He exploited the system and created a new algorithm
Even helped Satoshi Nakamoto
But he disappeared mysteriously:
- ArtForz
- early online gamer
- farms virtual currencies in games
- PayPal account gets frozen
- background in hardware
- knows GPUs, circuits, cards
way more comfortable with hardware than software
2010
- discovers Bitcoin
- CPU mining is inefficient
- starts experimenting with GPUs
- one of the first to ever do it
- builds custom GPU miners privately
- registers on Bitcointalk
- starts posting technical details
July 2010
- finds a critical Bitcoin script validation bug
- related to the RETURN opcode
- bug could allow invalid spends
- emails Satoshi directly
- also loops in Gavin Andresen
- Satoshi replies
- patch gets shipped fast
- Bitcoin survives a catastrophic failure
late 2010
- GPU mining explodes
- ArtForz scales
- builds a GPU farm using cardboard boxes
- reaches ~10% of total hashrate
- then 15%
- then close to 25%
highest single entity share Bitcoin has ever seen
December 2010
- reports ~15.7 GH/s
- mining ~1,200+ BTC per day
- Satoshi sends his last messages
- ArtForz keeps mining
2011
- ASICs and FPGAs arrive
- GPU advantage fades
- his hashrate drops below 1%
- experiments with FPGA
- talks about custom ASIC chips
- total mined estimate ~409,000 BTC
one of the largest early accumulations ever
2012
- disappears completely
after that
- rumors connect him to game modding
- Minecraft
- Kerbal Space Program
- stays away from crypto
Will he come back one day?
