[Cryptography] Proving a Negative (was MAybe he's Adam Back, maybe not)

[Nico Williams]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2026 at 01:10:28PM -0700, Jon Callas wrote:
> I have an anecdote. Maybe you've heard it before, apologies if you
> have.
> 
> [...]
> 
> And therefore I ask, what kind of idiot is Satoshi and doesn't have a
> stash of bitcoins?

Maybe not that much of an idiot, since bitcoin is pseudonymous and the
"heavyset gentlemen" will find users of wallets of interest quickly, and
if those users are in countries beyond the reach of the heavyset
gentlemen then they will have other leverage to ultimately identify
those users.

Those early wallets that presumably belong to Satoshi might simply be as
good as non-existent.

Since we're doing anecdotes anyways, here's one you might find
interesting.

Some years ago my bank wrote me a letter demanding that I register my
company as a money services business (MSB).  The letter was devoid of
detail.  I called them, but they couldn't tell me anything about why
they thought my company might be an MSB.  Thinking for a bit it occurred
to me that my company's name had "crypto" in it therefore they might
have thought it's a cryptocurrency-related business!  I called them up
again but they could not confirm or deny that hypothesis.  Still, it had
been in the news around then that Treasury had sent a memo to banks to
have them identify MSBs, so I was certain my hunch was right.  I wrote
them a letter telling them what auditing they could do of all payments
in and out of the relevant accounts to convince themselves that mine was
not an MSB.  I never heard from them again, and I didn't register as an
MSB either.

I can picture a bank employee given the task of finding unregistered
MSBs doing a "grep" for "crypto" in an Excel spreadsheet and presto, I
fell in their dragnet.  I bet that had very few false positives though,
so sure, I laugh at that, but looking for companies with "crypto" in
their names was almost certainly a legit low-hanging fruit exercise.

Nico
--