
The Saga of Craig Wright, the Latest “Inventor of Bitcoin” - jstoiko
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/bizarre-saga-craig-wright-latest-inventor-bitcoin
======
Lazare
Regardless of whether Craig Wright is Nakamoto, there's an interesting story
here, and I'm looking forward to it coming out. Someone has spent a fair
amount of time and effort forging documents and setting up an elaborate paper
trail to lead some journalists to this conclusion. Why?

It's easy to compare this to the Dorian Nakamoto thing, but this is quite
different. Nobody had a vested interest in making Dorian look like Satoshi, it
was just sloppy journalism. This is something else (although it might be
sloppy journalism too...)

~~~
joosters
My best guess is that the fraud angle is most likely. Especially the
'fortunate' emergence of draft contracts showing that the guy has claim to a
huge stash of bitcoins (but conveniently he can't access them until 2020).
Perhaps he hoped that by appearing to be 'doxxed' it would lend more credence
to his claims that he owned/controlled this wealth.

A fraudster could get a lot of mileage out of a "I will pay you back later,
look I've got all this future wealth" claim.

~~~
jgalt212
> but conveniently he can't access them until 2020

Maybe that's his estimate of when the supercomputer he's built in Iceland will
crack Satoshi's private key.

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runn1ng
As others have said, I lost a little confidence in Gwern, who was a co-author
of the the Wired piece and who I, until now, viewed as more skeptical.
Especially given his history at LessWrong.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
Gwern has a sterling reputation at LessWrong - or do you just mean having an
association with LessWrong is bad in itself. One Satoshi candidate, Hal
Finney, was a LessWronger, too.

I, too, am surprised he believes this, but I'm not about to write him off. He
could still be right and if he's wrong so what.

~~~
runn1ng
Yeah, that's what I meant. He has a great reputation, so I held him in high
regard somewhat until now

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phpnode
This reddit thread offers some pretty interesting / convincing speculation on
Craig Wright's scam -
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3web4s/some_more_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3web4s/some_more_info_on_craig_wright_and_his_scam)

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vezzy-fnord
I swear with all the rampant speculation and hunting for Satoshi's identity
that have led deep to a multitude of rabbit holes, the only way for the real
Satoshi's uncovering _not_ to end up a disappointment, would be if he's also
revealed to be simultaneously D.B. Cooper and Jimmy Hoffa (maybe even the
Zodiac Killer while we're at it).

~~~
keithpeter
The reality might be quite everyday like the strange case of David Rodinsky
[1]

I'm just wondering why those early-mined bitcoins have not been touched...

[1]
[http://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/may/22/books.guardianr...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/may/22/books.guardianreview9)

~~~
oh_sigh
Perhaps he just used a throwaway key and Satoshi no longer has access to it.

~~~
keithpeter
That would chime in with the idea that the reality was much more mundane than
what we all imagine. I suppose before bitcoin actually took off, that might be
a reasonable thing to do, just check it was all working as intended with early
adopters...

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canjobear
Is there anywhere I can read a concise summary of the evidence for and against
this guy as Satoshi?

Right now the facts seem spread out across popular press articles and random
forum threads.

~~~
jnbiche
If you're technical, this alone should be enough to convince you that none of
this has any connection to Satoshi:

\- [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-
proba...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-probably-
backdated-and-point-to-a-hoax)

If not, then this will probably at least convince you of the (lack of)
veracity of Craig Wright's many claims:

\- [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/) (Wright claimed to have SGI supercomputer,
turns out to not be true)

\-
[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/) (Wright claimed to have CSU PhD,
turns out to be false)

Go and look up the claims this guy has made that turned out false. The guy is
clearly a massive fraudster, which was crystal clear to me from the moment I
first heard him speak, and who has encouraged this "I'm Satoshi" thing for the
last year or so (probably for financial reasons).

I mean, the fact that a lot of people in the "technical community" and
"Bitcoin community" fell for this have seriously lowered my esteem of both.
Bitcoin in particular seems to have been attracting a certain type of gullible
gold-seeker since ~2013. Sadly, the scammers go wherever these folks go, and
so Bitcoin has been absolutely besieged by them.

Similarly, the number of "journalists" who wrote off the difference between
"satoshin@gmx.com" and "satoshi@gmx" as it were an unimportant detail is
pretty stunning (my opinion of them was already pretty low, so no real hard
done).

------
ikeboy
That's probably the most "forum" links I've ever seen in a mainstream
publication.

------
fiatjaf
Why is the police trying to catch Satoshi Nakamoto?

~~~
ufo
The police is going after Craig because he owes millions of dollars in unpaid
taxes. It has nothing to do with him claiming to be Satoshi (although his name
getting in the news might have prompted them to raid his house before he ran
away with the evidence).

~~~
fiatjaf
Thank you for summing that up for me.

------
cornchips
My summaries (with evidence):

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3weotb/evidence_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3weotb/evidence_the_craig_wright_emails_were_genuine/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3wi2qk/twitter_acc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3wi2qk/twitter_account_of_the_satoshi_doxer_and_more/)

There's a whole other story to people's reactions to this. I'm quite surprised
there is an equivalent of lack of belief here; as reddit can be really
childish and vile. Meme phrase "Regardless of the outcome.. I believe this is
a hoax"

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mbrutsch
Who doesn't love ~~doxxing~~ investigative journalism?

~~~
Kutta
Please don't propagate this crap. The stories came out only after the guy
publicly paraded himself as Nakamoto.

Quite possibly we would have gotten articles published even if Wright didn't
"out" himself, but I highly doubt that gwern would have given his name in that
case, and Wright did out himself after all.

~~~
baby
How did he out himself? He was outed after an "investigation". This is
doxxing, not journalism, I will agree with the parent comment.

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fredgrott
Craig Wright is not the inventor of Bitcoin...

First Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym first part implies clear thinking second
part implies central in origin..its meaning might be central to the origin of
cyber-encryption movement..although that probably is not it..but the made up
name does imply that the inventor is central to an encryption movement.

~~~
plorg
I probably need not explain that this is simply tautological.

