Tell HN: Meeting Satoshi
back in 2011 I convinced my wife who ran a small creperie in DUMBO, Brooklyn to start accepting bitcoins. We were one of the first in the world physical location that accepted this new digital currency [1]. In the next couple of month we received a lot of attention, but no one has purchased anything with btc. Then one day, my wife calls me and informs that there is someone who would like to pay with bitcoins. I got excited and asked her to take a picture of the guy because he is the first one and it's a historic moment for us. He bought 2 crepes and paid using his smartphone and our QR code with btc address. One crepe and a lemonade was 1 bitcoin at that time :)
After he finished his food my wife approached him and asked to take a picture of him for being the first. He blushed and politely declined citing that bitcoin is an anonymous currency. He wished us well, added that bitcoins should already be in our account and left.
My wife called me back and revealed that he refused to take a picture. So I asked her to describe him. She portrayed the guy as a humble polite Japanese man in his 50s. We joked maybe it was Satoshi, but I dismissed the idea. I assumed it was some one from Mt Gox since it was located in Japan.
Today I showed the picture of Satoshi in Newsweek to my wife and she recognized him.
http://bitcoinbabe.blogspot.com/2011/07/bitcoin-sex-drugs-and-baklava-and.html
Goddamnit guys. Let him be. Come on. Are we hackers here or are we paparazzi?
I thought Hacker News was a club of quality-valuing people that saw the world from a hacker's perspective and questioned the status quo. My view is shifting with every comment posted here.
I am not going to reveal any more information that I already have. I respect his will to stay anonymous. It was just an emotional post without a thought of provoking a witch-hunt. Satoshi has been an inspiration to me, I apologize for any inconvenience I might cause.
All of you asking for the transaction ID are incorrigible. The man clearly wants privacy. The kind of privacy that you all opine for every time there's some governmental incursion. Or some startup gets hacked or whatever.
Leave the man be.
Not that I doubt this story, but human memory is not very reliable. There's many studies that have been done on this. The fact that your wife would remember someone from three years ago who she met for 20 minutes is a little far fetched even if it was a significant meeting.
It also matters how you showed the picture. Depending on how you did it can influence people to remember incorrectly.
Please don't disclose the transaction. It's a serious decision, at least.
This is the address for the creperie's wallet: 1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3JPUekwoBC
Blockexplorer: https://blockexplorer.com/address/1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3J...
Source: http://o-crepes.com/
I think we're at the point now where we need a mod to step in and delete this entire post.
You guys are literally trying to doxx this man.
Wallet of the store: 1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3JPUekwoBC
source: https://twitter.com/Ocrepes/status/83671795693133824
Can you identify the transaction? We are fairly certain which bitcoins belong to the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
Your crepes are awfully expensive now. ;-) http://o-crepes.com/bitcoin/#
Do you know which BitCoin it is? This is a collectors piece and you can probably trace its lineage!
No wonder Satoshi wanted to be anonymous. People are already tracing the transaction and the BitCoin.
Though it might just be a lesson in how "anonymous" bitcoin transactions actually are.
DO NOT DISCLOSE THE TRANSACTION ID, PLEASE
I'm curious because this suggests that Satoshi was maybe at the Bitcoin World Conference and Expo in New York, which was in August 2011.
> and politely declined citing that bitcoin is an anonymous currency.
I wonder if he still believes that today.
really fascinating story: now we must ask you the Transaction ID :D
What cellphone app allowed you to buy and sell Bitcoins in July 2011? I didn't think QR codes were regularly used till late 2011/early 2012.
Remember everyone, if you get the correct transaction ID you will not learn too much. It's widely known the vast majority of Satoshi's 1,000,000 bitcoin still sit in their mined blocks. So you might search back to a small set of addresses probably totalling a few thousand bitcoin but nothing spectacular like a giant 50,000+ address.
>Invents a currency that allows all your received and paid values to be tracked by the entire world.
>Says it's anonymous.
Good luck with that.
Hey, I tried to go to your place to spend some bitcoins last time I was in NYC, which was about 6 months ago. It didn't look like your store was in business anymore, though, and a tweet to a blog post seemed to confirm it. Too bad, I'd still like to spend some BTC at a brick-and-mortar store.
Oh what a witch-hunt after Satoshi, he wants to be left alone from the public so please respect it.
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Eventually the government is going to come after him. If you just happen to be sitting on 400 million without paying taxes the government is going to be interested.
Would you be able to give us the Transaction ID for this? :)
And most of New York wants photos of athletes, musicians and movie stars. :-)
I wonder if his motivation was testing, or to generate some seed business for it?
How many bitcoins did he pay at the time? (no need to be exact to the satoshi if you want to maintain anonymity, i'm just curious)
OP: Your account is interesting, but was it really necessary to confirm the doxxing?
Hello neighbor. I've eaten your crepes. :D
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Why does anybody care?
Amazing - that you had the foresight to ask for a picture and he had the foresight to politely decline.
Do you think Satoshi travelled all the way from his home in California to your creperie in Brooklyn just to try out BitCoin in real life?
We need to know the adress he used!