[Cryptography] With Moderator Hat on -- A Note From a Possible Satoshi

[Jon Callas]

Everyone,

A person claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto has been sending us mods notes, claiming to be Satoshi and wanting to reveal themselves as Satoshi.

I'm sure you also know about the HBO movie about a possible real-world identity for Satoshi. I know there's also another movie about finding Satoshi that's in process of a release. There's a lot of buzz, therefore, and we are also coming up on the 16th anniversary of of the Bitcoin white paper being published on this very list.

Our new Satoshi-claimant wants to write something here. They're not claiming some real-world identity, just taking up the mantle as Satoshi behind an email address.

I don't think this person is Satoshi. They have been sending emails with the apparent email address of <_satoshi at gmx.com> as well as <satoshin at gmx.com> and the inconsistency has not escaped me.

There are a number of ways that Real Satoshi could claim the mantle. For example, signing something with the OpenPGP key we know Satoshi used. Satoshi could make some bitcoin transfer -- even to some conjured wallet and back -- that would show control of bitcoins that we know Satoshi has.

And yet there's the issue of what if Satoshi doesn't have those? It wouldn't be the first time someone lost a PGP key. It wouldn't be the first time someone lost a wallet with a lot of bitcoins in it either. (And my opinion of why the Satoshi Tranche has not been touched is that the key was lost long ago.)

So there's the interesting question of if one were Satoshi, how would one demonstrate it, after losing keys? Our Satoshi-claimant tried to do convince me. I remain unconvinced. I told the claimant that a good way to start would even be saying something like, "Uh, Jon, this is Satoshi, and I lost everything." I think that Satoshi knows me, and while I certainly have my opinions on who Satoshi might be, I'm really convinced that Satoshi knows me well enough that we could do some human-oriented zero-knowledge proof where Satoshi could convince me they're Satoshi.

What if I'm wrong, though? This isn't even out of the question given my opinions on Satoshi's real-world identity. Satoshi could be someone I don't know and the discussion could be awkward, especially for a Satoshi who wants to reveal themselves as Satoshi, with the nym still intact.

So after going back and forth with this claimant, I'm letting their email through. This is not an endorsement of the claim, it's even an anti-endorsement. Ages ago at an IETF that happened to take place on April 1, I did a humorous presentation (well, it was to me, and I got laughs) that had among new features the anti-identity certification, with web-of-trust rules for how people could get together and revoke someone's identity. Consider this my anti-identity statement; I believe this is not Satoshi.

Please discuss as you like. Or not. Ignore it if you like. Please follow our usual rules. Be respectful; we can express strong opinions politely, in any direction. We mods will cut off discussion when it looks like it's no longer productive. Let us know if you're done with it, yourself. I don't want to stop an interesting discussion, and at the same time, *interesting* is one of the things we want here, and this is interesting in its own unique way.

I also want to note for the record that the *next* person who wants to claim to be Satoshi here better have better game; precedent isn't worth much here. We don't want to deal with everyone who wants to be Satoshi.

	Jon