<p>I saw a recent article supporting Craig Wright's claim to being Satoshi Nakamoto.  Other articles about him suggest that most of the community believes he's a scammer, and not actually Nakamoto.  The evidence he provided was some signature that apparently proved nothing.  On the other hand, Bitcoin developers challenged him to reveal the private key.  That seems pretty extreme, as it would allow anyone to spend all his BTC, no?</p>
<p>Wouldn't an appropriate demonstration be to announce that you are going to transfer a very precise but token number of BTC to some wallet, say, a charity?  This would preserve everyone's private information, but demonstrate that he has control of Nakamoto's BTC, no?  I assume anyone who is unwilling to make such a demonstration would automatically be assumed to be a fraudster.  What am I missing?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-23T07:18:51.023Z
This is incorrect. The challenge was to sign a message with that key, not revealing the private key. That would be ridiculous.
Pieter Wuille
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-01-23T07:29:33.463Z
@Prayank That answer seems unrelated. OP is asking whether proving ownership requires revealing a private key (it doesn't; one can sign if one has the private key). The answer you link is about a way of fraudulently convincing people of that without having the private key.
Pieter Wuille
<verification><satoshi-nakamoto><identity>
Verify Bitcoin ownership
Lawnmower Man
# Verify Bitcoin ownership

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-01-23)

I saw a recent article supporting Craig Wright's claim to being Satoshi Nakamoto. Other articles about him suggest that most of the community believes he's a scammer, and not actually Nakamoto. The evidence he provided was some signature that apparently proved nothing. On the other hand, Bitcoin developers challenged him to reveal the private key. That seems pretty extreme, as it would allow anyone to spend all his BTC, no?

Wouldn't an appropriate demonstration be to announce that you are going to transfer a very precise but token number of BTC to some wallet, say, a charity? This would preserve everyone's private information, but demonstrate that he has control of Nakamoto's BTC, no? I assume anyone who is unwilling to make such a demonstration would automatically be assumed to be a fraudster. What am I missing?

**Tags:** verification, satoshi-nakamoto, identity

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: This is incorrect. The challenge was to sign a message with that key, not revealing the private key. That would be ridiculous.  
> **username_1**: @Prayank That answer seems unrelated. OP is asking whether proving ownership requires revealing a private key (it doesn't; one can sign if one has the private key). The answer you link is about a way of fraudulently convincing people of that without having the private key.  

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## 0 answers

