No idea about the novel - other than it being Libertarian. But hearing from Hal's early contemporaries that he was deeply into the novel seems something that we can't overlook.
With Hal being heavily into cryptography, being Satoshi's 'first contact' and heavily into Libertarianism - it's difficult not to believe that Hal wasn't Satoshi.
They do remember Finney as an unusually intelligent and thoughtful student, who at times carried around an impressively large copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and seemed to have adopted its lessons about libertarian free thinking. Friends recall him quietly sitting in the back of a physics class, only to approach the teacher afterwards to correct an error or suggest a better way of articulating a problem. At math team competitions, Finney would ring in with an answer to most questions before they’d been fully asked. In 1974, his senior year, he was voted “most brains” by his peers.
The book has been a political hot iron since it was written. There is nothing in it that should be so controversial. It's a good story which espouses individualism and self reliance. I think statists hated the idea of judging yourself by your own standards of excellence rather than worshipping standards of the collective. The fact that Hal loved it makes me respect him even more, if that's possible. Don't discount misogyny either. Ayn Rand was an intellectual powerhouse who terrified male socialists.
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Yep, she terrified them. She escaped the Soviet Union under a fake name. She's a fascinating person for sure. One that truly understood the evil that is socialism.
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Agreed - responding "no comment" to this post should tell you everything you need to know
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I have opinions about the book - I’m just not going to debate them here. I actually had someone in my face (on Saturday) fronting up to me over it.
Suffice to say I am impressed Hal Finney held it in high regard as it is a worthy read.
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And I want to add that @carlosfandango and I can disagree about politics all we want, and in the end come together as hodlers. This world needs more civilized airing of differences. And, we both like the snail.
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Respect to you @siggy47
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Agreed, no disrespect to the snail
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You're not talking about escargot there are ya...
I'm guessing CFD is the dude who posts the $100,000 snail every day?
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I love the laser eyed snail but it’s @orthwyrm who posts it. I just like to encourage him.
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This is turning into one big snail lovefest!
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Yes, I enjoy your attempts to beat @orthwyrm to the punch at 6:00am est.
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I am literally piggy backing a snail lol
Heck, just realized. We've got snails AND earthworms now!
What my kids want to know is, what happens after $100k...?
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Well, the snail doesn’t have to come to the party anymore…
no, that would be @orthwyrm
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Thanks for the input @BBitcoinUSA. Now I'm on tenterhooks about the snail story...
C'mon @siggy47, spill da beans. I'm obviously outta the loop.
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I have the copy that I read (and flipped my worldview upside down) framed, hanging on the wall of my office.
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I wouldnt say it flipped my world view because I was already a Ron Paul fan by the time I read it but it did open my mind and make me think.
I really think people rail on Rand so much because she was so brilliant and persuasive. She had a beautiful mind.
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Ron Paul's son is named Rand! Enough said.
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hal calculated bitcoin's value based on 20 million not 21 million one week aver it was released
how could he know 1 million would be locked as a honeypot canary for bitcoin's security https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10152.html
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Great. Thanks for adding the link. I was just about to ask you for one.
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in my opinion that was the only time he slipped up as "satoshi" and it was only a week in. after that he maintained the dual personality pseudonym perfectly
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Wow. I know a lot of people over the years have claimed that Hal is Satoshi, but I didn't know there was proof of it. Never saw anyone mentioning this message. Thanks for posting this.
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Playing Devil's Advocate for a mo: $200 trillion divided by 20,000,000 is easier to work out than $200 trillion divided by 21,000,000
But I prefer your hypothesis.
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As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world. Then the total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With 20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.
So the possibility of generating coins today with a few cents of compute time may be quite a good bet, with a payoff of something like 100 million to 1! Even if the odds of Bitcoin succeeding to this degree are slim, are they really 100 million to one against? Something to think about...
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It might just be an interesting coincidence but it is suspicious. 1. Hal is very smart. 2. Hal might've noticed coins would get lost, or that some would simply never move. 3. 1 million coins lost is the number he might've approximated.
Or he's Satoshi and had been pondering this very piece of the puzzle that is building a coherent bitcoin version 1 .
Interesting
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Atlas Shrugged is great, though it's a bit of a tough read...it's dang long. I enjoyed The Fountainhead even more because of readability. The premise of the book is the same. For anyone pressed for time, read Anthem. It's essentially the short version of Atlas Shrugged, only a 100 pages or so...a little weird, but I enjoyed it.
For anyone really wanting to sit back and take it in, watch the graphic novel version, which is actually really good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty9CHMYD8BI
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Thank you for the video suggestion!
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Great. Thanks for your recommendations.
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It’s worth a read but as a book can be quite devisive… no comment.
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Yeah, I'd heard that too...
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Just finished this book. It's a must read for everyone, particularly the BTC/NOSTR crowd with their already libertarian leanings. Written in 1957 yet perfectly describes what's going on in today's society, prescient to say the least. I feel like BTC/NOSTR represents a kind of Galt's Gulch and I have to say how grateful I am for the likes of Satoshi and Finney for being the John Galt's/ Francisco D'Anconios of the world for building the ark we're all going to need more and more in the future. I know it's a long read but seriously everyone give it a go.
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Rand was not a libertarian for the record. She had her own philosophy. Objectivism.
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This is neither meant as a complement or slight. Everyone should read this book if only to understand one of the most influential books in the last 100 years. The number of businesses with names from her book is interesting alone. I read the book many years ago after hear so many rail against it. Wanted to see for myself what the big fuss was about.
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Great book, heard at one time it was ranked by the library of congress as the 2nd most influential book of all time, next to the Holy Bible
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I had to look that up. Your memory serves your right: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064517537/the-monster-of-we
From the NPR article of the respective episode: Are most modern problems caused by selfishness or a lack of it? Ayn Rand, a Russian American philosopher and writer, would say it's the latter — that selfishness is not a vice but a virtue — and that capitalism is the ideal system. Everyone from Donald Trump, to Alan Greenspan, to Brad Pitt have sung Ayn Rand's praises. The Library of Congress named her novel Atlas Shrugged the second most influential book in the U.S. after the Bible. Ayn Rand wasn't politically correct, she was belligerent and liked going against the grain. And although she lived by the doctrine of her own greatness, she was driven by the fear that she would never be good enough.
In this episode, historian Jennifer Burns will guide us through Rand's evolution and how she eventually reshaped American politics, becoming what Burns calls "a gateway drug to life on the right."
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If you want a good laugh go to YouTube and watch Rand's interviews with Donahue. I'm not a follower of her philosophy but the fact that academic types despise her is telling. Her novella Anthem is my favorite though.
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Excellent choice posting this. It's been a while since I watched one of her interviews.
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Agree Anthem is her best
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Who is John Galt...?
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Indeed
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I get the reference. But, thanks to you, I just went down a whole new (weird) rabbit hole: https://www.galtsgulchchile.com/
Probably best to keep with El Salvador.
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I believe he wasn't Satoshi. It's not difficult.
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Bitcoin Audible covers some of her work, great listen:
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Is he Satoshi? "But in following the clues that led me to Finney, I found something equally significant: a dying man who had been something like a far-more-brilliant Forrest Gump of cryptographic history: a witness to and participant in practically every important moment in the recent history of secret-keeping technologies."
Seems possible. Somebody like that, someone that capable, with such a brilliant mind, able to see so far in to things, might not need to take credit for all their successes. Hal was familiar with the benefits of anonymity, he would've known absolute secrecy was for the best.
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Unsurprisingly, Finney is one of the most popular candidates for Satoshi, though this implies that Finney faked his extensive email interactions with Satoshi and simultaneously contributed to Bitcoin under both his real name and a separate fake identity. Finney would also continue to work on Bitcoin well after Satoshi had “moved on” in 2011.
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