TechCentralTechCentral
    Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentralTechCentral
    NEWSLETTER
    • News

      Sarb tells banks they should work with crypto exchanges

      18 August 2022

      Telkom muscles into banks’ turf with business loans

      18 August 2022

      iPhone 14 launch date targeted for 7 September

      18 August 2022

      Icasa moves to license more broadband spectrum

      17 August 2022

      Eskom to impose more load shedding

      17 August 2022
    • World

      China blasts US over ‘discriminatory’ Chips Act

      18 August 2022

      Tencent reports first-ever sales decline

      17 August 2022

      Chip makers are flashing a big warning for the global economy

      17 August 2022

      Semiconductor boom turns to bust

      16 August 2022

      Tencent plans to offload R400-billion Meituan stake: sources

      16 August 2022
    • In-depth

      Are you a chronic procrastinator? Read this!

      18 August 2022

      African unicorn Flutterwave battles fires on multiple fronts

      11 August 2022

      The length of Earth’s days has been increasing – and no one knows why

      7 August 2022

      As Facebook fades, the Mad Men of advertising stage a comeback

      2 August 2022

      Crypto breaks the rules. That’s the point

      27 July 2022
    • Podcasts

      Qush on infosec: why prevention is always better than cure

      11 August 2022

      e4’s Adri Führi on encouraging more women into tech careers

      10 August 2022

      How South Africa can woo more women into tech

      4 August 2022

      Book and check-in via WhatsApp? FlySafair is on it

      28 July 2022

      Interview: Why Dell’s next-gen PowerEdge servers change the game

      28 July 2022
    • Opinion

      No reason South Africa should have a shortage of electricity: Ramaphosa

      11 July 2022

      Ntshavheni’s bias against the private sector

      8 July 2022

      South Africa can no longer rely on Eskom alone

      4 July 2022

      Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

      21 June 2022

      Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

      13 June 2022
    • Company Hubs
      • 1-grid
      • Africa Data Centres
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Amplitude
      • Atvance Intellect
      • Axiz
      • BOATech
      • CallMiner
      • Digital Generation
      • E4
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • IBM
      • Kyocera Document Solutions
      • Microsoft
      • Nutanix
      • One Trust
      • Pinnacle
      • Skybox Security
      • SkyWire
      • Tarsus on Demand
      • Videri Digital
      • Zendesk
    • Sections
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud computing
      • Consumer electronics
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Energy
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Motoring and transport
      • Public sector
      • Science
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home»Opinion»David Glance»Reddit shows up journalists in bitcoin saga

    Reddit shows up journalists in bitcoin saga

    David Glance By David Glance9 May 2016
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email

    david-glance-180The world last week was treated to another episode in the saga of discovering the real identify of the person behind the creation of bitcoin. Australian Craig Wright announced to journalists and bitcoin “experts” that he was indeed Satoshi Nakamoto and that he had proof of this.

    The whole event was managed through PR firms and non-disclosure agreements which should have given the “journalists” pause for thought, but they insisted they were relying on the opinion of the “experts”, Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis.

    After some of the “proof” provided by Wright started unravelling, Andresen at least started seeing the error of his ways when he admitted that it was wrong to come out and support Wright’s claim unequivocally. He stopped short of saying that Wright wasn’t Nakamoto.

    Unfortunately, the bitcoin developers decided that Andresen had either been hacked when he announced his support for Wright, or was just showing “inexcusable incompetence” and revoked his access to the bitcoin software code. For the time being, it doesn’t look like he will be given that access back.

    If there was anything positive to come out of the events of the past few months, it has been the demonstration of the effectiveness of discussion site Reddit as a tool for crowdsourced opinion and analysis.

    It was Reddit user JoukeH who initially spotted that Wright’s public claim to have used a cryptographic key to digitally sign the text of a speech by Sartre was faked. He found that the series of numbers appeared elsewhere on the Internet, something that should have been impossible if it was what Wright had claimed it to be. The full deconstruction of Wright’s public evidence for being Nakamoto was published later by security developer Dan Kaminsky leading him to conclude that Wright’s claims were fake.

    Reddit users had from the outset shown scepticism over Wright’s claims and through a series of discussion threads on the bitcoin subreddit explored all of the possible motives, evidence and claims around Wright’s announcements.

    User “andreasma” discussed the process by which he had been approached to be one of the people to “verify” Wright’s claims. He baulked at having to sign a non-disclosure agreement and to take part in a process that should have been entirely unnecessary if Wright had made believable proofs in public.

    Another line of investigation by “redditors” examined the role of David Kleiman, a cryptography expert who had worked with Wright and who was alleged to also have been involved in the creation of bitcoin.

    The investigations haven’t finished with Wright’s sudden decision to not proceed with his proof of being bitcoin’s inventor. Redditors are continuing to find, and disclose, evidence about Craig Wright’s other potential misdemeanours. A recent post details how Wright was alleged to have plagiarised extensively in a book that he authored called The IT Regulatory and Standards Compliance Handbook.

    Craig S Wright ... the Australian who claimed to be behind bitcoin
    Craig S Wright … the Australian who claimed to be behind bitcoin

    When the BBC decided to rely on the evidence of two people to make sense of claims in an area that they had no expertise, they made the assumption that these people were “experts” and so would be able to make a judgment one way or another about the weight of evidence that had been presented. There was nothing scientific in this process. The whole basis was resting on the claim of one person and two people whose expertise was not in the area of the proof that Wright was offering. From a journalist’s perspective, they had a second confirmatory source and so that was all that was needed. Very little questioning or interrogation happened in this process. It went from PR firm to headline without much deliberation in between.

    Reddit on the other hand, operates on the basis of a much larger set of evidence that is scrutinised by a larger number of people. Opinion can be still divided about the full significance of each piece of evidence, but taken as a whole, it makes a much more reliable picture of the truth behind an event such as last week’s press announcements. The user comment voting mechanism in Reddit adds to the ability of important aspects of a discussion to surface to the top.

    Reddit users don’t always get it right. In the hunt for the Boston bombers, potential suspects were being suggested on Reddit with very little evidence. This fact has not escaped redditors making claims in the case of Wright which shows at least that even they are aware of the potential pitfalls of crowd-sourced intelligence.The Conversation

    • David Glance is director of the UWA Centre for Software Practice, University of Western Australia
    • This article was originally published on The Conversation
    Bitcoin Craig Wright David Glance Satoshi Nakamoto
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Previous ArticleTrevor Noah defends Daily Show viewership
    Next Article SA start-up IoT.nxt spots big opportunity in IoT

    Related Posts

    Ether leaps higher on verge of Merge

    16 August 2022

    Bitcoin’s laser-eyed king is blind to billions in losses

    3 August 2022

    Central African Republic’s digital coin flops at launch

    26 July 2022
    Add A Comment

    Comments are closed.

    Promoted

    Entelek, A2pay to roll out 2 500 free Wi-Fi sites in South Africa

    18 August 2022

    Companies are drowning in data – but solutions are at hand

    18 August 2022

    Top cybersecurity challenge is inadequate identification of key risks

    17 August 2022
    Opinion

    No reason South Africa should have a shortage of electricity: Ramaphosa

    11 July 2022

    Ntshavheni’s bias against the private sector

    8 July 2022

    South Africa can no longer rely on Eskom alone

    4 July 2022

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2022 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.