Bitcoin Inventor Satoshi Nakamoto Nominated For Nobel Prize 153
HughPickens.com writes: Nobel Prizes are given for making important — preferably fundamental — breakthroughs in the realm of ideas. That's just what Satoshi Nakamoto has done, according to Bhagwan Chowdhry, a professor of finance at UCLA. Chowdhry has nominated Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, for a Nobel prize in economics. The Prize Committee for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, popularly known as the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, has invited Chowdhry to nominate someone for the 2016 Prize. He started thinking about whose ideas are likely to have a disruptive influence in the twenty first century: "The invention of bitcoin — a digital currency — is nothing short of revolutionary," says Chowdhry. "It offers many advantages over both physical and paper currencies. It is secure, relying on almost unbreakable cryptographic code, can be divided into millions of smaller sub-units, and can be transferred securely and nearly instantaneously from one person to any other person in the world with access to internet bypassing governments, central banks and financial intermediaries." Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin Protocol has also spawned exciting innovations in the FinTech space by showing how financial contracts — not just currencies — can be digitized, securely verified and stored, and transferred instantaneously from one party to another.
There's only one problem. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Suppose the Nobel Committee is convinced that Satoshi Nakamoto deserves the Prize. Now the problem it will face is how to contact him to announce that he has won the Prize. According to Chowdhry, Nakamoto can be informed by contacting him online just the same way people have communicated with him in the past. He has anonymously communicated with the computer science and cryptography community. If he accepts the award, he can verifiably communicate his acceptance. Finally, there is the issue of the Prize money. Nakamoto is already in possession of several hundred million U.S. dollars worth of bitcoins so the additional prize money may not mean much to him. "Only if he wants, the committee could also transfer the prize money to my bitcoin address, 165sAHBpLHujHbHx2zSjC898oXEz25Awtj," concludes Chowdhry. "Mr Nakamoto and I will settle later."
There's only one problem. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Suppose the Nobel Committee is convinced that Satoshi Nakamoto deserves the Prize. Now the problem it will face is how to contact him to announce that he has won the Prize. According to Chowdhry, Nakamoto can be informed by contacting him online just the same way people have communicated with him in the past. He has anonymously communicated with the computer science and cryptography community. If he accepts the award, he can verifiably communicate his acceptance. Finally, there is the issue of the Prize money. Nakamoto is already in possession of several hundred million U.S. dollars worth of bitcoins so the additional prize money may not mean much to him. "Only if he wants, the committee could also transfer the prize money to my bitcoin address, 165sAHBpLHujHbHx2zSjC898oXEz25Awtj," concludes Chowdhry. "Mr Nakamoto and I will settle later."
Too late (Score:3, Funny)
Actually he already communicated with me anonymously that he wants them to transfer the money to ME, personally, and I will deliver it to him. Cash only.
Is it a stupid attempt to lure him (or them) out? (Score:1)
Nobel prize still does not outweigh a perspective of spending the rest of a life behind bars.
Fake prize (Score:2, Informative)
There is no Nobel Prize for economics; it is a pretend prize that tries to piggy-back on the Nobel name to push an agenda (of course, some of the real Nobel prizes have been politicized as well).
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+1 It's fake price [theguardian.com]
"The Nobel prize for economics is not even a “real” Nobel prize anyway, having only been set up by the Swedish central bank in 1969."
I don't care - they all pay the same.
-- Professor Farnsworth
Re:Fake prize (Score:5, Informative)
It's formally called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, but don't let that deter from the fact it's part of the same ceremony [nobelprize.org] and is a pretty big deal among economists.
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Paul Krugman won a Nobel in Economics too.
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It's formally called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, but don't let that deter from the fact it's part of the same ceremony [nobelprize.org] and is a pretty big deal among economists.
It's even closer than you point out.
The bank donated the money to the Nobel Foundation in 1968. It is, technically speaking, a Nobel Prize. It only has their name tacked-on because of the plus-up to the Nobel Foundation –who decide independently on each year's awardee.
Re:Fake prize (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bitcoin will be an environmental disaster (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you think traditional transactions gets processed for free, or do they also need to be processed?
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But at a very high cost. The only way to create bitcoins is to waste energy. Worse, the amount of energy that must be wasted to create new bitcoins increases over time.
It doesn't necessarily increase over time, it may also decrease.
Bitcoin mining is a competition : the more they are, the harder it is, the less they are, the easier it is. Because of this, the worst case scenario, energy wise, is that the reward for mining is equal to the energy cost. It means that the energy cost for a new bitcoin will follow its valuation, until all possible bitcoins are mined. It won't be a major problem unless there is a major surge in bitcoin value well before we reach this maximum.
And
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Speculative mining may continue long after the immediate returns are greatly outweighed by the energy costs because the value of bitcoins can be expected to rise; investing now with apparent losses may be profitable in the long term.
This may affect the sales of ASIC mining rigs but not the energy cost. To put it simply, why would I spend $500 of electricity mining a Bitcoin when I can buy one on the market for $300?
Not to mention the ever-growing blockchains are wasteful by their very existence.
The ever-growing blockchain is a bit wasteful yes. However, Satoshi showed in his paper that it isn't that bad. Also, there is a way for small actors not to have a copy of the whole blockchain.
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And it would be nice if it were anonymous and yet safe.
Millions upon millions of BTC have been stolen (lost) and only the assholes who ran off with it knows where it is.
And God.
God knows where the BTC is.
Not that God is an asshole.
He just knows where it is.
The BTC, not the assholes.
Well, the assholes, too.
They are on Santa's Naughty list and stuff.
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But at a very high cost. The only way to create bitcoins is to waste energy. Worse, the amount of energy that must be wasted to create new bitcoins increases over time.
Here is your homework:
What is the total cost to produce a US penny? Of that, what is the total energy cost?
What is the cost to mine and refine an ounce of gold? What is the energy cost?
What is the cost to mine a bitcoin? What is the energy cost?
The answers may surprise you.
Not really a Nobel price anyway (Score:3)
popularly known as the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences
Economists like to call it that. But Alfred Nobel had more sense than to give a prize for hand waving.
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Alfred Nobel had more sense than to give a prize for hand waving.
You are aware that there are one for peace and one for literature, right?
Re:Not really a Nobel price anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: Stupider Than BitCoin (Score:2)
They cannot even ensure that he's still alive, so it's all a silly flight of fancy.
He is, but he won't come forward until he's retired off-world, so ineligible for any Nobel-type awards.
Nominated? (Score:2)
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In 2004, I nominated my left testicle, which has caused a great deal of jealousy in my pants. A controversy that continues to this day.
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Exactly. There are a huge number of people who are allowed to nominate, including anyone who is a professor of economics.
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Exactly. There are a huge number of people who are allowed to nominate, including anyone who is a professor of economics.
Only if a permanent professor in one of the five Nordic countries. Those who can nominate are:
URGENT. (Score:2)
If payement is not doing the needfuls, please be reverting the same kind guru's and post you're documents here showing error's of the same.
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Re: Irony Prize (Score:2)
Ah, but the irony of a system that eliminates the need for banks as middlemen being nominated for a banker's prize is delicious.
Settlement (Score:2)
Or pay the Nobel prize to *my* bitcoin address.
I will settle with Mr Nakamoto later.
In fact I offer this service to all Nobel prize winners.
Surely, you must be joking. (Score:2)
Feynman said getting the prize was the worst thing that ever happened to him.
I am Spartacus! (Score:2)
Admiral Ackbar says . . . . (Score:2)
" It's a trap "
They finally gave up trying to figure out who the person is behind the name. So, they're gonna try a million dollar piece of cheese to see if they'll bite :D
Bitcoin address (Score:2)
"Only if he wants, the committee could also transfer the prize money to my bitcoin address ..." concludes Chowdhry. "Mr Nakamoto and I will settle later."
Seems like it would make more sense to transfer the money to one of Mr Nakamoto's bitcoin addresses.
Not always (Score:2)
>"Nobel Prizes are given for making important â" preferably fundamental â" breakthroughs in the realm of ideas"
Um, not always. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.cracked.com/article... [cracked.com]
Sometimes the Nobel prize is a joke.
They'll need to confirm... (Score:2)
Latest reports are that the nobel prize being awarded needs five more confirmations from random networks across the world, so I guess we'll need to wait on those.
Fitting (Score:1)
Get some perspective (Score:1)
Whoever nominated him has serious problems in keeping things in perspective - guys your grubby little hobby is not earthshaking and is a million miles away from the initial dreams of a viable digital currency. Without trust it's just a temporary token to aid in exchange of real currencies.
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Going to be an increasing problem (Score:1)
Moving forward, "disruptive influences" are going to become more and more "dangerous". The folks coming up with them are going to want to stay anonymous more and more often.
Re: Congratulations! (Score:1, Insightful)
Inventor of dynamite never intended it to be used to kill people... Bitcoin has the potential to change the world, but it's not the creator's fault that bad people abuse it early on.
Re: Congratulations! (Score:4, Interesting)
Inventor of dynamite never intended it to be used to kill people...
How peculiarly relevant that the inventor of dynamite was Alfred Nobel, the founder of the Nobel prize
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At last, the circle is complete.
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Who could have foreseen that something that makes a violent explosion could be used as a weapon?
In other news, the inventor of the ping pong paddle never intended it to be used to hit a little white ball.
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There's plenty of ways to make explosions in war, though. Those were all around way before that.
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At the time he made it, he was "rather focussed" on making it possible for miners to not blow their hands off, which was happening regularly with nitroglycerine.
Re: Congratulations! (Score:5, Insightful)
nventor of dynamite never intended it to be used to kill people
Not true at all. Nobel was one of the biggest armament manufacturers and merchants of the nineteenth century. As he got older he felt guilty about all the people who were being killed as a result of his inventions and business so he turned to philanthropy.
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so maybe guilt is driving bill gates too?
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So it's blood money then?
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Dynamite was never used as a military explosive except for certain demolition purposes.
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Interesting)
You know nothing.
He created a decentralized trust chain, one that could be used in applications we cannot today even imagine. Let's say there's a country with no proper land registry... How do you transfer, demarcate or make original claims for a piece of land?
If there's enough mobile phones, computers, participating in a specific swarm due to self-interest (protecting land) then some random can't come and claim rights to the land with forged documents. It would only be valid if both sides agreed to the transaction and signed it cryptographically.
This also extends to bank-to-bank trust, and various others. Paedo-phobia and drug druggies are just where it found a proving ground.
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"Country with no proper land registry"
So, for example, the United States of America
"How do you transfer, demarcate or make original claims for a piece of land?"
However you like, and then you just cross your fingers that nobody sues. If they do, it'll cost a vast amount of money and take years and probably nothing useful will be decided. Having a "decentralised trust chain" will alter nothing. You can buy insurance, and indeed if you need a mortgage you'll have to buy insurance.
You can't fix this problem wit
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It would only be valid if both sides agreed to the transaction and signed it cryptographically.
All it does it confirm that the document hasn't changed since it was signed, the validity of the document is determined by property law. You can do the same thing by giving a copy of the document to an independent party for safe keeping. It's a complex solution to a simple problem of trust, and a waste of electricity to boot.
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Your simple problem of trust none the less manages to give rise to cases of fraud on a daily basis.
What he did do was take the corruptible fleshy mass of mostly water out of the equation. That is quite a significant achievement.
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Trust is not a simple problem.
Re:Congratulations! (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you think your digital trust chain will be in any way enforcable in a nation that has collapsed so far that it doesn't even have a "proper land registry"?
In that situation, a gun would be far more useful than some bits on a computer somewhere. And that's only if someone else doesn't have bigger and/or more guns.
BTW, Nakamoto didn't invent the idea of decentralised trust chains. He borrowed the idea from existing public key encryption.
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Let's say there's a country with no proper land registry... How do you transfer, demarcate or make original claims for a piece of land?
You don't.
Without a central administration, there is no claim to land. The land isn't yours to sell, or yours to buy, or yours to own. No executive power can determine ownership, and so the enforcement of police and military does not protect your claim to land.
In such a situation, a decentralized cryptographic trust chain is as valid as a handshake over beer.
Re: Congratulations! (Score:5, Insightful)
And as we all know, traditional currency has never been used for criminal activity whatsoever.
Lame answer (Score:5, Insightful)
You have made a currency for an underworld of drug & arms dealers, paedophile porn sites and murder for hire. Oh yes, a few people use it for normal transactions too, and it ruins the environment as you have to run computers for a long time to create it.
That's a pretty lame way to frame it. You forgot to mention that it rots your teeth and destroys family values.
American paper money is also the currency of underworld drugs and arms, pedophiles, and murder for hire.
Bitcoin is also the currency of freedom from oppression, freedom from centralized regulation based on political agendas, and massive surveilance.
The American dollar... not so much.
Did you think that the credit cards refusing to allow payments to WikiLeaks was a good thing?
Googling "BitCoin freedom" turns up just shy of a million links.
At least 2000 girls in Afghanistan are being paid in bitcoin [coindesk.com] for their blog writing and social media skills.
Bitcoin Will Thrust the World Towards Freedom [cryptocoinsnews.com]
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Well, it may not Rot your Teeth, but bitcoin is only a partial answer to a digital currency.
Because only X many bitcoins can be created, they need to hyperinflate if they became more widely used. This is why it will always be a toy currency used at the fringe.
Our current debt based Fiat money system also sucks. Behind the scenes, central banks are working on SDR's to replace the USD. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.
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Actually, you've got it totally wrong and the OP probably missed / silently corrected your mistake because it is so absurd. The longer Bitcoins are used, the more they will suffer from a massive deflation, not from inflation (unless the trust in them suddenly went to zero because of widespread prohibitions or a successful cryptographic attack of their design). This deflation is part of the design of the currency and intended but it is controversial whether that is good.
What you are referring to is a currenc
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So far it's the favorite currency of e-ransom scams. Hard-to-trace money is a recipe for scams. It's why Swiss bank accounts are so popular with crooks. I vote to ban bitcoin regardless of your hypothetical freedom rant.
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That is kind of funny, because Bitcoins are incredibly easy to trace. Many things are being broken up by the ability to trace bitcoin. The blockchain keeps track of every transaction, so if I record the bitcoin ID, and transfer you the bitcoin, it can be tracked through every transaction to where you finally pull out the money, where it becomes obvious who owns the wallet by the account that receives the money.
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/p... [wired.com]
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/21... [cnbc.com]
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.co [cryptocoinsnews.com]
Re:Tracing bitcoins (Score:2)
It's quite easy to defeat that kind of tracking. Send your coins to a bitcoin exchange, and sell them for currency. Later trade back to bitcoin and pull your funds out, typically on a different address.
Another way is to trade on localbitcoins.com for paper cash. The coins now belong to an unconnected person.
Finally, people run "tumbler" services, where multiple people put in funds, they are randomly sent through various addresses, and finally go back to the original people, but in random amounts to diffe
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That's for the Nobel prize in economics, not for the peace prize.
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Which is strange, since he invented something with no economic value.
BitCoin is only useful for trading to other currency--it's a currency at best--and thus for speculation. BitCoin has spawned speculation and BitCoin production, two operations which consume labor to produce nothing but the ability to transfer money from others to yourself. That's equivalent to a Government jobs bill which mandates you get taxpayer money for digging holes and filling them in again: you could get paid to stay home and d
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Funny)
Right. People with that kind of criminal record usually don't get a Nobel Prize for economics. They get the one for peace.
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You just described the US dollar fiat currency!
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is temporary.
If I want to send the equivalent of $100 to somebody overseas, I spend $100 at a Bitcoin exchange to get BTC. I send the BTC to my recipient, who cashes it in at a Bitcoin exchange to get euros or whatever. That's two transactions with a Bitcoin exchange, and three Bitcoin transactions. Those aren't going to be free. Banks can do that sort of thing cheaper. Thing is, they don't.
With pressure from Bitcoin, banks will be forced to lower their international money transfer and curren
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Look at it this way: if everybody were using BTC as currency nobody would be losing anything to the banks. That's a really good thing.
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Bitcoin is useful as a way to transfer value without going through the banks, to fund illegal activities, and as a speculative investment. It is not useful as a store of value. Therefore, since I'm not into that much speculation, I wouldn't just have Bitcoin sitting around, and to transfer value I'd have to buy the things off an exchange. Are there any exchanges where I can buy $100 of Bitcoin, and the next day, assuming no fluctuations in the market, sell that Bitcoin for $100? Even if there were, I'd
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You're missing the point. You're comparing BTC to USD and saying that when the market fluctuates in favor of USD you're losing money holding BTC. That's true but by the same token you are losing money by holding USD when it goes the other way.
I agree that USD is a more convenient currency, I can't pay my rent or buy groceries with BTC.
If you haven't realized that banks are evil by now than I won't convince you. You've lived through a 7 year (and counting) recession that was caused by predatory lending
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The USD is a reasonably stable currency. What I can buy with $100 decreases very slowly for the most part. It's a reasonable store of value. I know that, if I get paid, my pay is a reasonable amount for the work I did in the last pay period. I know that I'll not lose noticeably by paying my bills a week later. That isn't really true of Bitcoin.
Also, it's true that the transfer of value from me in the US to someone in Germany is inherently less expensive with banks than Bitcoin.
Banks also have diff
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If your definition of currency requires that it be the liability of a counterparty, then who need that shit anyway?
By that standard, Bitcoin is better than currency.
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Are you suggesting that Bitcoin resembled a ponzi scheme? If so, could you elaborate as the similarity is not immediately apparent.
Bitcoin doesn't seem to be any worse than any other currency for the most part. The main issue is that exchanges and "banks" are not being regulated by the countries they reside in. Either they don't recognize Bitcoin as a currency, or they declined to regulate it, or they were just slow off the mark.
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Bitcoin does resemble a Ponzi scheme, in that the people who buy in early stand to get a lot of money, to be extracted from later adopters. Satoshi has a lot of Bitcoin, and the early adopters tend to have a good deal. If Bitcoin grows like its proponents want, the value of an individual Bitcoin will soar, leaving the early adopters rich and the late adopters out in the cold: they'll put real currency into the Bitcoin economy, and not benefit accordingly.
Bitcoin is considered a commodity in the US. I
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How is this different than a Silicon Valley startup where the founders and venture capitalists who got in early stand to get a lot of money from the IPO, extracted from later investors?
Early adopters of bitcoin had no assurance bitcoin would be worth anything at all. It was over a year before the first real world purchase happened (Two Papa John pizzas for 10,000 BTC), and a year and a half before they traded for over one cent.
Until a market developed for using them, they were just a cryptographic curiosit
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A successful startup produces things people want, more than they want something else, and they need to have a reason why someone else can't come along, do what they're doing, and undercut them in the marketplace. Bitcoin doesn't have that. Any number of other digital currencies could appear, and could be backed by large organizations. Bitcoin's advantages as a medium of exchange are temporary, since the banking system can do anything legitimate (and some other things) at a lower cost than Bitcoin.
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- startups don't pretend that they are a currency.
- investment, even private investment, is regulated
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Bitcoin has certainly been put to the test the last couple years with scandal etc.... but it is still here.
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many people have faith in their god(s) too. doesn't make 'em real.