{"id":24568,"date":"2014-03-07T08:00:54","date_gmt":"2014-03-07T13:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24568"},"modified":"2014-03-07T08:00:54","modified_gmt":"2014-03-07T13:00:54","slug":"breaking-news-satoshi-nakamoto-isnt-really-satoshi-nakamoto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/03\/07\/breaking-news-satoshi-nakamoto-isnt-really-satoshi-nakamoto\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking news – Satoshi Nakamoto isn’t really “Satoshi Nakamoto”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Self-described Bitcoin detractor Colby Cosh<\/a> explains how “Newsweek<\/em>” got conned by “Satoshi Nakamoto” (yes, both sets of scare quotes are ‘splained):<\/p>\n

Newsweek<\/em>\u2019s Satoshi is a 64-year-old Japanese-American living in Temple City, California. \u201cSatoshi Nakamoto\u201d is the name on his birth certificate, although he goes by Dorian. Mr. Nakamoto has a physics degree and has done computer engineering for a number of military-industrial firms, as well as one online stock-price provider. Much of his work history is shrouded in official secrecy, or perhaps just the habitual truculence of defence-tech professionals. He is known to have a libertarian streak, has had some run-ins with the financial system, and is thought by friends and relatives to capable of cooking up something like Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

But it is now looking as though he had the square root of bugger-all to do with it. Newsweek<\/em> concluded its investigation of Dorian S. Nakamoto with a police-supervised doorstep interview in which the gentleman is supposed to have said \u201cI am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It\u2019s been turned over to other people.\u201d Dorian has now told the Associated Press that when he said \u201cno longer,\u201d two words on which Newsweek<\/em> hung an entire feature, he was referring to the engineering profession generally. He denied being involved in any way with what he repeatedly called \u201cBitcom,\u201d explained the work he had briefly done for a financial-information company, and read the Newsweek<\/em> piece to himself, displaying increasing confusion and annoyance as he did so.<\/p>\n

I have to say, having read New Newsweek<\/em>\u2019s article, that it does appear to rest on a fairly slender foundation. Aside from that \u201cno longer,\u201d the evidence that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto equals \u201cSatoshi Nakamoto\u201d amounts to the obvious coincidence of names and a bunch of quotes from the man\u2019s semi-estranged family. Unfortunately, neither \u201cSatoshi\u201d nor \u201cNakamoto\u201d are uncommon names for individuals of Japanese ancestry; the article acknowledges that there are several more just in the United States. The Bitcoin-inventing \u201cSatoshi\u201d clearly does not much want to be found; the name is obviously a pseudonym, has always been taken to be one until now, and was probably chosen precisely for its red-herring flavour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, so Satoshi Nakamoto is probably not “Satoshi Nakamoto”, but why is Newsweek<\/em> actually “Newsweek<\/em>” in scare quotes?<\/p>\n

A lot of people are asking how something like this could happen to Newsweek<\/em>, not realizing that the Newsweek<\/em> nameplate has basically been asset-stripped and repurposed in order that the remaining credibility and familiarity might be squeezed out of it. (This will happen to Maclean\u2019s<\/em> someday \u2014 two years from now, or 200. I\u2019m hoping it\u2019s 200.) No one expected this cred-squeezing process to happen quite so quickly and powerfully, but IBT Media, buyer of Newsweek<\/em>, seems to have blundered into a singular piece of ill luck: the wrong reporter matched at the wrong time with the wrong story, one in which an informed intuition about any number of subjects might have saved the day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Self-described Bitcoin detractor Colby Cosh explains how “Newsweek” got conned by “Satoshi Nakamoto” (yes, both sets of scare quotes are ‘splained): Newsweek\u2019s Satoshi is a 64-year-old Japanese-American living in Temple City, California. \u201cSatoshi Nakamoto\u201d is the name on his birth certificate, although he goes by Dorian. Mr. Nakamoto has a physics degree and has done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,28],"tags":[899,347,477,563],"class_list":["post-24568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-media","tag-bitcoin","tag-debunking","tag-magazines","tag-money"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6og","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24568"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24570,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24568\/revisions\/24570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}