I'm going to be more arrogant and say p << 1%:
Prior probability that a super-intelligent, reclusive, crypto-guy that values anonymity would use his given name as his pseudonym: very very low.
Subsequent evidence to believe Dorian is Satoshi: He's an apparently intelligent guy that knows how to program + a quote wherein he appears to admit that he was once involved with Bitcoin, but he later claimed was misinterpreted and out of context.
My gut instinct would be that Satoshi denying it actually makes it more probable that it's Dorian, given that we've had other suspects before but Satoshi has never bothered commenting on them. If nothing else, there's something about Dorian that makes him interesting to Satoshi in a way that hasn't been true for any previous suspect.
My response to that is never before has a Satoshi proposal led to a scrum of reporters on a target's front lawn, and also none of them have been sick or old (except Finney). If Satoshi was ever going to deny it, of the targets so far, Dorian is the best. And there's an additional factor here: Satoshi may feel directly responsible for Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto's problems, given that he could have chosen a globally unique pseudonym (it's not that hard) but failed to do so and so put people like Dorian at risk. This is untrue of any suggestions about Wei Dai, Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, etc.
(This has, incidentally, been a good reminder of why I don't post my Satoshi research publicly, and generally limit my comments to debunking proposals.)
In case you haven't seen it, here's a great piece about Hal Finney, which includes the strongest arguments I've seen so far about why he's not Satoshi (despite the author's initial suspicions):
Yes, I too agree Finney is less likely to be Satoshi than is commonly assumed. Mostly based on the early emails to each other - it beggars belief that Satoshi would set up two accounts, sockpuppet them talking to each other, find crashing bugs as one account and report it with debug logs to the other account, etc. Satoshi was trying to be pseudonymous, but nothing suggests he was so paranoid that he would resort to such ruses and stratagems that early on.
The usual: curiosity; deriving security lessons; research practice; prolonged & severe irritation with the incompetence of other Satoshi hunters; the outside chance of undying renown & deathless fame.
EDIT: Seth Robert furnishes a handy example of the crappy reasoning & rampant confirmation bias in such discussions: http://blog.sethroberts.net/2014/03/11/nick-szabo-is-satoshi-nakamoto-the-inventor-of-bitcoin/
When I read this story, my response was something like, "I don't believe this very much, but it sure makes a good story — Mysterious Bitcoin founder turns out to be hiding in plain sight under his real name. He's some unassuming old guy, not the anarcho-capitalist cypherpunk everyone was expecting. The fact that it's a good story means a lot of people are going to believe it, since believing things like that is short-term rewarding."
Nope. I say p~=10%.
Dorian Nakamoto isn't wealthy
That would actually be a point against: since now you need to explain how Satoshi could have cashed out a lot of coins early (at low prices) or any coins recently (at high prices), without anyone noticing, keeping in mind people (such as myself) actively are watching early coin-rewards and especially the ones tagged as the Satoshi miner by Sergio's research.
Not quite what I meant. The fact that Satoshi didn't sell many of the early coins, and didn't mix them around enough to keep the option open either, is evidence that he felt financially secure without them. That suggests that he had money already, from a source other than Bitcoin - which, for a skilled programmer, has a high prior already.
Yes. The early coins have been scrutinized pretty heavily, and the more time that passes, the harder it is to move a lot of coins (eg. with each day, the coin-days-destroyed increases, irrespective of exchange rate; and blockchain analysis gets better, which because Satoshi did not move the coins early on is going to work against him ever more - normally, the more time that passes and the more transactions that happen, the worse and more unreliable blockchain analysis gets, but since he's done no transactions...).
If Dorian came into a lot of money, I would want an explanation: did he sell an early Bitcoin startup? Did some other project (the things Satoshi moved onto) yield dividends? For example, one problem with Jed McCaleb as a candidate was that he seems to be rich, but that problem was satisfactorily addressed by his MtGox sale & Ripple work.
(That investigation proved pointless, incidentally: I ultimately scrapped McCaleb as a candidate because the password hashing on his MtGox codebase was inexcusably sloppy for Satoshi, and I simply can't see Satoshi deliberately endangering MtGox users just for the off-chance of a hack revealing the sloppiness and inducing researchers to write him off as cryptographically ignorant.)
Your first paragraph seems to be directed more at P(Dorian came into a lot of money | Dorian is Satoshi) than P(Dorian is Satoshi | Dorian came into a lot of money). It explains why you think that being Satoshi does not significantly increase the probability of coming into a lot of money, but it doesn't explain why you think being Satoshi decreases the probability.
I think I did explain that. Satoshi is one of the early Bitcoin adopters whose finances we understand best: ie he has cashed out and moved ~$0. Being Satoshi substantially decreases the odds of mysteriously being wealthy as compared to all the other early Bitcoin adopters, whose finances are not so nailed down and so who routinely surprise us watchers.
For example, even as I type this, we are being surprised by an early Bitcoin adopter: the 1933x addresses (with 111k btc or ~$70 million's worth), generally believed to have been Ross Ulbricht's Silk Road commissions from the first year of operation, abruptly started moving yesterday after being completely inactive since ~Nov 2011; Ulbricht is still in jail, has not pled, and the FBI presumably long ago finished its forensics, so the inescapable conclusion is that we were completely wrong about it being Ulbricht and it's an unknown actor. If you find someone involved with Bitcoin early on who matches Satoshi's profile but mysteriously has millions, you haven't found Satoshi - you've found someone like 1933x!
He's in jail; he has no access to the hardware the FBI seized (with all his encrypted files on them, and it's hard to unencrypt an encrypted file when you don't have a copy, even if you know the passphrase); and there is no particular reason to move the coins at this time, with Mtgox shattered & the database leaked. It's extremely implausible that it's Ross, now.
It's much more likely it's either Karpeles or a Mtgox insider moving around gains for some reason, or the insider realizes their Mtgox account information is now public and is scrambling to disperse their fortune to less-easily-tracked addresses.
That part matches though doesn't it, given that SN's code used hungarian notation and otherwise seemed to be a bit old school?
You don't mean reverse polish notation? There are other signs of age too, like using two spaces after a full stop.
I use two spaces after every sentence, and I'm 23. It's not a personal quirk either, it was just normal formatting in the American public schools I attended. (By the way, anyone who points out that this very post uses single spaces after a full stop should know that LessWrong messes with formatting. I typed double spaces; it's just not displaying as written.)
By the way, anyone who points out that this very post uses single spaces after a full stop should know that LessWrong messes with formatting. I typed double spaces; it's just not displaying as written.
This isn't a specifically LessWrong thing. Web browsers do that to text - they ignore spaces at the beginning of a paragraph and also between words.
Hungarian notation in a random bitcoin file I opened: coins.cpp
if (!fZero) {
nLastUsedByte = b + 1;
nNonzeroBytes++;
}
See the letters preceding each variable? Those tell you what type of variable they are. Here I suspect "f" is for float and "n" is for "integer". This is not a common style for programming, and especially this kind of it ("systems hungarian") is associated with Microsoft.
I got the part about Hungarian notation from Gavin's quote here. Hungarian notation is a thing in programming.
Sounds like both systems acquired their names in similar ways (founder / proponent from a particular national origin).
I take it you are ascribing both the idea that it proves that the paper is old, and the idea that "disk space" is obsolete, to her, and are not intending the word "obsolete" to be "your" word? Also, some people draw a distinction between disc and disk, so I think it is at least bordering on acceptable pedantry for me to point out that she used the latter spelling.
"I don't think he's in any trouble," I say. "I would like to ask him about Bitcoin. This man is Satoshi Nakamoto." "What?" The police officer balks. "This is the guy who created Bitcoin? It looks like he's living a pretty humble life."
Anyone else find it odd that a random cop knows who Satoshi is?
The reporter began with the very questionable assumption that Satoshi Nakamoto was his real name*. Because of this, it is less surprising that they found someone with that name and some resemblance to "The" Satoshi Nakamoto. 0.05.
* "It was only while scouring a database that contained the registration cards of naturalized U.S. citizens that a Satoshi Nakamoto turned up whose profile and background offered a potential match." -- It's possible from this sentence they were doing an unrelated search and just saw the name, but I doubt it.
"The man Newsweek claims is the founder of Bitcoin denies he had anything to do with the digital currency.
In an exclusive two-hour interview with The Associated Press Dorian S. Nakamoto, 64, said he had never heard of Bitcoin until his son told him he had been contacted by a reporter three weeks ago."
says AP
The real Satoshi would likely be in a situation where claiming complete ignorance would be a poor strategic choice. If the real Satoshi were to make that claim, he (I'm assuming it's safe to use male pronouns) would be making a gamble that nothing would come to light that would contradict that claim. It's possible that Satoshi would feel comfortable making that gamble, but there is a significant probability that the real Satoshi cannot credibly claim complete ignorance. The fact that Dorian made that claim is weak evidence that this is a safe gamble for him to make, and it being a safe gamble is weak evidence that he is not Satoshi.
I think it is correct (>70%), but also unimportant (>95%). Even with a revealed identity, Satoshi remains reclusive and private, and I believe he will continue to avoid public recognition (>80%). This is purely from a few handfuls of background information beforehand, and then the article itself.
I am not sure where updating will come into this.
Many of you here have likely heard of Bitcoin, and maybe know something about it.
Earlier today, a story broke that a reporter had apparently tracked down the real Satoshi Nakamoto, infamous creator of the Bitcoin protocol.
This seems like an excellent opportunity to practice our Bayesian updating!
So, how likely do you think it is that this man is the founder of Bitcoin? What do you believe and why?