, his bullshit fell just as short as everything he said in Court, on social media and everywhere else. Bitcoin SV is only his attempt to take over something that was never his. In fact, he even tried to call Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash creators basically thieves. Had his bullshit ever had a little bit of substance, Bitcoin might have been taken down long time ago already as we all would've thought the real Satoshi has returned.
Therefore, Wright is just an attempt of Thomas Edison, who has been accused of stealing inventions and claiming credits for something he did not really invent. Edison is, interestingly, part of a conspiracy: the fact that he might've been implicated in the mysterious case of the father of cinema who also misteriously disappeared not too long after his invention. However, unlike Satoshi's mystery, we do know who Louis Le Prince was before he vanished. According to Historic Mysteries,
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Edison, who couldn’t have been less of a stranger to patent lawsuits – as he regularly incited them himself, including and especially inventions that he obviously came second to creating, but wanted credit for anyways – fought hard. It was the rich and already established company man versus family of a nobody inventor who never lived to see his legacy; I’ll let you take a minute to consider who might have won.
This one sounds very similar to what would've most likely happened if Craig's words were taken for granted. In fact, there is a number of people who do take them for granted and support his coin. But taking a look back at the court history of Craig, it makes me wonder.. considering he still hasn't been punished for all the lies he made up in the court and for the forged papers, could he actually be working with an intel agency and under its protection in an attempt to change the course of Bitcoin's history?
TRUSTING SOMEONE TO BE SATOSHI COULD MEAN THE END OF BTC AS WE KNOW IT. If someone ever proves to be the real Satoshi with real evidence, it could prove to be a big danger for Bitcoin's future. Craig Wright has said multiple times that the actual course Satoshi wanted to take was creating a regulation-friendly coin. By the creation of Bitcoin SV, I would understand that Craig goes against the fundamental ideas of Bitcoin while allegedly following them.
As a lot of people are looking up to the real Satoshi, if anyone ever proves to be him (false prophet of Bitcoin or not), that entity will have a lot of influence over a lot of people.
It is quite well-known that intel has technology +50 years ahead of us. One example is quantum computers - if they became the norm tomorrow, too much of the Internet would become vulnerable to it, possibly including Bitcoin itself. But they own it and they could use it to change or prove things that aren't really true.
2020 is only one decade past Bitcoin's creation. The timeframe is still short enough for us to look for the truth and there are too many witnesses for someone to come up and change history.. but if we ever trust someone for being the real Satoshi, even with the most proof possible, we might fall into someone's trap. Digital means some things could be altered and forged well enough to create a false timeline of false events, unless verifiable.
Obviously, there is a significant difference between being against the law and being against laws that allow abuse. Most of the regulations we see being pushed every now and then go against privacy and against what Satoshi really wanted to create. Trading Bitcoin ETFs? Using third-parties and having to trust them when using a currency that was created to be trustless? Having the governments/companies hold the keys of our own coins when the keys should be our own..
Most of the authorities have shown they do not support Bitcoin by launching regulations and laws that supposedly go for Bitcoin's growth when, in fact, they really go against it. Take it as "attempting to kill the initial Bitcoin by making it non-trustless" - or changing the fundamental ideas of Bitcoin in a slow and steady way. One example I always mention is Know-Your-Customer, the regulation that allowed and still allows a lot of companies to legally seize and steal their own customers' money.
Trusting someone for being the real Satoshi might mean unknowingly trusting an entity who might want to destroy what the initial project meant to turn Bitcoin into and allowing a big change that may end up to be the death of Bitcoin as we know it.