
Bitcoin 'creator' backs out of Satoshi coin move 'proof' - blacktulip
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36213580
======
Geekette
Given his history as a prolific liar, I find his post to be utter bullshit.
Note how he's still lying about things he was caught at: "When the rumours
began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations
were proven false". NO - it was _established_ (with confirmation from the
schools in question) that he lied about having a PhD from Charles Stuart U.
and he definitely does not possess 8 masters degrees. Not to mention other
lies about having super computers and partnership with SGI to build more with
fake reference letter (all clarified by company as false), etc.

Now, because he knows he can't successfully claim Satoshi's identity and in
light of possible charges based on ongoing police investigation (fraudulent
use of tax credits), he wants to dramatically disappear. I hope the
authorities have his passport(s). His thirst for fame is _unreal_.

~~~
danielweber
First search for narcissist checklist got me

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-legacy-distorted-
lo...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-legacy-distorted-
love/201412/is-your-partner-narcissist-here-are-50-ways-tell)

If you toss out the ones about romantic relationships, Craig hits on most of
them.

~~~
nacs
I'm in the Wright is a liar/con-artist camp but the items on that list apply
to most "normal" people (including myself).

~~~
crispyambulance
Any psychologist will tell you that most people can't objectively evaluate
such criteria for themselves. This is something that is best left to
professionals who have experience with people that DEFINITELY have such
disorders.

I'm also in the non-believer camp, nor can I fathom why "Satoshi" would
initially choose to remain anonymous but then decide to come out. What purpose
does that serve?

Whatever the case, all of this drama is really, really bad news for bitcoin as
a currency in the future.

~~~
arcticfox
Why bad news? Is basically irrelevant, now that he has turned out to not be
Satoshi. The only way it would be relevant is if one of those early coins does
indeed move, because that would drastically affect the number of coins on the
market.

~~~
bduerst
While some will disagree, appearances _are_ important. Wright was [probably]
trying to claim to be Satoshi to use Satoshi's bitcoins as collateral for
something else.

Bitcoin already has a reputation for being used in scams and illegal dealings.
This con man being able to convince some major news organizations and bitcoin
celebrities doesn't help improve that image.

~~~
HappyTypist
That demonstrates a flaw of non-technological news organisations, not Bitcoin.
The two Bitcoin celebrities had been widely discredited from Bitcoin ages ago.
Gavin has not committed in a year, started his own fork of Bitcoin with 3%
adoption. Jon has disappeared after starting a bankrupt for-profit
"foundation".

~~~
DonHopkins
I haven't been following the parade of Bitcoin celebrities very closely, but
what ever happened with the Digital Entertainment Network Executive VP [1]
guy, Brock Pierce?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Entertainment_Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Entertainment_Network)

------
spdustin
Okay seriously, is anyone contacting the authorities to see if this man is
still alive? I do not know who to contact or what his location is. His "blog"
post sounds like a suicide note - I've had the misfortune of reading others,
and there are telltale signs - and it doesn't appear that anyone is taking
steps to see if he's okay.

Maybe he is a liar, maybe he's Satoshi, who gives a shit at this point when
the jaded comments make it sound like we've been invaded by 4chan.

~~~
sktrdie
I understand this, but there's also the dimension where his actions, whether
true or not, are also damaging other people (Gavin's reputation is on the
line).

We'd all be more worried for him if he wasn't so blatantly causing harm to
other people's reputation.

Obviously he could suffer from severe mental illness, which combines elements
of harming others and self harm, but as a society I think we should worry more
about the person being harmed (ex. Gavin).

~~~
sktrdie
@bwilliams, yep, and that's why I said "I understand this". We should help
him. But we should also help, if not more, Gavin and the others who's
reputation is on the line without much fault of their own.

~~~
bpchaps
Why not handle the the thing that seems to be pretty pressing right now
instead? Reputation can wait until someone can confirm one thing or another.
It's just kind of calloused otherwise and I'm sure someone whose reputation on
the line would agree.

------
Grazester
"But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof
of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot."

This guys is so full of crap its amusing

~~~
toyg
Lol, he doesn't have the courage to do the one thing that will remove any
doubt about him, but has enough courage to announce to the public that he's a
coward and a broken man and likely a fraud on a planetary scale...

At this point his mental health is clearly not good. If he really believes
what he writes, he has delusions on a clinical scale which should be addressed
before he does something he might regret. If he doesn't believe it, he is a
consummate fraudster, a danger to the community, and should probably go to
jail.

~~~
CIPHERSTONE
He doesn't have the courage to make use of basic bitcoin functionality... oh
the humanity!

------
gtrubetskoy
My (non-provable) theory is that Satoshi is not a person but a team, now
defunct, that was tasked with developing a crypto-currency. They are probably
more scientists/mathematicians/economists than they are software developers,
which would explain the very sound but not exactly elegant initial code.

It would also explain the silence - the project is over, the team is probably
bound to secrecy because this stuff is classified.

The only time Satoshi spoke out (edit: and we don't even know that it was
authentic, see discussion below) was to help the poor bloke who was mistaken
to be Satoshi and his life was being ruined, and that was probably a
collective decision by the former team members, it was the right thing to do.

This is a different case - Satoshi speaking out wouldn't help in this case,
Craig sounds like someone in need of help from a professional psychiatrist or
psychologist, [http://www.drcraigwright.net/](http://www.drcraigwright.net/)
almost sounds like a suicide note. I feel sorry and worried for the bloke.

~~~
user24
> The only time Satoshi spoke out was to help the poor bloke who was mistaken
> to be Satoshi

no, the forum account was hacked to make that claim. It wasn't by Satoshi.

~~~
gtrubetskoy
> no, the forum account was hacked to make that claim. It wasn't by Satoshi.

Are you sure, I wasn't aware of that?

Edit: the "I am not Dorian Nakamoto" was on March 7 2014, the account hack on
Sept 8 of same year. It doesn't prove it conclusively. In fact the hack may
well have been done deliberately, for a (kind of) plausible deniability (i.e.
now you can't tell whether it was the real "Satoshi" and thus there was no
provable breach of secrecy).

~~~
geofft
And the forum account hadn't posted for five years before that. There's
certainly no conclusive evidence that it _wasn 't_ Satoshi, but there's also
no conclusive evidence that it _was_ , and strong reason to believe the
account could have gotten hacked because it did indeed get hacked a few months
later.

------
celticninja
Dude's a liar. After everything else he has done this is the simplest step
which requires no extra burden on him. He has already claimed to be SN, the
only reason not to follow through is because he cannot and could never have.
Therefore he is just another pretender to the throne.

~~~
r3bl
And let us not forget that the doctorate degree that he's bragging about so
much that he put it in his domain is completely made up, as discovered by
Forbes when they asked the college about it.

(Warning: Adblock dection)
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/12/11/bitcoi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/12/11/bitcoin-
creator-satoshi-craig-wright-lies-hoax/#7cd66c053903)

------
spilk
Why is there even an argument? It is not rocket science to produce a signed
message with a key, the reference software can do this trivially. Until that
is provided I don't see why anyone should entertain the possibility. Anything
else is just theatrics.

------
tazjin
Can we just stop giving this con man more attention?

~~~
tangled_zans
I know right. It was obvious from the start that he's full of shit, how are
people still arguing about this?

------
tommynicholas
To those of you who have never known a conman or someone with borderline
personality disorder, this behavior might seem odd. To me, it's like looking
at a picture of a dog and going "oh that's a dog!"

~~~
danielweber
The best indicator for me was, instead of providing something right away,
saying you will provide it "soon," and then waiting for the inevitable excuse
when it doesn't happen.

~~~
tommynicholas
Not just the excuse, but making themselves into a martyr SPECIFICALLY as the
excuse. This type of person can never simply say they can't do something, they
have to be larger than life even when failing to do something.

------
threatofrain
It's hard for me to believe that he's backing out of his promise to provide
stronger evidence because the pressure is too much, because the pressure of
being known as a fraud is a lot worse than being known as an inventor.

------
andremendes
Source: [http://www.drcraigwright.net/](http://www.drcraigwright.net/)

Asides the conversation, the whole source code of this website is: <img
src="homepage.jpg">

This man is really not caring.

EDIT: site is updated now, with proper html+css coding.

~~~
SyneRyder
Some of the website is still in archive.org, but will probably disappear soon.
Any snapshots before May have already disappeared. Might help for folks to
download the old posts before they disappear from the web entirely.

Frustratingly, it appears the main screenshots from the Sartre post (showing
his original 'proof') have already been removed from archive.org.

~~~
sah2ed
I entertained the possibility that he would not be able to weather what would
come next from his claim, so I managed to save the 7 screenshots for the
_Jean-Paul Sartre, Signing and Significance_ blog post.

You can fetch them from here:
[http://imgur.com/a/ppGI9](http://imgur.com/a/ppGI9)

~~~
SyneRyder
Brilliant, thanks for this!

------
mabbo
I hope the actual Satoshi is alive somewhere, and just for fun moves a
different original coin, as if to say "I am alive, and Wright is not me".

~~~
CydeWeys
Even better if the coin is moved to a burn address that looks something like
1IWouldAnnounceMyselfThisWayJaNVN2.

Or just use the privkey from the genesis block to sign a message "In the very
unlikely event that I ever decide to reveal myself, it will be through a
message similar to this one" \-- and then post it anonymously somewhere.

------
AKifer
The only blamable thing in this story is that the so called mainstream media
are not technically knowledgeable enough to "scientifically" check their news
sources. Good thing, all the nerds around have exposed the scheme in such a
short time, I like this era !!

~~~
azernik
And the New York Times story about this _still_ insists that his initial
"proof" was genuine!

------
kazinator
The Nick Szabo hypothesis is plausible, see:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Nick_Szabo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Nick_Szabo)

> _In December 2013, a blogger named Skye Grey linked Nick Szabo to the
> bitcoin 's whitepaper using a stylometric analysis._

All that, and the NS/NS: Nakamoto Satoshi / Nick Szabo. :)

I assign a low probability to the proposition that Nakamoto is other than
Szabo.

Suppose Nakamoto isn't Szabo. Why the various similarities? They could be
deliberate: Nakamoto isn't Szabo but another researcher who not only runs with
the same ideas, but mimics the elements of writing, duplicates the timezone of
activity and so on. Even chooses the letters N and S for his pseudonym to
tantalize people with the hypothesis that he is Szabo. The problem under this
hypothesized scenario is that Szabo would almost certainly have cried foul:
"Hey, world, this Bitcoin Nakamoto dude is ripping off my research without
crediting me at all!" Secondly, why would someone who wants to create a
digital currency system based on Szabo's ideas go to the trouble of creating
all these irrelevant similarities.

On the other hand, there is the why: why wouldn't someone who obviously knows
a lot about security an privacy issues not put more effort into building
plausible deniability? Maybe Szabo simply doesn't care about having anything
near air-tight claim that he isn't Nakamoto, and so just let himself be
sloppy. Perhaps he actually wants there to be all that circumstantial
evidence, and is biding his time until the right moment to admit that he is
Nakamoto, at which time with just some small piece of proof, it will be iron-
clad to everyone.

------
numair
It is interesting to note that the only Satoshi-existence scenario whose
probability improves with each passing day, is the scenario in which Satoshi /
the "Satoshis" is/are dead (unless you think Bitcoin was the first great
invention of hyper-advanced AI, of course).

Figuring out whether anyone actually knows who Satoshi is/was becomes more
interesting than waiting for the person(s) to show up, because it will never
happen in a death scenario. One thing we have gained from this bizarre circus
is a sign that neither Gavin nor Jon know who Satoshi might be; who's left?
Who might know?

~~~
Finnucane
If Satoshi is dead or not an individual person, then who owns his bitcoin? If
Satoshi is dead, then his property would be subject to the probate laws of his
home country. Can the bitcoin of a dead person be recovered if they don't make
arrangements for it in their will? Or will blocks of bitcoin become inactive
over time as their owners die?

~~~
bitJericho
Bitcoins can only be distributed if you have the private key for it. If
satoshi dies and leaves the keys for his heirs, then its just a normal asset.
If the keys are gone, then that money is unrecoverable, just like burning
cash.

~~~
Finnucane
So Bitcoin could conceivably be 'burned' faster than new bitcoin can be made.
That might be great for a collector's market, but sounds like a bad plan for a
useful currency.

~~~
BinaryResult
Bitcoin is infinitely divisible, if a bitcoin is lost forever the remaining
bitcoin just increase in value.

~~~
eridius
It is? I thought there was a minimum usable denomination, called a "satoshi",
that was something like 0.0000001 BTC (I don't know the actual value). Or is
this really just a convention enforced by the current clients that can be
easily changed in the future?

~~~
CydeWeys
It would require a hard fork to increase the data storage for the number field
from an int64 to an int128, but doing so would be uncontroversial (way more so
than the current debate over the block size). It could be programmed to take
effect at a certain block # from several years out, by which point almost
everyone would be using a version of the software that would support it.

We're not anywhere close to it mattering yet, though; it's several decades
out.

------
dpweb
This whole "controversy" is incredibly boring. The real Satoshi would be able
to prove it easily. Prove it, or STFU and we can move on from the who is
Satoshi mystery?

~~~
arcticfox
It's not that boring at all. How did he smoke and mirror two of the best
Bitcoin devs on the planet?

At worst, it's an interesting discussion of a con man running into a technical
wall.

~~~
haakon
Matonis is not a Bitcoin developer or a person of much technical merit, if
that was one of the two you referred to. Good question about Gavin, though.

~~~
arcticfox
Ah - you're correct, he seems to be an economist. I incorrectly assumed
someone so intimately involved w/ Bitcoin for so long must be a cryptographer.

------
atomical
He played the media like a fiddle. They should follow up with some
investigative reporting on him.

~~~
Aqueous
If "playing the media like a fiddle" means "walking away with your tail
between your legs, a sad, broken man..." then sure.

~~~
dsfuoi
You don't know if he is a sad, broken man.

There is no evidence to believe the post reflects upon his real emotions, and
since the man is untrustworthy[0], the post cannot be taken as evidence about
his emotional state.

[0]:Whether he is willfully or maliciously deceptive is irrelevant. Even if he
has the best of intentions, his behavior is still untrustworthy.

~~~
Aqueous
I don't know, but based on the last line I err on the side of caution. People
don't react well to world-wide humiliation. I agree that he is completely
untrustworthy and can't be relied upon to give an accurate representation of
his own mental well-being.

------
jgrahamc
The note is terribly sad. I hope he has people around him to support him.

~~~
hugozap
It's weird that he's afraid of proving it but not of being labeled as a con
artist. It makes no sense.

~~~
regnet
He's clearly used to being labeled a con-artist for many years.

------
saalweachter
Thought experiment: Suppose Satoshi, whoever it is, is still alive somewhere
in the wild. But he doesn't have his original keys (hard-drive failure with no
backup, apartment fire with no offsite backup, etc etc).

How would Satoshi prove himself then?

~~~
jamoes
He could still have access to his PGP private key, which would be a strong
data point. It could be possible that someone stole this key though, so this
alone wouldn't completely prove his identity.

If he had the foresight to know he might want to prove his identity at some
point in the future, he could have embedded the hash of a message into an
early block (using the public keys of coinbase transactions). The message
could say something like "Satoshi Nakamoto is <real name>. <salt>". In order
to prove his identity, he'd just have to reveal the contents of the message
(he'd have the make the salt something he could memorize so that it wouldn't
be at risk of being destroyed by a fire). Ideally he'd encode this message
hash in multiple early blocks (using a different salt in each message, so that
the hash is different each time).

I think anything like the "knowledge of the content of private emails" is
flawed. Satoshi's email account was hacked, so most of his "private" emails
are no longer private (supposedly he didn't use PGP for most of his private
correspondence).

~~~
CydeWeys
A Bitcoin private key is only 51 characters when expressed in the Base58
format that Bitcoin uses. Here is an example private key expressed in such a
format: 5Kb8kLf9zgWQnogidDA76MzPL6TsZZY36hWXMssSzNydYXYB9KF

If I were Satoshi I totally would've committed it to memory. I have more
random characters than that memorized for passwords to various accounts.

Or, even easier, have a smaller simple password, and then be able to
reconstruct them using an algorithm that your remember, e.g.
SHA256(SHA256(SHA256("correct") + "horse battery") + "staple").

~~~
atomical
That is genius.

------
criddell
His note doesn't make any sense to me.

If I were to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is Satoshi, this
note still doesn't make any sense. Removing all doubt that he at least
controls the keys is almost trivial.

------
neuropie
It's very interesting that he asked the media to send coins to one of
Satoshi's Bitcoin addresses, and that he would return them. All of Satoshi's
original coins are Pay-to-Public-Key, whereas the BBC's money was sent Pay-to-
Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH). This means that Craig would have to present a
signature along with a public key that just has the same hash as the Satoshi
public key, not a signature for Satoshi's public key itself. I think he is
banking on finding another key with the same hash, as a final desperate
attempt to forge his identity.

~~~
m-i-l
If Craig Wright did indeed purchase the supercomputer which was placed at
number 17 on the list of the world's fastest supercomputers in November 2015,
perhaps its sole purpose was to do a collision attack. Although as with other
claims, it is uncertain whether he did buy this computer (SGI deny it was
bought from them but concede that it could have been bought on the grey
market[0]).

[0] [http://www.zdnet.com/article/sgi-denies-links-with-
alleged-b...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/sgi-denies-links-with-alleged-
bitcoin-founder-craig-wright/)

------
tunesmith
For those of you who haven't had firsthand experience with truly weird
habitual liars, this is exactly what it's like... not saying Wright is a liar
but he hasn't differentiated himself from it.

------
koktang
Is the website image steganographic?

~~~
mastazi
I thought the same. The image has been taken down, is there anyone who saved
it?

~~~
cporios
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160505121147/http://www.drcrai...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160505121147/http://www.drcraigwright.net/homepage.jpg)

------
abalone
What is the best theory of how Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis were deceived?

------
jbmorgado
I think it follows the typical modus operandi of large part of the Bitcoin
community:

1 - Propose flawed argument.

2 - Insert pink unicorns.

3 - When asked for proof, don't give it and instead claim this is exactly
what's best for the world but that we are too short minded to understand it.

~~~
snitko
What you're trying to do here is to project your hatred for Bitcoin using
fraud as somehow representative of the ideas embedded into Bitcoin, which have
nothing to do with that fraud.

~~~
jbmorgado
I'm sorry, but only the people that feel the need to follow something as some
kind of religion or philosophy really need to attribute the adjectives _"
hatred"_ or _" love"_ to some kind of technology.

The rest of the world at large (EDIT: that knows about bitcoin as sub intended
by the rest of the sentence) that is not part of the bitcoin cult, looks at
the thing for its technological prowess - or lack of it - and mostly sees it
as a cryptographic experiment gone right and a financial experiment gone very
wrong.

~~~
snitko
Don't speak for most people. Most people know nothing about Bitcoin just yet.
Can you be more specific about where the financial experiment of Bitcoin has
gone wrong and why?

~~~
jbmorgado
It's quite telling that you don't want me to speak for other people but just
in your answer before projected your irrational feelings about bitcoin on me
and on what I feel or don't feel for bitcoin (so that we get straight, I don't
_" feel"_ anything for a technology, that doesn't make sense).

When I referred the world at large, I referred the world at large that already
knows bitcoin, not the world population. And from those, most of them
obviously didn't get in bitcoin (in fact the ones that did get in bitcoin are
pulling out as can be clearly seen in the volume of bitcoin transactions since
2014).

And it is a clearly failed financial experiment because:

1 - It concentrated all the wealth in the hands and very few people in only a
couple of years
([http://www.bitcoinrichlist.com/top100](http://www.bitcoinrichlist.com/top100))

2 - The majority of bitcoin transactions are used for ilegal purposes
([http://www.coindesk.com/dark-web-markets-processed-more-
bitc...](http://www.coindesk.com/dark-web-markets-processed-more-bitcoin-than-
bitpay-in-2014/))

3 - It's more inconvenient than existing payment systems to use so people
don't use it ([http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-is-dead-says-
prominent...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-is-dead-says-prominent-
fintech-executive-taavet-hinrikus-transferwise-bitcoin-experiment-
failed-191800988.html))

4 - People are so uninterested and suspicious of bitcoin that you actually
_loose_ money if you present bitcoin as a payment/donation method
([http://bitcoinist.net/mozilla-study-shows-bitcoin-
negative-i...](http://bitcoinist.net/mozilla-study-shows-bitcoin-negative-
impact-donations/))

5 - Complete unregulation keeps meaning high scale theft and complete
unreliability of bitcoin markets (MtGox and many others)

All in all, the world at large - in this case not only the ones that know
bitcoin - clearly understands that the financial system needs _more
regulation_ not less, and yet, you put bitcoin in the table with is utter lack
of regulation and try to claim its a great thing that will solve the world's
financial problems but you don't give absolutely no sane argument or metrics
about how it is doing that. And that was exactly my original point.

~~~
fucking_tragedy
The most damning: Seven transaction a second.

You cannot have a functioning financial system that is constrained to seven
transactions per second.

~~~
elif
So when you say that for a "fact" the system is constrained to 7TPS, you are
intentionally ignoring most bitcoin transactions, which are off-chain
transactions at exchanges. That's not just oversight that's deceit.

~~~
homogeneous
Ah, the "off-chain" transaction, AKA "using a traditional centralized database
because the blockchain is too slow and expensive".

------
bpchaps
Odd note - his page just turned from a jpeg to use actual text. So, uh. yay, I
suppose.

------
glaberficken
Link to archived version of full May 3rd post
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160504045648/http://www.drcrai...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160504045648/http://www.drcraigwright.net/extraordinary-
claims-require-extraordinary-proof/)

------
Tenoke
Can someone please explain how Gavin can still think he is Satoshi? I am very
confused.

~~~
mpeg
People who get conned will generally refuse to believe they've been scammed,
even when presented with evidence.

------
oneloop
The words "absolute moron" come to mind.

------
PhasmaFelis
The entire "who is Satoshi" thing is basically the tech equivalent of gossip
rags.

------
satysin
The guy sounds like a pathological liar and narcissist. Amazing so many were
sucked in to his bullshit. The journalists involved should be embarrassed as
they look like utter fools.

------
crystalmeph
Tin-foil, but if I were Satoshi and wanted to remain anonymous, and some
journalists started snooping around, one way to shut them down would be to
publicly post a "proof" that seems technical enough to get the reporters to
run out screaming "we got him!" but falls apart once more technical people
start investigating...

~~~
chriswarbo
If you treat the "proof" falling apart under scrutiny as evidence that he _is_
Satoshi, then to remain consistent you must treat a strong proof which holds
up under scrutiny as evidence _against_ him being Satoshi.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence)

~~~
crystalmeph
To be clear, I don't believe my tin-foil conspiracy is true, and honestly it
doesn't matter one bit to me if Craig Wright is the inventor of Bitcoin.

That said, I never said that his "absence of evidence that he is Satoshi" is
actually "evidence that he is Satoshi". In fact, no one has provided any real
evidence either that he is or is not Satoshi.

Again, assuming that the real Satoshi wishes to remain anonymous, but is on
the verge of discovery anyway, he may have a difficult time "proving" that he
isn't Satoshi, so his next best bet might be to sidestep proof entirely and
instead play a kind of mind game to throw off the investigation. So
conservation of expected evidence doesn't factor in, because he hasn't
"proven" anything one way or the other, he's basically gambled that internet
ridicule will achieve a desired goal.

------
bitmapbrother
I suggested this from the start. A simple transaction from Satoshi's account
to an agreed upon 3rd party is all that would have been needed to prove his
claims. Claiming to not have the "courage" to perform this simple verification
is just ridiculous.

------
ajonit
I really wish Satoshi comes out from hiding before he (or the group) is dead
(assuming he is not already); otherwise it will forever take #1 position on
those listicles sites ("The top 10 mysteries of all time; You really want to
know #1")

------
lazzlazzlazz
Nobody here should be surprised; we knew Wright has been engaging in
pathological behaviors for years now. The question is how Gavin will handle
the damage to his reputation. I feel bad for him.

------
supercoder
It's a suicide note.

~~~
l33tbro
As cringey as this whole episode has been, I genuinely hope this guy is
alright and doesn't do something dumb.

~~~
woodman
The subsequent modifications to the website lead me to believe that the
chances of this being a suicide note are really low. But everything leading up
to this leaves me confident that he will continue to "do something dumb", just
not suicide.

------
jheriko
Unsurprising. Being vague and mysterious is the hallmark of bullshit.

The fact that some people believe it is more a testament to their naivete than
anything else. I pity them... :(

------
throw7
"There are very credible people besides Gavin and Jon who still think he is
Satoshi - people who are privy to other information and whose judgement I
respect."

Oh? Pray tell.

------
biot
In the video he claims that he is the one known by the "monkier" [sic] Satoshi
Nakamoto. A very appropriate misspeak of the word "moniker".

------
DonGateley
Perhaps he was simply clued to some seriously bad consequence of proving his
ownership of the Satoshi hoard.

------
fapjacks
Wow, I'm psychic! Turns out all the guy really had was a rubber suit in a
freezer. It wasn't a bigfoot after all!!

Shocking.

------
cogentleman
Haha can't handle the limelight, this fella reminds me of the Flappy Bird
creator.

I think he's BSing as well.

------
ParadisoShlee
that’s the kind of apology I would expect from the zodiac killer..

------
The_knight
I'd be willing to bet that the coins will move soon.

~~~
6nf
I will take your bet, what would you like to wager?

------
bitmadness
What an ass

------
jsprogrammer
Humans are not monkies and never were. It is believed that the two species
shared a common ancestor at some point.

Edit: If someone has evidence otherwise, please post.

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11636167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11636167)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Why?

------
imsatoshi
This guy is not the creator. No body is. Evolution!!

------
jonah
Bitcoin needs a "For Entertainment Purposes Only" disclaimer on it.

------
johnjac
We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of
'Satoshi Nakamoto' for the week. But all the decision of that Satoshi have to
be ratified at a special biweekly meeting.

------
id122015
these stories about bitcoin are like those long drama's/soap operas/ Tween
Peaks, I dont know anything about because I didnt have time to put up with it.
Only women..

~~~
imsatoshi
True that

------
ebbv
One thing that gives me a little pause and makes me think maybe he is telling
the truth (even though all other evidence and logic says he's a fraud) is that
the real Satoshi has not put out a statement calling this guy out as a fraud.

When the Dorian Nakamoto stuff happened the real Satoshi put out a statement
saying he's not Dorian. That wasn't that long ago.

If he did that you'd think he'd step up and say he's not Craig Wright either.
But maybe he did the previous one because he felt Dorian was being victimized
whereas Craig Wright has made a mess of his own design.

It's hard to say for sure.

~~~
gamache
> When the Dorian Nakamoto stuff happened the real Satoshi put out a statement
> saying he's not Dorian. That wasn't that long ago.

My read on that is that Satoshi felt sorry for the hapless Japanese-American
guy with tech media showing up at his house.

In contrast, Craig Wright asked for this.

~~~
celticninja
Also the old guy was going to have to prove a negative. Can't be done.

~~~
lgas
Let's see some proof that it can't be done.

