Why was Patoshi offline for ten days?

Satoshi’s Patoshi setup was vital for securing the Bitcoin network in the early days. Patoshi used customised software and was something like 10x faster than a computer running the standard software. For most of 2009 there was only a handful of people mining and without Patoshi the blockchain was very vulnerable to a 51% attack. Satoshi kept the software running 24/7 except for brief interludes when he stopped the software presumably to backup. So it is remarkable that Patoshi was offline for ten days in August 2009.

The exact time that Patoshi was inoperative is between 14 Aug 2009 22:37 and 24 Aug 2009 22:04. When Satoshi restarted the miner, he also responded to an email from Martti Malmi, his first communication for weeks. The most likely explanation is that Patoshi had crashed and Satoshi either did not notice or was too busy to fix the issue. It was very untypical of Satoshi.

The period that Patoshi was inoperative corresponds with a traumatic episode in Le Roux’s criminal career: the Captain Ufuk affair. The Ufuk was an old cargo ship used by Le Roux to smuggle arms into the Philippines. As Evan Ratliff expressed it: “The Ufuk was a kind of unintended coming-out party for le Roux’s criminal expansion, from on-line pharmaceuticals into large-scale illegal drug and arms trafficking”.

Le Roux had sent Bruce Jones, an amiable British sea captain from Bristol, to purchase a ship in Turkey. With a Georgian crew, Jones sailed the Captain Ufuk to Indonesia, where the arms in crates were loaded.  A mercenary, Joseph Hunter, joined the ship to provide protection, and Jones and his crew sailed the boat to the Philippines. But instead of putting into port, Le Roux ordered Jones to anchor in a remote location. Jones sensed that something was wrong and did not want to get involved in anything illegal. So when a boat, the Mou Man Tai, unloaded most of the arms he left with it and was replaced by a new captain. The next day the Ufuk was raided by Philippine customs, who discovered the remnants of the arms shipment.

The Ufuk became a national scandal in the Philippine. Bruce Jones was ready to testify, and Le Roux’s companies were exposed to unwanted attention. It was a major headache for Le Roux who had previously managed to stay under the radar. He even appeared in an indictment as “Johan a.k.a. John Paul Leraux”. The ship was a fiasco that absorbed Le Roux’s time to extinguish the fires. He had to pay hefty bribes to make the case go away.

The arms were loaded on the 10 Aug 2009 and the ship boarded by customs officials on 19 Aug 2009. After the 19 Aug Le Roux would have been very busy and distracted dealing with the aftermath. But trouble had been brewing before that date, with the ship placed in a holding pattern for several days. So Le Roux would have been in crisis mode with the Ufuk for most of the period in which Patoshi was offline.

The Ufuk episode had a tragic conclusion. Bruce Jones would not stop talking and even gave an interview on television. In Sep 2010, he left his house for lunch with his Filipina wife and toddler. As they were driving back, a motorbike drew alongside and then moved ahead to cut them off. A gunman dismounted and fired through the driver’s window. Bruce Jones was hit several times and died. His wife took a bullet in the back but survived. Le Roux had commissioned his first murder.