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Comment by tavavex | Hacker News Reader

Can I just ask why people are so fixated on revealing Satoshi's identity? This article phrases it as some pure, innocent and almost academic pursuit, driven by curiosity and the mystique itself. But the amount of effort spent on trying to find Satoshi is immense. He must be the internet's most doxxed person by now. Is it just because of his wealth? Is someone trying to exact revenge on him? Or is he wanted by the authorities of some country? Why is finding him so important?

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It's a silly topic to spend (waste) time on, but I can't help it, I just find it sort of fascinating.

It's a mystery where you have to try and put together different pieces of evidence, match things up, try and look for hidden connections - a certain type of human mind (mine, I guess) just finds that process rewarding.

I've gone down most of these rabbit holes and my 2c is it's one of these two people, not any of the most common candidates: Len Sassaman or Paul Le Roux.

Sassaman is dead and Le Roux is in federal prison in the US, which explains why the coins haven't moved

Le Roux was not in prison before 2020, it makes no sense to me that he was spending his time trafficking drugs when he was sitting on billions.

Of course at this point the only "sane" reasons for someone to not touch the wallet is that they are sitting on so much BTC anyway, they don't want to cause the price to drop, or the keys are lost (but the person is alive), or the person is dead.

If someone has access they can hire security for a few billion dollars and still have some change.

If we count "insane" reasons then of course there are quite a few more. Such as ideological motivations.

Your timeline is a bit off - he got arrested on 26 September 2012 (around the time Satoshi disappeared), and he became a DEA informant after his arrest which is why he didn't finally get sentenced for 8 years.

So at the time of his arrest (after which he was in federal custody and the DEA were monitoring all his use of electronic devices) Bitcoin had only been in existence for three and a half years.

The drug trafficking and Le Roux's various other criminal enterprises all started happened in the mid-late 2000s, before Bitcoin was worth anything

Thanks for the details! I assumed he had at least some access, control or leverage.

(But losing keys is very easy, especially if the feds take your devices and your means of buying new ones, and freely accessing potential backups.)

We'll never know but I honestly think it might be him, there's other evidence:

Commonwealth English speaker (grew up in Rhodesia/SA) - Sassaman was american and it would be odd for him to adopt British english as Satoshi

Known Windows user and there are supposedly similarities in the tech stack and code between early Bitcoin client versions and TrueCrypt which Le Roux is widely believed to have developed

Early Bitcoin client versions included poker game code for some reason - Le Roux is known to have been interested in this and at one point was considering opening an online casino

On the other hand, evidence against Le Roux and in favour of Sassaman:

The whitepaper has weird references that suggest the author was involved in cryptography academically in the Benelux countries. Le Roux did live in the Netherlands at one point but afaik wasn't involved in anything academic whereas Sassaman very much was

I'm curious about his life, in the same way I might read a biography or the Early Life section on a Wikipedia page.

Some people like mysteries.

So am I. I presume I can read if after he passes away, if I am still around. Otherwise I am content to respect people's wishes for anonymity and privacy, as there are plenty of other interesting things to learn about.

I agree. I'm interested, but think Satoshi should keep his anonymity.

I was articulating why someone might want to know, as tavavex asked.

What I'm saying is that the overall amount of effort being spent on this isn't very proportional to sheer curiosity. Curious people may go out of their way to do something difficult, but years-long research campaigns with a single person in the crosshair feel like a step too far. Not even the perpetrators of famous unsolved crimes receive this much scrutiny. I don't doubt there's many people in the mix who are just curious about this, like you are, but I feel like people who spend months of their lives on this could be trying to get at something bigger. Maybe hurting him or trying to profit off of the knowledge somehow, or even just becoming famous for being the person who found Satoshi Nakamoto.

> Not even the perpetrators of famous unsolved crimes receive this much scrutiny.

The zodiac killer still has an active subreddit! https://old.reddit.com/r/ZodiacKiller/

> Maybe hurting him or trying to profit off of the knowledge somehow, or even just becoming famous for being the person who found Satoshi Nakamoto.

Yeah, there's likely some pride/ego involved, and sadly trying to hurt the person most responsible for cryptocurrency.

> Can I just ask why people are so fixated on revealing Satoshi's identity?

Probably the same reason people remain interested in the identity of Jack the Ripper, despite over 130 years having passed.

See also, DB Cooper and who stole the FIFA World Cup.

Nothing wrong with a good mystery.

Those people are all criminals, though.

The point you raise is an amusing one; it will no doubt cause crypto-evangelists to have fits of the vapours.

There are some legitimate reasons. First one: a government-backed operation that can have even deeper conspiracies. The second most important one is Bitcoin's long-term stability. If people figure out who created it, they can also predict what kind of major crashes can happen, especially Satoshi's wallet with million+ bitcoins used one day.

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