Depending on your perspective this profile could seem more or less compelling than the last one, but either way it's nowhere near conclusive. Fortunately unlike the Newsweek article, this one doesn't try to claim it is conclusive.
Personally I do think the creator should be unmasked. This person stands to profit hugely from BitCoin's adoption and continued use. I want to know if they really are doing it for eventual personal financial gain or not. And what kind of person they are, how the massive amount of money they gain will be used. Maybe Satoshi was a secret CIA project all along and the government will use the huge BitCoin stash to fund black ops that we'd rather not have happen. Maybe it was similar but the KGB instead. Maybe it was some lone hacker or group of hackers like Mr. Szabo, and they threw away the keys. Or maybe they didn't throw away the keys but they will just eventually split it up and give the money to their children. There's lots of good and bad possibilities, none of which we know until the identity of Satoshi is revealed.
Personally, I have always been skeptical of BitCoin. There's no reason why it should be the crypto currency. If cryptocurrencies do take off as more than just a toy for libertarians and rich technophiles, then governments will start their own fork and decree that these are the official cryptocurrencies of their nations, and all others are junk. Over night the value of BitCoin will plummet, because the wider population will choose the government backed one.
Governments all believe that the supply of money must be managed for the sake of the economy. This might be true, but any currency built on this belief will be valued lower than a fixed-supply currency.
It's hard to create and distribute a new currency, and convince people that it's worth something. Bitcoin has done that, and it will be hard for even governments to convince people that there's a better option.
It is extremely easy for a government to convince people to use their new currency, they already do it just by enforcing tax payments be paid in their local fiat currencies.
1. Bills are introduced every session in just about every state for any crazy thing you can think of. And most of them die a quiet death, because they never had a chance to begin with.
2. States don't have their own currencies, so other than the ease of use of US Dollars, they really wouldn't care what you pay your taxes in, so long as they can use it.
That's true but not very meaningful. Imagine the difference if only US citizens would take USD (and only so much of it) instead of it generally being preferred world-wide.
So yes, a government could set up an e-currency and make us use it, but there's no way a government could (intentionally) set up a currency like bitcoin. Truly algorithmic e-currency is fundamentally incompatible with the concept of governing. Anything by a government would allow reversals, currency injections, invisible transactions, etc.
Give an example. The fiat currencies that people actually save in have a direct lineage from gold, or are linked to such a currency by monetary policy. Tax value alone has never given a new currency stable value.
> The fiat currencies that people actually save in have a direct lineage from gold
(1) What difference does "direct lineage" have? They aren't gold, and they aren't backed by gold. Unless you arguing that they have sentimental value from a historical association that hasn't been real for generations, this is meaningless.
(2) Also, this is more true of silver than it is of gold. the gold standard was sort of a brief fad (in long-term historical terms) in the final centuries of commodity currency standards as the dominant model, while silver had dominated for a much longer time previously. Pretty much all of the extant currencies that have a "direct lineage from gold" also have a direct lineage from silver, and the ones that aren't themselves relatively new have a much longer history under silver.
The direct lineage matters because my point was that it's hard to convince people that a new currency is worth something. It's easy if you promise to redeem it for something people already value.
> It's hard to create and distribute a new currency, and convince people that it's worth something.
I don't buy this premise. Lots of online games have also done this. They do this by finding a target audience and hooking them in, and then saying "If you want more you have to pay."
BitCoin just targeted libertarians. People have made other BitCoin forks for other audiences. Granted none of them took off like BitCoin, but that's because they were all pretty much jokes targeted at a small niche.
Bitcoin's political alignments are a distraction and I encourage you to ignore them if your goal is to understand what's happening in the world.
No one buys game currencies to hold. They buy them to spend. If you don't understand why people are excited about Bitcoin, you should go find out. It's a trustless database in the sky, and that sort of thing wasn't possible before 2009. New technologies make old analogies misleading.
This is actually not true. But I'm not going to get into it since you don't think BitCoin's political alignments are relevant, and you are talking down to me at the same time.
Those who trust their governments already use government-issued money. Nothing will change. Bitcoin made for those who don't think that government should be able to control money.
I realize that's who made it and initially adopted it and currently uses it. But lots of BitCoin fans talk about it being adopted more universally. Which is what I was referring to being unlikely.
There is no way back to fiat from cryptoCurrencies. They work 24/7 with minimal overheads. Technology has disintermediated a lot of other industries, why do you think it wont do so for banking (other than your cultural beliefs)?
While the $200 million worth of bitcoin sited in the article is certainly a lot of money, in a world with at least 1,800 billionaires in it, all open enough to be identified by Forbes, it can't really be called a "massive" amount.
Libertarian junkie here; government don't need a bitcoin clone because if they want to control it then all inventive tech in bitcoin is unnecessary and if they don't want to control it they can just use bitcoin.
>> "That item, in May 2011, was one of the last posts Mr. Szabo made before he went on a lengthy hiatus to work, he said later, on a new concept he called temporal programming."
Anyone know what 'temporal programming' refers to? Sounds intriguing.
My personal bet is that Satoshi Nakamoto is probably the creation of a security agency. Bitcoin has done wonders for illuminating vast swathes of the black market, especially for anyone with a good network overview.
Hmm, I'm not so sure. If anything, it seems to me that bitcoin has actually been quite a boon for the viability of darknet markets; certainly the silk road would have never risen to such heights were it not for bitcoin, and as far as I'm aware, bitcoin itself has never actually played a direct role in helping to identify darknet kingpins (who end up tipping their hand in some other fashion). Honestly, I'd say darknet markets are the only place where bitcoin is genuinely useful.
More importantly: if Bitcoin was invented and released for that reason, then it will turn out to be one of the more epic backfires in security agency history, for the simple reason that everyone involved knows that inventing the first successful distributed pseudonymous e-cash is much, much harder than inventing the first successful distributed anonymous e-cash.
As soon as Bitcoin became clearly successful, it also became inevitable that things like Monero or Zerocoin or Coinjoin would be invented. Once the genie of distributed e-cash has been let out of the bottle, it not merely can evolve but will evolve.
So in exchange for a brief period of visibility through Bitcoin, they would have permanently and irrevocably damaged their ability to spy via banks, Western Union, PayPal etc (entities which they pwn lock stock and barrel) as usage diverts to anonymous currencies (Bitcoin with extensions or mixes, or anonymous coins).
>everyone involved knows that inventing the first successful distributed pseudonymous e-cash is much, much harder than inventing the first successful distributed anonymous e-cash
Assuming "much, much harder" isn't hyperbole, could you elaborate on this please? I'm interested in the tech aspect. The existing anonymous solutions I've looked at are all more complex and difficult to grasp than the simplicity of bitcoin's global ledger.
What I'm saying is that before Bitcoin no one had a good idea for a distributed e-cash which met the basic criteria of no trusted third parties. Given such a system, then you can fairly easily imagine building an anonymity layer on top of it: if nothing else, to name only the very most obvious solution, people can use a mixer service hosted on a Tor hidden service. The jump from ???->Bitcoin is much bigger than Bitcoin->Bitcoin+Tor, and with a working system, one can go back and look at all the fancy anonymity-related math and ideas which had been published or speculated about in the past and see which can be added in, and dollars to donuts, at least one will work and that's all you need. Any group smart enough to invent Bitcoin would be able to foresee that at some point, anonymous currency would follow as a consequence and I believe Satoshi said as much somewhere (although I don't have a quote on hand).
But it will. The journal contains connections, just like facebook, between every miner, buyer, and seller ever. If you make a new wallet and transfer your coins there, it's recorded. If you buy some on the street for cash from some guy, it's recorded. You don't always know the details, but you always know the connection.
Cash, laundering, shell corps; they have none of these properties.
I don't see why parallel construction would be necessary in the case of bitcoin. Investigators can legally subpoena the records of bitcoin payment gateways/exchanges (that's the entire point of KYC procedures) and then easily link bank records to wallet addresses on the public ledger without violating any laws. It's also a well known fact that this is already possible (hence the creation of tumblers etc), so it's not as if the government would hesitate to do this for fear that the technique would be compromised.
It's not about violating laws. It's about not letting the enemy know when you've cracked their system. If bitcoin was setup (or is just being conveniently used) by a three letter, they will use parallel construction to avoid letting the public know their true capabilities. Popularity of bitcoin would plummet if that capabilty was known.
> they will use parallel construction to avoid letting the public know their true capabilities.
As I already stated, parallel construction is completely unnecessary since everyone is already aware that the blockchain is a comprehensive public record of all bitcoin transactions. What secret technique could the government have that could give them more information than is already available for everyone to see? There isn't any more information beyond what's inside the ledger except for the link between wallet and bank account which everyone knows the government is capable of establishing.
It's not about a secret technique. It's about whether or not they are in fact using the blockchain for this purpose. That little detail is presently unknown by the public, regardless if "everyone knows" they should be capable. If they do not wish to confirm this in public then parallel construction will be necessary to maintain that unknowing.
If we're throwing out evil schemes, maybe they created Bitcoin in order to build a big scary black market that they could point to as a reason they need more funding and less oversight.
Hey, look at all this bad stuff! We need more money to fight it! Also, we can't tell you what we're doing to fight it, because then it wouldn't work, so just trust us, ok?
*Note: I don't actually believe this, and I don't own a tinfoil hat. Just an amusing thought.
It's nothing like a submarine piece. It has original reporting, no clear endorsement of any company (not even Vaurum). This is original reporting, don't discount it just because it doesn't go so far as to make crazy certainties about the identify of Satoshi.
Nobody writes a submarine piece and goes to bitcoin conferences.
>Furthermore, George Washington University says that despite widespread reports that Mr. Szabo worked as a law professor at the school, it has no records of his ever working there in that capacity. The university did confirm, though, that he received a law degree from the school in 2006.
Why would something like that need to be a a 'widely held belief' -- aren't faculty easily identifiable i.e. listed on their website, or confirmed via a phone call?
It seems odd to me that many bitcoin supporters consider Satoshi's pre-mined coins to be a personal security risk (to the tune of $200 million), but simultaneously refuse to hold that fact against bitcoin even though "pre-mined" is a common pejorative used to criticize altcoins.
That's a fair point, but it doesn't seem like there's much of a practical difference in terms of user apprehension related to the consequences of pre-mining (namely, that the creator controls a gigantic sum of coins at close to zero cost)
It's a problem of fairness. Satoshi released Bitcoin publicly and only then began mining coins, just like everyone else was potentially able to do. It's hard to begrudge him from using his own invention, after all! Whereas pre-mined cryptocurrencies make others feel cheated.
I understand the fairness argument, but I wonder where the line is drawn between pre-mine and low-key release. Just releasing the client doesn't seem like it'd be enough to evade criticism if the practical effect is the same as a pre-mine (i.e the creator gets a huge head start before people start to catch on).
Before Satoshi's invention the concept of pre-mining didn't exist. I think the inventor of the worlds first decentralised currency is allowed to do whatever he wants. If you dont like it, make your own currency and stop bickering.
Huh? Of course he is allowed to do whatever he wants, the nature of Satoshi's prerogatives are not in question here. My point is that there's very little practical difference between pre-mining and early-mining during a time when the currency is basically unknown. It's not as if it's a trivial amount of coins either, Satoshi's stash completely dwarfs the holdings of every bitcoin user that has come after him, so it's hard to just write it off as blockchain finder's fee.
I like how you think that creating bitcoin was no work at all. Look at where it is now, isn't that a bit like mark Zuckerberg making a large fortune from creating Facebook? And they were not zero cost, initially they would have expense to make something that had no value. Only because he has the coins is bitcoin worth anything , he has them because the network required a miner, he turned them off when there was a stable network that didn't need his mining power,i
> I like how you think that creating bitcoin was no work at all.
I never said or implied that.
> isn't that a bit like mark Zuckerberg making a large fortune from creating Facebook?
Facebook is a company, Zuckerberg made a large fortune because investors and advertisers gave money directly to his company.
> And they were not zero cost, initially they would have expense to make something that had no value.
I said close to zero; the point being that pre-miners and Satoshi put in a negligible amount of computational effort relative to the payoff, especially when you consider the staggering sum of coins mined.
> he turned them off when there was a stable network that didn't need his mining power
I'm not trying to judge Satoshi's intentions or values, though it's pretty obvious that continuing to amass even larger sums of bitcoin wouldn't have made the community very comfortable. Still, 5% of the entire money supply seems pretty significant for a currency that's the ostensible future of money.
> Satoshi put in a negligible amount of computational effort relative to the payoff
Yes but he put in a metric fuck ton of work imagining and coding bitcoin. Comparing bitcoin to a pre-mined alt-coin is disingenous. Bitcoin is different because it came first, it needed those coins to be mined for the network to exist. Alt-coins that were pre-mined were pre-mined specificaly to create an advantage for the author of the system after seein the success of bitcoin.
Satoshi cannot be said with having done this. He didnt know the success that would follow on from his experiment and he didnt pre-mine, he just made up a large part of the network in the early days.
> or if PGP is broken by then we will never know for sure.
Unless they have already put encrypted messages into the existing blockchain using different algos with such a signed message- Then they could use another signature to prove they signed the message with PGP before PGP was broken.
No need to do that. Satoshi has bitcoin in the blockchain already that he or she may have secp256k1 keypairs for. Being able to spend these coins would be proof enough.
It's referencing a person that goes by gwern. Who that is, I haven't fully gathered. He is talked about a lot (and active) on /r/bitcoin and has had some popular Satoshi related answers on Quora. Seems to get a lot of respect (that is likely his website).
so... it would be a ploy by an early version of Winterm.. I mean IBM's Watson, who is using bitcoin-laundered money to bootstrap itself into a weird-art-making godlike IA?
Yes. I don't think it's been reported that Nick Szabo has been involved in any BitCoin startup, let alone an exchange called "Vaurum" / "Mirror." Credit to the guy: in the world of the Internet where perfect privacy is nearly impossible, not so much as a picture of him has surfaced. Or, well, until recently; if you do a Google Search of his name one of the photos seems similar (sans beard) to the physical description of him in this article.
Despite this, he has to this day remained an extraordinarily secretive individual, while being widely suspected to be the creator of BTC. Looks like all that practice (http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/10/msg00759.html) paid off.
I'm still not convinced that the name "Nick Szabo" itself isn't a pseudonym... how would the reporter know? It's not like "Nick" is going to show them his passport or anything...
>Mr. Szabo’s was unavailable for comment. Furthermore, George Washington University says that despite widespread reports that Mr. Szabo worked as a law professor at the school, it has no records of his ever working there in that capacity. The university did confirm, though, that he received a law degree from the school in 2006.
Yes, but there's several people out there with that name... What I really wonder is whether any reporter was able to get GWU to supply them with a photo of the "GWU Nick Szabo" to confirm it's the same person.
That fact that he claimed on his blog to have a degree from GMU, and said that he was going to get one "soon" in 2006 (see https://web.archive.org/web/20060329122426/http://unenumerat...) implies that it was him, and presuming you can't get into college with a fake name, then that's his real name.
Nothing to do with this case, but that makes me wonder if it is possible to get a college degree with a fake name. Assuming you don't have any federal assistance or loans, would you need a SSN? Even if you do, would the school actually run it through any system that would verify it, or do they just keep it in their system as an identifier? If the latter, you could just provide a made-up SSN, and as long as nobody comes along and applies to the school with the same number, it may never be discovered.
I always thought the biggest downside to dropping your life, changing your name, and trying to start over would be the inability to get a college-requiring job, but maybe it would be a possibility. (Like a witness protection program, without the federal support)
>An encouraging fact undocumented students should keep in mind when considering college: No federal law requires proof of citizenship to be admitted to U.S. colleges. Most institutions set their own admission policies.
You'd still need a high school diploma or equivalent to get into a good college, and those may require ID, or at least keeping up the fake since you were a teen. For Szabo, if he really is a fake name and got a high school diploma with it, I'd say he deserves us not knowing.
Very interesting. I expect you could at least get into a community college as an adult with no HS equivalent, by taking their placement tests. Then you could use a transcript from that school to get into a better 4 year school, and possibly use your degree there to get into a solid graduate program if you desired.
You could probably get the same kind of IDs that undocumented residents get in order to get a driver's license. So, no SSN, but a number for tax and identification purposes.
He has an undergraduate degree in computer science from University of Washington and a law degree from George Washington University in D.C. (not George Mason University), according to the New York Times.
I don't think so, to be honest. The context is important and, atleast to me, it seems he makes a difference between "Nick Szabo" and his pseudonyms, here:
Another big problem I see with pseudonymous reputations
is entry. If most people are blocking posts from new pseudonyms, how does one get a new reputation stablished? I've had several years to establish a net.reputation for "Nick Szabo", and it might take a long time for any of my pseudonyms to catch up.
The article describes him as a 'large' man - http://i.imgur.com/6l3rImj.png is a candidate, pre-beard, almost two decades younger (allegedly from a 1997 talk.) I wouldn't say it's definitely him - just a possibility.
No, sorry--I'm not deep enough into this speculation to have heard of Nick Szabo. I didn't read your mind to know that your level of knowledge is far greater than mine on the topic.
I just previously read the Wired piece that profiled the wrong man, and the ensuing discussion here.
A normative statement isn't necessarily an attempt to censor someone. You can be for someone having a class of freedoms, which includes the freedom to do things you don't approve of, while disapproving of the manner in which they choose to exercise that freedom.
I am not sure we do have a right to privacy in some generic sense. We have a right to privacy in certain very well defined situations and not in others
So...what right is that? I mean, specifically, in case law? When people do something that causes a substantial effect in the public sphere, they are seen as (at the very least) as a "limited public figure" and in the U.S., journalists have a large amount of protection in the freedom to report on such people.
That's not a right to privacy...at least as precedent is concerned. Once you've done something that has a public impact, or even, involved in something that is now in the public attention, a U.S. news organization can make the case that information about you is of public interest.
Take the Amtrak engineer in the recent Philadelphia crash...as far as I can tell, he most definitely would like to remain out of the spotlight. Yet, because he happened to be the engineer at the time of the crash -- whether or not we know that he directly or even indirectly contributed to the crash -- news orgs have some legal protection in scrutinizing his life, including where he went to school, his job history, and any public social media postings.
Sometimes privacy is accorded out of tradition or convention...for example, the identity of a rape victim who is testifying in a court case is public information, though it is rarely reported except under special circumstances. But in this case, the victim did not intentionally put themselves in this position of public interest, but because court cases are considered to be important for the public to know about, the victim's identity is considered public information.
It should be said that nothing is completely cut and dry, there's always a tension between the public's right to know and privacy. But the right of privacy is usually afforded to victims and for people whom public exposure would cause greater harm than censorship -- i.e. the identity of witnesses in a state case. Bitcoin's creator does not seem to fall into this category.
>Once you've done something that has a public impact, or even, involved in something that is now in the public attention, a U.S. news organization can make the case that information about you is of public interest.
Except there isn't evidence that this guy is Satoshi. So there isn't evidence that he is a public figure.
Also, choosing not to reveal someone's identity is not censorship.
No he doesn't (legally speaking, which I assume is the framework you're adopting based on your use of the term "public figure"). It's totally legal to report facts or opinions about random people. Standards for libel and the burden of proof are different but truth is still a defense.
this is free speech - as long as no one gets arrested for expressing an opinion. Free speech doesn't mean no one gets to disagree with you in a public forum.
I never said it was, and I never asked amyjess not to express his opinion, I was just pointing out that screaming against censorship is completely irrelevant with the parent post, I tough this was pretty clear.
The charitable explanation is that they don't pay attention to usernames (I'm guilty of this too) and default to male pronouns for everyone.
The sinister explanation is that they dug through my post history, saw that I'm trans (I'm very open about it, and in fact I've been discussing my name change in another thread this morning), and decided to misgender me either out of bigotry or just to be hurtful.
juliangregorian I can't reply to your comment so I reply here: I didn't even read the name, I'm not interested gender when I talk to someone online I just defaulted into "his". Was just a curiosity or are you implying I'm being sexist?
Bullshit, you typed out the name, so I know you definitely read it. And yeah, defaulting to 'his' is exactly sexist (it's a rather mild form of it, but still).
> Bullshit, you typed out the name, so I know you definitely read it.
You can cut and past the name from the header of a post without reading it, and without typing it out.
> And yeah, defaulting to 'his' is exactly sexist (it's a rather mild form of it, but still).
Adherence to the English convention of using the masculine grammatical gender for subjects of unknown sex/gender identity might bother some readers, but is only "sexist" by an understanding of sexism that trivializes the term and robs it of substantial meaning.
> You can cut and past the name from the header of a post without reading it, and without typing it out.
Oh really. We are talking about four words here. So are we squinting or something, because you have to be illiterate to not read that incidentally.
> Adherence to the English convention of using the masculine grammatical gender for subjects of unknown sex/gender identity might bother some readers, but is only "sexist" by an understanding of sexism that trivializes the term and robs it of substantial meaning.
Oh brother. Nope, you're the one redefining. See the myriad examples of "avoiding sexist language" style guides. Just because someone isn't getting raped doesn't mean there's no sexism.
you idiot why would I lie? I exactly did that, it's a small word I know but I can't be bothered, also when I code, I always copy paste even small variables, is that a problem for you? son't assume stuff that you have no fucking clue. Anyway why would I trust a nickname to get the gender?
>Oh brother. Nope, you're the one redefining. See the myriad examples of "avoiding sexist language" style guides.
do you whitch hunt everyine that use the wrong word? get a grip
when I talk to people on the phone they always get my gender wrong, I don't correct them because I really couldn't care less,
I was operating under the assumption that you were either lying or really dumb, but you've been fairly effective in convincing me of the latter, so... congratulations?
oh thank you! I really needed your approval, dear nobody on the internet
seriously don't you think all this is too much, just because i used a "his" and not reading a username? I admit that I shouldn't have call you idiot, I just get annoyed by the way you expressed your opinion.
> If a kidnapper knew of Nick's whereabouts, he could be tortured for days in the privacy of his own home before finally giving up the $200MM.
This hypothetical kidnapper could do exactly the same thing to anyone. Bitcoin is not a necessary component. The details of how he carried it out would just differ.
Either way, torturing a semi-public figure for days in his own home and then stealing $200 million worth of Bitcoins sounds like a guaranteed way to get caught and go to prison, unless nobody would notice him missing (I suppose he'll have to kill him, too) and the thief never, ever sells the Bitcoins.
This hypothetical kidnapper doesn't need to track down Szabo, he could go after any rich person and extort them.
2. putting them for sale on an exchange would crash the market,
3. and when everyone found out that Bitcoins were stolen from Satoshi, I suspect the Bitcoin community would rally together to hunt the person down, while blacklisting the transactions to make them unspendable (also to prevent a crash of the Bitcoin market).
All of this is silly though, anyone with that many Bitcoin should protect them with muiltisig[0] and make one of the parties to the multisig their attorney. Failing that Satoshi could just secret share his private key[1]. Certainly people unfamiliar with the details of Bitcoin may not take such precautions but Satoshi is not a member of that set.
Never underestimate human stupidity, but a rational criminal has much better risk-rewards ratio to choose them. A discussion of how Satoshi can and probably does protect his or her Bitcoin should reduce the risks of such a crime.
They couldn't blacklist those coins without completely undermining confidence in Bitcoin itself. The same discussion came about with the coins that were confiscated by DPR.
Not quite. Gold imposes physical constraints and attendant risks that bitcoin doesn't: gold is heavy, and you have to store it someplace physical. If the location of your hiding place is discovered, it's hard to move. And you have to be physically present to accept the initial delivery. None of these are true for bitcoin. For the kidnapping scenario you still have to take physical risks, but once that is accomplished the extortion itself can be conducted form the comfort of your living room, wherever that may happen to be.
Gold is heavy, but not traceable (at least with a little bit of effort--melt it down and re-cast, you'll never trace it!). You wouldn't be able to do anything with Satoshi's stolen BTC.
This article should result in huge court settlements payed by NYTimes to Mr. Szabo. They are literally putting his life and life of his family in danger.
> They are literally putting his life and life of his family in danger.
The world is filled with millionaires and billionaires who are publicly known and yet perfectly safe, even though the vast majority of them don't have security guards or anything like that.
Why do you think things would be different for the creator of Bitcoin? The reality is that very few criminals are of the take-hostages-and-murder type in the first place and murdering or stealing from a semi-famous rich person is a surefire way to get caught, especially when Bitcoins are traceable in a way that cash is not. You might as well break in and steal a Picasso painting from some other millionaire.
There are lots of people who want to remain private and unknown; the best (though not guaranteed) way is to not do anything worthy of the public notice. If you do, you should expect some scrutiny. So while I sympathize with Szabo, I don't feel very sorry for him. He pursued his dream of working on cryptocurrency (whether or not he is Satoshi) and this is a perfectly reasonable and predictable consequence of that dream.
Things are different in third-world countries, but at least in the US, the rich person with 24/7 security is a rare beast. Go look for yourself and drive through some wealthy neighborhoods. They have alarm systems like us plebians, not bodyguards.
There are certainly exceptions, for the super-rich and some kinds of celebrities, but it's not very common.
Well, if we are including all millionaires, I doubt the majority of them have a security detail, as that would eat into a million fairly quickly unless you underpay them, in which case you are probably increasing your risk.
Those millionaires and billionaires by and large do not have large piles of untraceable money sitting around. Killing them wouldn't enrich the killer appreciably. Satoshi, whoever he is, does have a large pile of what may be untraceable money though. There is a world of difference between him and the others.
> Those millionaires and billionaires by and large do not have large piles of untraceable money sitting around.
Neither does Szabo. What Bitcoins he has are traceable and they are not just sitting around. The usual imagination is that someone would threat/torture and kill him and his family to get his keys, but that's extremely high profile and risky and works just as well for normally wealthy people. (Send your wife to take out one million dollars cash from the bank or I'll kill your children!)
> Satoshi, whoever he is, does have a large pile of what may be untraceable money though.
How would it be untraceable? Bitcoin, unlike cash, is very traceable.
Szabo's situation is not at all different from anybody else who is wealthy.
Nick Szabo has been ID'd repeatedly as the most likely author of BitCoin by various attempts to discover Satoshi's identity, and this article does not do anything more than that. Yet he remains stubbornly alive!
Why wouldn't this be protected speech under the first amendment? As long as the newspaper believes it to be true, why wouldn't they be allowed to publish it?
I don't think this is nearly the case here, but to answer your question publication of false information with "reckless disregard" for it's truth or falsity is also actionable under New York Times v. Sullivan. NYT does not have to believe it to be false to have First Amendment protections stripped.
Also his blog: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/