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Comment by ElijahLynn | Hacker News Reader

How did Martin Shkreli figure that out?

It's not an original idea. It was popularized a few years ago by Evan Ratliff, author of a book about Paul Le Roux, 'The Mastermind'

Convenient for the author to discover the link to Le Roux. Then talk about it on podcasts while promoting his book, and have articles written about him.

All Shkreli does is promote himself to get eyes on whatever he's doing next. You can't ignore the incentives. It's difficult to prove who Satoshi is or is not. Craig Wright made a succesful career out of it.

Also, Shkreli has been critical of Bitcoin. Picking Le Roux, a criminal, as Satoshi helps to paint Bitcoin in a bad light.

Thanks for sharing that important context and perspective.

Also, my question means: How did he figure out how to decrypt that hash into the plain text message?

Someone gave him the signature to verify the hash.

He explains it during this stream here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjE4dEX2z9E

You can just watch the first 10-ish minutes to get the gist.

He gets the same push back he's getting here. Still confidently says "Paul Le Roux is Satoshi."

I'm watching the video and from where I started Martin is talking to the person who gave him this info and he is reading these very comments and the comments on his blog post and being very skeptical and also thinks it is fake now too. Very good watch, and I like the non-attachment to the specific outcome Martin has towards all of this. He is looking at this objectively.

The question is where did he get the signature from?

Someone gave him the signature to verify the hash.

He explains it during this stream here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjE4dEX2z9E

Someone else suggested he could have bought the signature. It wouldn't surprise me.

Ratliff in the book said a lot of people suggested this to him, and he never found any evidence of it.

someone told him . likely someone who knows hal

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