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Comment by doublextremevil

8 days ago

Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared. Adam is a well known supporter of small blocks, ultimately the "winning" side of the debate. They are not the same person.

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doublextremevil

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cloche  8 days ago

I haven't read the article yet but I remember this as well. IIRC Adam went the route of more towards a centralized group controlling Bitcoin's future during the BTC/BCH debates/fork. It seemed against what Satoshi would have pushed for. Plus Adam's group seemed like a catalyst for Gavin stepping back as a result of the political in-fighting and mud-slinging. It would be a huge surprise if Satoshi were Adam.

Personally, I think Satoshi was Hal Finney.

  • cloche  8 days ago

    Adding on now that I've read the article and this situation is covered:

    > The following year, in 2015, the Bitcoin community fractured over a proposal to increase Bitcoin’s block size. A faction led by two Bitcoin developers, Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn, wanted to make the blocks much bigger to accommodate more transactions. But this was controversial...

    > Mr. Back fiercely opposed increasing the block size. In a series of posts on the Bitcoin-dev list, he warned against Mr. Andresen and Mr. Hearn’s proposal in increasingly strident tones.

    > Then, out of the blue, Satoshi appeared on the list with an email that neatly dovetailed with Mr. Back’s position. It was the first time Satoshi had been heard from in more than four years, other than a five-word post the previous year denying a Newsweek article’s claim to have unmasked him.

    > Many in the Bitcoin community questioned the new email’s authenticity since another of Satoshi’s email accounts had been hacked. But Mr. Back argued that the email sounded real. In a series of tweets, he called Satoshi’s observations “spot on” and “consistent with Satoshi views IMO” and took to quoting from the email.

    I now realize that the Satoshi email was after Hal Finney's death so that changes my opinion.

    From OP:

    > Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared

    This isn't correct. In fact, the linked email in the article says the opposite https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/6EC9DDF352DC4838AE9B088AB37...

    • WatchDog  7 days ago

      >> Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared

      >> This isn't correct. In fact, the linked email in the article says the opposite

      Characterizing the arguments are big vs small blocks, seems wrong.

      There appeared to be broad agreement that the block size needed to be increased, however there were 4 competing proposed solutions(BIP 100, 101, 102, 103), and consensus on which approach to take could not be reached.

      Gavin decided to push ahead with BIP 101, and both Satoshi and Adam agreed that it was reckless to proceed without better consensus.

    • mike_hearn  7 days ago

      It helps to understand the context at the time.

      The small block faction, of which Adam was absolutely one of the ring leaders, were willing to do literally anything to win. They were and still are collectivist totalitarians. Above it was described as a debate, but it wasn't, it was more like a war. Amongst other things, the small block faction:

      • Launched botnet attacks on any node or company that expressed support for big blocks. They took Coinbase offline, they took any mining pool offline for merely allowing users to vote for big blocks. They took out entire datacenters because it hosted a single node expressing support for bigger blocks in its version handshake. One of these attacks was big enough to take out the internet for an entire rural ISP.

      • Constantly lied about everyone who was working on bigger blocks. I've actually met people who said they didn't trust me because I worked for British intelligence. I've never worked for British intelligence!

      • They wrote a tool to fuck with the vote we were trying to run. Back was fully in support of such tactics: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3hb63g/bip_suggest...

      • They constantly manipulated people, promising them they'd work on a compromise solution whilst actually refusing to do so and organizing conferences with rules like "nobody is allowed to discuss solutions to the problem" or "nobody is allowed to make written notes".

      ... and more. I don't recall Adam expressing any opposition to these acts or trying to stop them. Frequently he was directly engaged in them (not sure who was behind the DDoS attacks, but none of the Blockstreamers publicly asked them to stop).

      Satoshi's account had been hacked at that time, and one of the main arguments for raising the block size was simply that it wasn't controversial at all - it was in fact the planned roadmap for Bitcoin from day one, that everyone had signed up to and that Satoshi had discussed. Given their willingness to lie to everyone else and use outright illegal tactics to win, would a small blocker have forged an email from Satoshi? Absolutely they would, which is why nobody cared about it and it made no difference. Especially as that email inexplicably refuted a position Satoshi had repeatedly defended for years, without explanation.

  • irishcoffee  8 days ago

    I think Back reacts the way he does when being asked if he is the creator of BTC is that he knows it was Finney, and the key is gone.

    • alchemist1e9  8 days ago

      It can’t be Finney because there was an entire send reply send reply sequence that was while Finney was in a marathon race between Satoshi and others which could not have been scripted.

      The case for Jack Dorsey is much stronger than the Back claim.

  • rhubarbtree  7 days ago

    I have no real interest in this chat, but a quick google makes me agree that Hal Finney was very likely Satoshi. Fits my expectations perfectly and would also explain why it’s a “mystery”, ie some people know but agreed not to reveal it as per Hal or family wishes given their targeting by criminals in the past. Extremely plausible.

danso  8 days ago

Doesn’t this fierce debate exist because people cannot agree what Satoshi would have written had he known Bitcoin would take off in such a massive way, versus what Satoshi believed back when bitcoin was just a paper? If it actually is the case that Adam Back is Satoshi, we shouldn’t find it surprising that Back’s views on bitcoin changed as bitcoin’s viability and real world impact changed

lateforwork  8 days ago

Did you miss the part where Satoshi came to Adam's rescue, to thwart big blocks?

https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/6EC9DDF352DC4838AE9B088AB37...

coppsilgold  8 days ago

> Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared. Adam is a well known supporter of small blocks, ultimately the "winning" side of the debate. They are not the same person.

From the article:

    Then, out of the blue, Satoshi appeared on the list with an email that neatly dovetailed with Mr. Back’s position. It was the first time Satoshi had been heard from in more than four years, other than a five-word post the previous year denying a Newsweek article’s claim to have unmasked him.

    Many in the Bitcoin community questioned the new email’s authenticity since another of Satoshi’s email accounts had been hacked. But Mr. Back argued that the email sounded real. In a series of tweets, he called Satoshi’s observations “spot on” and “consistent with Satoshi views IMO” and took to quoting from the email.

    Mr. Back was likely correct: To this day, there is no evidence to indicate the email was a forgery, and no other emails from that account have surfaced.

    The Satoshi email sounded a lot like Mr. Back had in his posts during the preceding weeks, although no one took notice. Like Mr. Back, Satoshi argued that the Bitcoin network’s increasing centralization jeopardized its security. He called the big block proposal very “dangerous” — the same term Mr. Back had used repeatedly. He also used other words and phrases Mr. Back had used: “widespread consensus,” “consensus rules,” “technical,” “trivial” and “robust.”

    At the end of the email, Satoshi denounced Mr. Andresen and Mr. Hearn as two reckless developers trying to hijack Bitcoin with populist tactics and added: “This present situation has been very disappointing to watch unfold.”

It also happened to be densely cited with hyperlinks:

https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/6EC9DDF352DC4838AE9B088AB37...

https://x.com/adam3us/status/632928398893907968

https://x.com/adam3us/status/632650884011458560

https://x.com/adam3us/status/632923680104841220

https://x.com/adam3us/status/632919411112849410

https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTHfU5+1ezP-Jnn5obpd62...

https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTGBt7MNs5YWf8QzKe+4Fr...

https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTFC7zBN9GvHAZLQj4SbXj...

https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTFu6DRVMSLsGDa6AgVX1X...

https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTG7+MMN50VH9-Y++B1_De...

https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTGCkTZAs74bXk57L6JWK2...

https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/CALqxMTH_5rtOs=aSNiVrfsG_sq...