There's a lot of chatter about whether Satoshi Nakamoto was actually Hal Finney. I'm not gonna dive into all the reasons people think that. But I was going through one of Hal's last posts and something caught my eye. Here’s the link to that post:
https://this forum.org/index.php?topic=155054.0
In the last part, he mentions, "My bitcoins are stored in our safe deposit box, and my son and daughter are tech savvy."
If Hal really was Satoshi, why on earth would he stash his keys in a safe deposit box? Those things are usually in banks that are controlled by the government. It kinda seems crazy for the guy who created bitcoin to store his keys in a bank, right? That goes against everything bitcoin is about.
Maybe Hal threw that in to mislead people about him being Satoshi, or maybe he just wasn’t Satoshi at all. But considering he was into cryptography and was a cypherpunk, it feels weird that he would use a safe deposit box for his bitcoin keys.
Or maybe he meant a personal safe when he said "safe deposit box," but if that’s the case, why not just say "safe"?
I might be overthinking this, but I thought it was an interesting point to bring up. What do you all think?
His keys were likely encrypted before they were put in the safe deposit box of they were put in a box secured by a bank. Steganography might also have been used here too to hide a lot of keys (such as with other random things) making the private keys even harder to find - especially if they're hidden within the others.
There could also have been a chance the keys were put in other places too, maybe a bank in a different country which could keep it more secure.
I wonder if both of his children had to agree on things in order to use the funds though or if each of their keys were able to decrypt and control his.
There's the other chance he gave them some bitcoin beforehand and essentially burnt his coins to avoid conflicts but said he hadn't to make bitcoin seem easier to inherit and therefore more valid as a currency.
I think it is bad to store private keys even they are encrypted in safety vaults in bank. Banks are centralized and we can not trust their services 100%.
The Russian evasion in Ukraine, this war, show that banks in Switzerland can break their tradition, their terms to freeze accounts and money if they want. It is safer to be our own bank by securing private keys, passwords to encrypt wallet files by ourselves and never store them in central banks.
We are fearful of central banks and choose Bitcoin but later return to central banks to store our bitcoins. Terrible idea.
Whether we like or not, keys stored in a bank's safe deposit box is probably much safer than keys hidden underneath a pile of clothes in your closet, or at the back of a painting in your living room, or even in a personal vault in your bedroom. Nobody would just barge in to a bank's vault.
And since Hal mentioned that his "son and daughter are tech savvy" right after saying that his "bitcoins are stored in our safe deposit box," I guess it means the keys and other important information are not in plaintext. Everything is certainly encrypted. His children are the only ones who could decrypt them.
heres a little secret....
just because you put them in a bank security box. for reasons like if your house burns down they are in a vaulted flame proof place as back up
does not mean that because they are in that place you have no access should the bank deny access
bitcoin works because you can keep copies in many places.
as for the silly gossip of the 'satoshi is hal' stuff.. nope. just no
its recently re-awakened due to some idiot that bought or stole some old used keys and has been signing messages of non satoshi keys pretending to be satoshi to hope to get some money.value out of selling a silly system of signing messages.
if people really think that there was only one cypherpunk in the 90's-00's
or that the cypherpunks all used satoshi username.. both are complete wrong
there were many cypherpunks and also casual readers of their mailing list that just took some idea's and evolved them.
but after this many years of so many people trying. end result is .. hal was not satoshi..
so lets put that gossip story back to bed
Knowing how seemingly bullish Hal Finney was with Bitcoin (based on some email or post saying that it could reach $1m or $10m or something), I doubt he's careless enough to actually store backups on a bank's safety deposit box.
Far highly more likely that it would be a home safe box.
He could just be storing a few BTC there in the safe box like 10% only of his BTC holdings and everything else is on his paper wallet with keys written on it. Hal is a father, it is very likely that he already handed 90% of his coins to his kids, telling them to not trust anybody before he even said goodbye. None of the coins from Satoshi's assumed wallet were moved, there is a conclusion to come up with that.
I'm pretty sure Hal knows what might happen when one of the most prominent cypherpunks of our time and one of the first bitcoin believers state that lines that he uttered before he left us. Also, I'm certain that he already have those keys encrypted before he handed them over to whichever bank of his choosing, adding another layer of security to a seemingly impenetrable (lol) institution. He understands all of those, and when you are a dying man, the best interest of your loved ones you'll be leaving behind will be put first. And as a dying man, maybe Hal doesn't really want to make it hard for his family, and the obvious choice for that are the banks that can fulfill all of his last agenda before leaving this worldkeeping his bitcoins safe and making it easy for his family to claim it.
It is evident from his saying our safe deposit box that this box is in his home or in another place of the family so that his son or daughter can access this box at any time.
So most likely this box is not in a bank but rather in a place that belongs to the family given it says "our safe deposit box".
As for the other point, whether the box is stored in a bank or in a family place, I do not think that this proves or denies that Hall is Satoshi, I do not find a link between the two things.
- Let's pretend he's actually Satoshi -
Because he was never really Satoshi in his mind or he believed in anyone else's mind, even though he was actually Satoshi. There's no need to throw anyone off, because he just needed to do what practically needs to be done. Satoshi is/was human like the rest of us in the community.
He probably has a real bank account with U.S. Dollars, and uses a credit card for his shopping.
Hal Finney's wife resumes activity on Bitcoin pioneer's Twitter account to avoid potential purge
With this inheritance of account information like this, and with disclosure from Hal Finney that his wife and his children inherited his bitcoin private keys, I believe that Hal family won't lose access to his bitcoins.
His wife makes me surprised to use his Twitter to tweet with aim to keep his account. Her reasons are well as she does not want to lose what belonged to his husband.
It makes me disappointed a little because we will not know what Elon Musk will do with inactive Twitter accounts from legends who had great contributions in the past.
relax.. social media fud spun some rumour..
the tweets were that elon will delete 1.5billion inactive accounts
twitter only has 1.5b accounts
in short its like saying subtly elon will delete everyone unless you use it every month
which is not the case.
elon never said he will specifically delete hals account either.
its just hysterical media spinning hysteria
Do you think Hal would openly write that "we store valuable and potentially very large Bitcoins at home" and risk it? I'm sure he chose the safest place. He was carrying more of your concerns.
We all know the risks of keeping valuable things at home. Add to that the potential 1+ million BTC wallet passwords. Who would risk their children's lives by hiding something like this at home?
I don't know if Satoshi was Hal and we can't never be sure, but it's very possible that Hal has a significant amount of Bitcoin. Since their children are also tech-savvy, they know when and how to use them. It's necessary to respect people's private life, including their economic preferences.
The problem isn't that a bank or a government could take control over an address, but they could deny access to it. Imagine if Hal got arrested, the government could seize the contents of his safety box, and he would lose one of his backups. It's not the end of the world if you have other backups, that have different treat model and can't be seized by government easily. So there's no contradiction here with "Satoshi's vision", because unlike with fiat, you are not storing bitcoins themselves, but information for accessing them, which can be copied.
It is certainly possible that Hal Finney was using a figure of speech or employing a bit of literary license when he referred to his Bitcoin keys being stored in a safe deposit box. It is also possible that he was using a metaphor to describe a secure storage location for his keys, rather than describing an actual safe deposit box at a bank.
Without more context or further information, it is difficult to say for certain what Finney meant when he wrote this. It is worth noting, however, that people often use figures of speech and figurative language in their writing, and it is not uncommon for them to use phrases in ways that might not be taken literally.
In any case, the fact that Finney referred to his keys being stored in a safe deposit box does not necessarily mean that he was Satoshi Nakamoto or that he was not Satoshi Nakamoto. There are many factors that can influence people's beliefs about who might be behind the pseudonym, and a single phrase in a forum post may not be sufficient to conclusively prove or disprove someone's identity.
This thread is directly relevant to a piece of evidence that emerged just days after it was posted. In December 2022, a cryptographically signed message was published using the private key belonging to Hal Finney's original Bitcoin address. The message reads: "This Transaction was made by Paul Leroux to Hal Finney on January 12, 2009 #bitcoin."
The signature has been independently verified as valid. Whoever signed it held Hal Finney's private key.
Hal mentioned his son and daughter are tech savvy and that his keys were in a safe deposit box. The signing method used became available around 2013 while Hal was still alive. Whether Hal recorded that message himself or whether someone holding his keys released it in 2022 is one of the most interesting questions in this investigation.
The thread about the safe deposit box and this signed message are directly connected. There is a current discussion examining the full picture here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5578099
Im always in favor of privacy, theres no reason for strangers to know how much you have in your wallet or where your keys are stored. Some people like to share that kind of information, maybe for hype, but if you dont have a strong way to protect yourself and your family, its better to stick to general statements or avoid such topics altogether. Although public figures may have a somewhat different philosophy and set of rules for living.
It is definitely your second to the last line for me, "while reading your argument, I had this in mind that" safe deposit box" can mean anything like a safe where he was sure that the private keys to the wallet containing his bitcoins would be save and secure..
So I honestly think that we should not judge Hal by his choice of words, I still believe that even if it turns out that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, it still doesn't change anything, bitcoin is here and have succeeded and it's doing very well, millions of people around the world have made money from bitcoin and other bitcoin related projects, what this mean is that bitcoin as been nothing but a true blessing to humanity, I don't want to mention the millions of people around the world today who are not idle but working and earning good amount of money as salary all because somebody like Satoshi Nakamoto created bitcoin, and indirectly created jobs for millions of people around the world.
Hal is no more (may his soul continue to find rest) but we are still discussing him today because of his legacy and contribution to the bitcoin community, I think instead of we wasting time and energy trying to know who Satoshi is or was, why don't we channel that time and energy in creating our own individual legacy as well so that when we are gone, the coming generations will still talk about us?
If you trust the centralized system or banks, which Satoshi seems to distrust, you cannot be a suitable candidate for the so called mysterious Bitcoin inventor. This is possibly one of many contradiction between both personalities.
The only people who could build a Bitcoin as we know it are those with passion for its ideals which are natural counter measures against a corrupt prison system.
There are few people with that passion who can effortlessly invent things like Bitcoin. And their main agenda would be to detach from centralized control and give control back to the people.
I believe parts of the reasons others couldn't do it are due to their elitist, individualistic, or top-bottom rule mindset or lack of humility.
By the way, it's either the end goal was subversion and state capture, or to free people from the control of a bad system just like innocent captives escaping their prisoners. The intention of such freedom may not necessarily be responsible, but I believe satoshi wants something more responsible to keep bad behaviors in check and help make society better
Sorry op, I do not see how saving his seedphrase in a safe deposit box in the bank contradict everything that Bitcoin stands for. The focus now is on securing the seedphrase from physical damage or theft, not because Hal Finney is incapable of being his own bank. One thing that comes to my mind is that, since Hal Finney made reference to his children, the possibility could be that his decision to store his seedphrase at the bank is part of his inheritance plans; when the time is right, his children will get access to it. Rather than being too hard on yourself, people can normalise handling certain things that hey know will work out for them. As we know, inheritance planning is a very important apect of investing in bitcoin that people are still yet to understand clearly how to go about it.