Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain
Page 17
[←106]
Kim Nilsson. “The missing MtGox bitcoins”. WizSec, 19 April 2015.
[←107]
“Jed McCaleb”. LinkedIn.
[←108]
Comma in original. Roger Ver. “Both Anne Frank, and Ross Ulbricht created dark markets to help people hide from violent oppressors who were trying to hurt peaceful people.” Twitter, 16 July 2016. (archive)
[←109]
Mike Power. “Online highs are old as the net: the first e-commerce was a drugs deal”. The Guardian, 19 April 2013.
[←110]
Satoshi Nakamoto. Comment on “Re: Porn”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Economy > Economics > adf, 23 September 2010. (archive)
[←111]
“Join the Tor Challenge”. Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[←112]
Yasha Levine. “Almost Everyone Involved in Developing Tor was (or is) Funded by the US Government”. Pando, 16 July 2014.
[←113]
Even Facebook has one, for users in heavily-filtered countries. Alec Muffett. “1 Million People use Facebook over Tor”. Facebook over Tor (official page), Facebook, 22 April 2016. (archive)
[←114]
Gwern Branwen. “Silk Road: Theory & Practice”. 11 July 2011, updated 8 March 2016.
[←115]
Adrian Chen. “The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable”. Gawker, 1 June 2011.
[←116]
United States v. Ross William Ulbricht, S1 14 Cr. 68 (KBF), Government Exhibit 241. This file is commonly referred to as “mycrimes.txt,” but its actual name was “log.txt”. There were also other personal journal files on the laptop.
[←117]
Andy Greenberg. “Prosecutors Trace $13.4M in Bitcoins From the Silk Road to Ulbricht’s Laptop”. Wired, 29 January 2015.
[←118]
This phrase was popularised by the New York Times in January 2014 (David Segal. “Eagle Scout. Idealist. Drug Trafficker?” New York Times, 18 January 2014), but the earliest usage I’ve found is a comment from Yves Smith, founder of the blog Naked Capitalism, on his reposting of Yanis Varoufakis. “Bitcoin and the Dangerous Fantasy of ‘Apolitical’ Money”. 23 April 2013. (archive)
[←119]
United States v. Ross William Ulbricht, S1 14 Cr. 68 (KBF), Opinion & Order, Document 173, 1 February 2015.
[←120]
Joseph Cox. “How Did the FBI Find the Silk Road Servers, Anyway?” Motherboard, 3 October 2014.
[←121]
Joe Mullin. “Judge in Silk Road case gets threatened on Darknet”. Ars Technica, 22 October 2014.
[←122]
Machkovech, Sam. “Notorious 8chan ‘subboard’ has history wiped after federal judge’s doxing”. Ars Technica, 12 February 2015.
[←123]
Poly Paradyme. “Interview with Lyn Ulbricht About Upcoming Silk Road Appeal”. Coinivore, 25 November 2015. (archive)
[←124]
Andy Greenberg. “In Silk Road Appeal, Ross Ulbricht’s Defense Focuses on Corrupt Feds”. Wired, 12 January 2016.
[←125]
United States of America v. Ulbricht, 15-1815-cr, Document 177, page 122, 31 May 2017.
[←126]
Eileen Yu. “Anonymous website disappears with $100M in Bitcoin”. ZDNet, 5 December 2013.
[←127]
Andy Greenberg. “Feds Seize Silk Road 2 in Major Dark Web Drug Bust”. Wired, 6 November 2014.
[←128]
Satoshi Nakamoto. Comment on “A few suggestions”. Bitcointalk.org Bitcoin Forum > Bitcoin > Development & Technical Discussion, 12 December 2009. (archive)
[←129]
For a collection of firetrap home mining rigs: Killhamster. “Mining Rig Megapost”. Buttcoin Foundation, 13 February 2015. (archive)
[←130]
“Miner Who Reported Brain Damage Tells All”. Bitcoin Mining Accidents (blog), 11 June 2011. (archive) Image of original post.
[←131]
Bitmain shop page.
[←132]
e.g., Yusho Cho. “Bitcoin trade volume hits record in November”. Nikkei Asian Review, 18 December 2016.
[←133]
Gautham. “Bitmain Responds to Controversy Surrounding its Upcoming 140,000 kW Mining Center”. NewsBTC, 4 November 2016. (archive)
[←134]
“Google Data Center FAQ, Part 2”. Data Center Knowledge.
[←135]
“Bitcoin Mining Pools”. BitcoinChain.com, 16 March 2017.
[←136]
Yuji Nakamura, Lulu Yilun Chen. “Bitcoin Miners Signal Revolt Amid Sluggish Blockchain”. Bloomberg, 13 March 2017.
[←137]
Ittay Eyal, Emin Gün Sirer. “How A Mining Monopoly Can Attack Bitcoin”. Hacking Distributed (blog), 16 June 2014.
[←138]
Cyrus Farivar. “Bitcoin pool GHash.io commits to 40% hashrate limit after its 51% breach”. Ars Technica, 16 July 2014.
[←139]
Kenny Spotz. “An Interview With Jeffrey Smith, CIO of GHash.io”. Bitcoin Magazine, 23 June 2014. (archive)
[←140]
Thomas Fox-Brewster. “Craig Wright Claims He’s Bitcoin Creator Satoshi – Experts Fear An Epic Scam”. Forbes (staff blog), 2 May 2016. (archive)
[←141]
The Satoshi Nakamoto Institute page collects every public post by him, and emails people have released.
[←142]
Gwern Branwen. “Happy birthday, Satoshi Nakamoto”. Reddit /r/bitcoin, 5 April 2014.
[←143]
e.g., Dominic Frisby. “The Search for Satoshi”. CoinDesk, 8 November 2014.
[←144]
Gwern Branwen. “Blackmail fail”.
[←145]
Leah McGrath Goodman. “The face behind Bitcoin”. Newsweek, 6 March 2014.
[←146]
Ryan Nakashima. “Man said to create bitcoin denies it”. AP The Big Story, 7 March 2014. (archive) (video)
[←147]
Satoshi Nakamoto. Comment on “Bitcoin open source implementation of P2P currency”. P2P Foundation forums, 7 March 2014. (archive)
[←148]
Matt Clinch. “‘Real’ bitcoin creator: ‘I am not Dorian Nakamoto’”. CNBC, 7 March 2014.
[←149]
Leslie Kaufman, Noam Cohen. “Newsweek Returns to Print and Sets Off a Bitcoin Storm”. New York Times, 7 March 2014, pB3.
[←150]
“Newsweek’s Statement on the Bitcoin Story”. Newsweek, 7 March 2014.
[←151]
Further reading for this section: Nik Cubrilovic. “Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto”. 2 May 2016. A comprehensive overview of the evidence concerning Wright’s claims. (archive)
[←152]
“Craig Steven Wright”. LinkedIn. Archive as of 9 December 2015.
[←153]
“Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto. Is he?” The Economist, 2 May 2016.
[←154]
Craig S. Wright. “The quantification of information systems risk: A look at quantitative responses to information security issues” (doctoral thesis). Charles Sturt University, February 2017.
[←155]
“craig-wright-cpunks-1996.txt”. Cryptome.
[←156]
Craig Wright. “Looking for people interested in starting a new revolution in payments”. Cracked, inSecure and Generally Broken (blog), 4 February 2011. (archive)
[←157]
Craig S. Wright. “LulzSec, Anonymous … freedom fighters or the new face of evil?” The Conversation, 9 August 2011.
[←158]
apoefjmqdsfls. “According to the Mtgox leaks from early 2014, our brand new ‘Satoshi’ Craig Wright bought 17.24 bitcoins at a rate of $1198 each”. Reddit /r/bitcoin, 4 May 2016.
[←159]
Ian Grigg. “Triple Entry Accounting”. 25 December 2005.
[←160]
Sarah Jeong. “Satoshi’s PGP Keys Are Probably Backdated and Point to a Hoax�
��. Motherboard, 9 December 2015.
[←161]
“Hotwire Preemptive Intelligence Pty Limited (Administrators Appointed) ACN 164 068 348 (‘the Company’): Circular to Creditors”. McGrathNicol, 26 May 2014. (archive)
[←162]
“The DeMorgan Ltd Group of Companies to receive up to $54 million from AusIndustry R&D tax rebate scheme: Australia’s fastest Top500 HPC is dedicated to Cryptocurrency and smart contract research”. DeMorgan Ltd (press release), 11 May 2015. (archive)
[←163]
Andrew O’Hagan. “The Satoshi Affair”. London Review of Books, 38 (13) pp7-28, 30 June 2016. Reprinted in O’Hagan’s 2017 book The Secret Life: Three True Stories (Faber, ISBN 0571335845).
[←164]
Andy Greenberg, Gwern Branwen. “Bitcoin’s Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Probably This Unknown Australian Genius”. Wired, 8 December 2015.
[←165]
Sam Biddle and Andy Cush. “This Australian Says He and His Dead Friend Invented Bitcoin”. Gizmodo, 8 December 2015, updated 2 May 2016.
[←166]
Leah McGrath Goodman. “@kashhill We all got it. It was being shopped around fairly aggressively this autumn. @nathanielpopper @a_greenberg”. Twitter, 10 December 2015.
[←167]
“Tulip-Trust-Redacted”. Gizmodo.
[←168]
Purported redacted transcript of interviews with Australian Tax Office auditor.
[←169]
Transcript: Richy_T. Comment on “WikiLeaks: SGI super-computer ‘letter’ removed from Craig Wright’s company ‘cloudsoft’”. Reddit /r/bitcoin, 10 December 2015.
[←170]
Kashmir Hill. “Who is the hacker that outed Craig Wright as the creator of Bitcoin? Maybe Craig Wright himself”. Fusion, 9 December 2015.
[←171]
Aimee Chanthadavong. “SGI denies links with alleged bitcoin founder Craig Wright”. ZDNet, 11 December 2015.
[←172]
“TOP500 List November 2015”. Top500, November 2015. Archive, 19 November 2015.
[←173]
Elle Hunt and Paul Farrell. “Reported bitcoin ‘founder’ Craig Wright’s home raided by Australian police”. The Guardian, 9 December 2015.
[←174]
Leo Shanahan. “ATO’s fraud squad probes Bitcoin ‘creator’ Craig Wright”. The Australian, 21 January 2016.
[←175]
This has been hypothesised as a way to fake the signing, e.g., a Reddit discussion thread started by Electrum developer EagleTM: comment on “Gavin explains how Craig Wright convinced him”. Reddit /r/bitcoin, 2 May 2016.
[←176]
Gavin Andresen. “Satoshi”. 2 May 2016. (archive)
[←177]
Jon Matonis. “How I Met Satoshi”. 2 May 2016. (archive)
[←178]
Gavin Andresen. Comment on “Gavin, can you please detail all parts of the signature verification you mention in your blog”. Reddit /r/btc, 2 May 2016.
[←179]
Dan Kaminsky. “Validating Satoshi (Or Not)”. 2 May 2016.
[←180]
“Craig Wright faces criminal charges and serious jail time in UK after claiming to be Bitcoin’s founder Satoshi Nakamoto”. (archive) The fake site’s URL is silliconangle.com, with two Ls.
[←181]
Byron Kaye, Jeremy Wagstaff. “Australian ‘bitcoin founder’ quietly bidding for patent empire”. Reuters, 20 June 2016.
[←182]
Byron Kaye, Jeremy Wagstaff. “Bitcoin’s ‘creator’ races to patent technology with gambling tycoon”. Reuters, 2 March 2017.
[←183]
Jeremy Wagstaff, Byron Kaye. “Exclusive: Company behind bitcoin ‘creator’ sold to private investors”. Bloomberg, 24 April 2017.
[←184]
“NCHAIN LIMITED Company number 09823112”. Companies House, 2 May 2017. (archive)
[←185]
“Jon Matonis Joins Blockchain Pioneer nChain as Vice President of Corporate Strategy”. nChain (press release), 2 May 2017. (archive)
[←186]
“Craig Wright at the 2017 Future of Bitcoin Conference”. YouTube. Quote at 1:14:38: “I’m a pariah. I am an evil person that some people like to call fraud. Some of those are going to discover the legal consequences very cert– ah, sure … well, I won’t say exactly when, and I won’t say who quite yet, but they’re coming.”
[←187]
Peter Todd (@petertoddbtc). “If that scammer tries to sue me I’m going to lol so hard…” Twitter, 30 June 2017.
[←188]
Kristy Kruithof, Judith Aldridge, David Décary Hétu, Megan Sim, Elma Dujso, Stijn Hoorens. “Internet-facilitated drugs trade: An analysis of the size, scope and the role of the Netherlands”. Rand Corporation, 2016.
[←189]
Herb Weisbaum. “Ransomware: Now a Billion Dollar a Year Crime and Growing”. NBC News, 9 January 2017.
[←190]
“Frequently Asked Questions: Find answers to recurring questions and myths about Bitcoin”. bitcoin.org. (Archive of 29 July 2015; archive of 4 August 2015; archive of 7 August 2015.)
[←191]
Giuseppe Pappalardo, T. Di Matteo, Guido Caldarelli, Tomaso Aste. “Blockchain Inefficiency in the Bitcoin Peers Network”. arXiv:1704.01414, 5 April 2017.
[←192]
45sbvad. “Stress Test Recap”. Reddit /r/bitcoin, 30 May 2015. Graph.
[←193]
“Bitcoin Network Capacity Analysis – Part 5: Stress Test Analysis”. TradeBlock, 16 June 2015. (archive)
[←194]
Jacob Donnelly. “Updated: Bitcoin Network Still Backlogged With Tens of Thousands of Unconfirmed Transactions, Causing Delays”. Bitcoin Magazine, 7 July 2015. (archive)
[←195]
Grace Caffyn. “Bitcoin Node Numbers Fall After Spam Transaction ‘Attack’”. CoinDesk, 15 October 2015.
[←196]
Jordan Pearson. “Is Bitcoin Under Attack?” Motherboard, 1 March 2016.
[←197]
Izabella Kaminska. “The currency of the future has a settlement problem”. FT Alphaville (blog), Financial Times, 17 May 2017.
[←198]
Nathaniel Popper. “A Bitcoin Believer’s Crisis of Faith”. New York Times, 14 January 2016.
[←199]
Rand Corporation’s estimate of the darknet drug market as $14.2m in January 2016 would make it $170m/year; the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimated the whole global illegal drug market at $321.6 billion in 2003, and presumably more now. All these figures are extremely rubbery (which may be why the latest global figure is from 2003), but “less than 0.1%” seems a safe statement. “World Drug Report 2005: Volume 1: Analysis”. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. p. 127. ISBN 92-1-148200-3.
[←200]
Kyle Soska, Nicolas Christin. “Measuring the Longitudinal Evolution of the Online Anonymous Marketplace Ecosystem”. Proceedings of the 24th USENIX Security Symposium, 12-14 August 2015.
[←201]
Gwern Branwen. “Dark Net Market archives, 2011-2015”. Internet Archive, 12 July 2015.
[←202]
Gwern Branwen. “Black-Market Archives”. 1 December 2013, updated 3 November 2016.
[←203]
Andy Greenberg. “The Silk Road’s Dark-Web Dream is Dead”. Wired, 14 January 2016.
[←204]
AlphaBay_mod. “AlphaBay will add Ethereum to its payment options”. Reddit /r/alphabaymarket, 18 March 2017.
[←205]
“Extortion virus code gets cracked”. BBC News, 1 June 2006.
[←206]
“Why the police virus was so effective”. PC Advisor, 26 February 2013.
[←207]
“New Ransomware Study Explores ‘Customer Journey’ of Getting Your Files Back”. F-Secure, 18 July 2016.
[←208]
“Ransomware risk could cripple British businesses with many not ready, while others stockpiling bitcoins to pay up”. Citrix (press release), June
2016.
[←209]
Chris Mayers. “Ransomware in the UK: One year on”. Citrix blog, 6 June 2017. Citrix give the questions and sample selection criteria in the comments.
[←210]
“Incidents of Ransomware on the Rise: Protect Yourself and Your Organization”. FBI, 29 April 2016.
[←211]
“Telstra Cyber Security Report 2017”. Telstra, 30 March 2017.
[←212]
According to an NHS IT worker I know, who spent his Saturday reimaging PCs.
[←213]
Jemina Kelly. “Bitcoin’s murkier rivals line up to displace it as cybercriminals’ favourite”. Reuters, 18 May 2017.
[←214]
Fahmida Y. Rashid. “How to tell if you’ve been hit by fake ransomware”. InfoWorld, 29 April 2016.
[←215]
“Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Charges Against Two Florida Men for Operating an Underground Bitcoin Exchange”. FBI (press release), 21 July 2015.