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Bitcoin Linux

No, Linus Torvalds is not Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto (zdnet.com) 54

Posted by EditorDavid from the mistaken-identities dept.
ZDNet reporter Steven Vaughan-Nichols has solved the mystery of whether Linus Torvalds is Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto: no.

But what's interesting is why the reporter had to ask in the first place: In a GitHub Linux kernel repository, it appeared Torvalds had changed a single line in the Linux Kernel. The change: 'Name = I am Satoshi....' Torvalds himself has been suspected of being Nakamoto several times over the years. But no one who knows him well, and I consider myself one of those, have ever thought he was the Bitcoin mastermind. It's just so, so not Linus.

So, while many people were discussing the "evidence," I decided just to ask Linus. Here's what he had to say.

"I'm afraid that is just a jokester taking advantage of how GitHub works — it shares git objects between different repositories, so you can use the SHA1 'name' of an object to specify something you did in your own tree, and then use my repository as the web name, and make it look like your object is in my tree...." Torvalds went on, "So the "torvalds/linux" part of that URL is basically just empty noise, designed to fool people into thinking it's in my tree. You could replace it with [another] GitHub repository name — the actual relevant part is just the SHA1 hash part...."

"So no," Torvalds concluded, "I'm sadly not the owner of a huge stash of original bitcoins."

And, there you have it, folks. Nakamoto's real identity remains a secret.
Late last year Vaughan-Nichols also reported on what happened when Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin suggested Torvalds sell an NFT of the 1991 email that first announced Linux to the world .

"An amused and appalled Torvalds replied, "I'm staying out of the whole craziness with crypto and NFTs. Those people are cuckoo!"
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No, Linus Torvalds is not Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto More

No, Linus Torvalds is not Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto

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  • Misinformation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jdmark ( 928972 ) on Saturday February 05, 2022 @06:54PM (#62241381)
    Why is this misinformation even a news story on Slashdert?

    • Not really misinformation, but not really nerdy either.

      I don't think Linus is behind Bitcoin because he wouldn't have had time for it. At most he's the kind of person putting in a harmelesd easter egg in the Linux kernel.

      Anyone remembering 'stoned beaver'?

      • Not really misinformation, but not really nerdy either....

        I respectfully disagree, I think it is nerdy in the sense of discussing an attack to attribute a change to a particular user. I recall old Slashdot discussions talking about having law makers use a git-style system to version control who made what changes to a proposed law. While this hole is in GitHub, it presents a pretty interesting generic attack space. If you can bypass attribution, even if only via a cursory look, that would be bad for a law maker use case. I've got no particular thoughts on how a

  • Yeah, also... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Saturday February 05, 2022 @07:01PM (#62241393)

    Santa Claus is not Satoshi Nakamoto. So... yeah, kind of already knew that. In case you're wondering, Joe Biden is ALSO not Satoshi Nakamoto. Slow news day, I guess.

    Linus:

    "I'm staying out of the whole craziness with crypto and NFTs. Those people are cuckoo!"

    Just one more reason to respect the man.

    • AHA! I see you didn’t make any similar disclaimers about either Kamala Harris or Joe Biden’s children!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by chill ( 34294 )

        So... you're claiming Hunter Biden is Satoshi Nakamoto? It all makes sense now! That's what was REALLY on his laptop -- Satoshi's bitcoin wallet keys!

        • I see you were fooled as well.

          It was Beau, who then faked his own death and retired to a private island in the South Pacific.

  • This was never even half-way credible. Who is the dumbass that believed it?

    • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Knightman ( 142928 ) on Saturday February 05, 2022 @08:04PM (#62241511)

      Do I really have to mention that there are people who believe in space lasers and pizzagate?

      I can guarantee that some nutcases will latch onto this as some kind of proof that Linus really is Satoshi, why else would he deny it? You can't argue with crazy.

      • Not just ordinary space lasers, but Jewish space lasers.

      • Do I really have to mention that there are people who believe in space lasers and pizzagate?

        Well, we do have space lasers, but they're used for rangefinding and communications. And the Billionaire pedophile sex ring alternately exists or is an insane wackjob theory depending on which politicians are currently being accused of involvement.

    • From the man himself - "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'."

      Had he invented crypto we'd know...

    • "This was never even half-way credible. Who is the dumbass that believed it?" If Craig Wright could fool people into thinking he's Satoshi, then Linus wouldn't be too much of a stretch for those types of people either.
  • I'm sure Mr. Torvalds would rather take out his own gall bladder with an oyster fork than code in C++.

  • Close (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    I think Linus created the Bite-me coin.

  • Think about it. Who would suspect me? I take every opportunity to say how bitcoins are an obvious con job and ntfs are a way of separating fools from their actual government-issued currency.

  • I'm not saying that I'm Satoshi... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dictator For Life ( 8829 ) on Saturday February 05, 2022 @08:44PM (#62241587) Homepage
    ...but you'll never see the two of us together in the same room.
  • about git behavior.

  • BC is basically unusable for anything, as it is exceptionally slow, you can trace what people do and proof-of-work is a really horrible idea. Linus would not ever have created that big a mess.

    • Plus, Linus already invented the only use for blockchain-like publicly recorded transaction ledgers - git.

      It also serves as proof-of-work and proof-of-stake too. You have to solve a software/hardware problem, and if it gets accepted into the mainline, then your contribution is accepted and publicly recorded and trackable and untamperable.

      And it's pretty energy efficient, in terms of both the technology and all the open source development workflows that has improved because of it.

  • Wrong Linus (Score:3)

    by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Saturday February 05, 2022 @10:03PM (#62241709)
    Tech journalists are always mixing up the two famous Linus' in the tech industry. It is not Linus Torvalds that everyone thinks created bitcoin, it's Linus van Pelt from the peanuts.

  • Shameless plug: Satoshi No No [amazon.com]

    What would you do if you became an instant Bitcoin billionaire?

    If you were the inventor of Bitcoin, you’d simply disappear. In 2008, he invented the world’s first digital cryptocurrency, publishing his seminal paper under the fake name “Satoshi Nakamoto.” For the next two years, he built an open source team to develop the Bitcoin software. Since then, bitcoin has grown in value exponentially as people worldwide have realized that its fundamental d

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Misagon ( 1135 )

      In 2008, he invented the worldâ(TM)s first digital cryptocurrency,

      He introduced the first blockchain-based currency that got widespread appeal.

      Electronic currency schemes based on encryption, not using blockchains, had been invented before. Are they not cryptocurrencies?

  • "I won't say" just to F with people's minds.

  • Am I Satoshi or not? Just flip a coin.

  • I have speculated... (Score:3)

    by joshuark ( 6549270 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @01:54AM (#62242029)

    I have often speculated that "Satoshi Nakamoto" is the same as Nicolas Bourbaki [britannica.com]. A group of persons that helped develop, define, and disburse Bitcoin. Much like the author Franklin W. Dixon [penguinrandomhouse.com] and etcetera. Just speculation, much like the RSA algorithm had mathematicians and computer scientists.

    JoshK.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Trongy ( 64652 )

      The larger the conspiracy, the greater chance of it being revealed. If Satoshi is a group, it's probably a small group.

      I find it interesting that a stylometric analysis of Satoshi's writing suggests that the bitcoin paper and the Satoshi emails are written by different authors: Stylometric Analysis: Satoshi Nakamoto [towardsdatascience.com]

      • I concur a smaller group of perhaps 3 or 4. Your comment about a larger conspiracy the greater probability of it being exposed, reminds of a quote by Benjamin Franklin: "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead." :)

        Interesting about the stylometric analysis, and it seems to be another indicator of a "committee" behind Bitcoin.

        I'd wondered if using a Markov model to analyze the original Bitcoin paper, and then compare against e-mails or posts to see if there is significant difference in phraseology, w

  • "So no," Torvalds concluded, "I'm sadly not the owner of a huge stash of original bitcoins."

    That's precisely what the real Satoshi would say.

    In other news:
    "Did you murder her?"
    "No of course not!"
    "You're standing over the body..."
    "I don't know how it got there"
    "...holding a knife..."
    "I was cooking dinner."
    "...covered in blood."
    "It's not what it looks like!"

  • so let us have more news about cryptobazinga.

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