back to article Dorian Nakamoto gets $23,000 payout over Bitcoin invention saga

The California man who says he was mistakenly identified as the inventor of Bitcoin is accepting a $23,000 gift from backers of the cryptocurrency. Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto said that he will be joining the ranks of Bitcoin users after receiving a wallet of 47.925 bitcoins (valued at roughly $23,300) from members of the …

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  1. Chris Miller

    I am "Satoshi Nakamoto"!

    No, I am "Satoshi Nakamoto".

    (continues for some time)

    1. DropBear
      Megaphone

      Re: I am "Satoshi Nakamoto"!

      ...eventually concluding with "will the real Slim Shady please stand up!"

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: I am "Satoshi Nakamoto"!

      I am Satoshi Nakamoto, and so is my wife.

      Or, if you prefer:

      Sirs: Many of my friends are Satoshi Nakamoto, and only a few of them are the inventors of Bitcoin.

      Yours faithfully, Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong (Mrs.)

      P.S. I have never kissed the editor of the Register.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is America Man...

    So sue the F**K out of Newsweek! How much did they make off this story anyway? If it was a Fox / News Intl fabrication a hoard of ambulance chasing lawyers would be running to assist him not Bitcoin users....

    1. DavCrav

      Re: This is America Man...

      The problem is that he might well actually be the person.

      Here's a rough way to work this out. Firstly, let's assume that his name is actually Satoshi Nakamoto. (Of course this might be false...)

      There are roughly 100m Japanese people in the world, about 50m of which are male. (This is order of magnitude calculations, so 150m or whatever doesn't matter.)

      According to

      http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2009/10/11/to-be-sorted/japans-top-100-most-common-family-names/#.U1eiOxDLKk0

      Nakamoto is not one of the 100 most popular surnames for Japanese people, so there are certainly less than a million people with that name in the world, let's say 100,000, so the number of male Nakamotos are about 50k.

      A list of popular forenames is given here:

      http://japanese.about.com/library/weekly/aa050601a.htm

      I know that choices of names vary with time (see the fall of the name Adolf post-1945) but this website says that Satoshi has *never* been a popular name. It's a good guesstimate that 1% is a decent upper bound. That yields roughly 500 Satoshi Nakamotos in the world.

      Finally, they have to have the requisite knowledge of mathematics and computer science: education is better in Japan than the UK, but high-level mathematics needed for one-way cryptosystems is still not universally taught, meaning 0.1% is a reasonable percentage. That leads there to be roughly 0.5 Satoshi Nakamotos with knowledge of cryptosystems in the world.

      From this first approximation, I think it's entirely plausible that he is *the* Satoshi Nakamoto, and suing them might not be the best course of action.

      1. caffeine addict

        Re: This is America Man...

        You know, there's this thing called the Internet, where it's common for people to use names that aren't really their own.

        If Bitcoin's creator had used the name "Barack Obama" would you have made the same assumptions?

        1. DavCrav

          Re: This is America Man...

          "You know, there's this thing called the Internet, where it's common for people to use names that aren't really their own.

          If Bitcoin's creator had used the name "Barack Obama" would you have made the same assumptions?"

          Listen Caffeine, if that is your real name: I started it with

          "Firstly, let's assume that his name is actually Satoshi Nakamoto. (Of course this might be false...)"

          so I stated my assumption clearly. What you are really saying is "you assume something that you clearly stated at the start, but I'm going to be sarcastic anyway".

          But my analysis proves that there aren't many Satoshi Nakamotos around, and if you chose a suitably rare name -- like Barack Obama for example -- then there likely isn't *anyone* with the requisite skills to make Bitcoin. If the Bitcoin creator made up a rare name and there just happens to be a mathematician/computer scientist called that rare name, then that's a pretty big coincidence.

          1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

            Re: This is America Man...

            "Firstly, let's assume that his name is actually Satoshi Nakamoto."

            The problem with this (aside from the awkward and completely unnecessary -ly suffix; "first" can be an adverb) is the antecedent for "his" is entirely unclear in your original post. When I read it, I thought you meant "let's assume that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto's name is actually Satoshi Nakamoto", which seemed like a rather odd postulate.

            I'd say Caffeine's interpretation is perfectly reasonable. If you want to throw pronouns around willy-nilly, you really have no one to blame but yourself.

            1. DavCrav

              Re: This is America Man...

              El Reg's commentators have spoken: Doing actual research, presenting an analysis of how likely it is that this person is the inventor of Bitcoin is not all that good, but making sarcastic comments and dragging people up on minor grammatical points that are entirely clear from context is good.

              "I'd say Caffeine's interpretation is perfectly reasonable. If you want to throw pronouns around willy-nilly, you really have no one to blame but yourself."

              Right-o, I'll just poke grammatical holes in other people's comments in future, rather than doing anything of any practical use. I am an academic, so I guess I'm used to doing that.

              Edit: As for mocking firstly, see

              http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/886/when-enumerating-motivations-is-it-correct-to-write-firstly-secondly-or

              1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
                Trollface

                Re: This is America Man...

                "IF YOU WANT TO THROW PRONOUNS AROUND WILLY-NILLY, YOU REALLY HAVE NO-ONE TO BLAME BUT YOURSELF"

                Somehow I find this statement politically uplifting.

  3. phil dude
    Coat

    birthday paradox...

    For some reason this discussion reminds me of the birthday paradox...

    P.

  4. JustNiz

    Dumbasses

    Basic common sense clearly eludes these donors. There's only two possible situations. He either really is or really isn't THE Satoshi.

    If he is, then he already is one of the richest people on the planet so this money will make less than no difference to him. If he really isn't, then this donation is even more obviously misplaced.

    Hey I'm not Satoshi Nakamoto either! Please send bitcoins to me too!.

    1. intrigid

      Re: Dumbasses

      How would the donation be misplaced? Admittedly, I didn't read the whole story, but my assumption was that the donations were for all the aggravation he went through unnecessarily.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "...a $23,000 gift..." in Bitcoins

    Probably taxable at its present value ($23k). So if it falls in value (e.g. to $5k), he might end up owing more in taxes ($8k) than it's worth at that time.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    and in the near future

    when all is said and done, the guy will announce loudly, "It WAS me the entire time!" while running off with millions of dollars of cash from sold BCs.

    You heard it here first :)

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: and in the near future

      "You heard it here first :)"

      No.

      But is there a special meaning to "Nakamoto" or not?

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