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Comment by jere | Hacker News Reader

I've said before the Newsweek story makes no sense. In order to believe it, you need to think this guy hatched a brilliant plan to protect his identity (after 5 years of successfully doing so) by acting like a clueless old man and calling Bitcoin "bitcom."

And simultaneously you have to believe, during the execution of his brilliant plan, he goofed and unambiguously confessed to his involvement in Bitcoin.

>"I have no knowledge of nor have I ever worked in cryptography, peer to peer systems, or alternative currencies."

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We are talking about the anonymous person behind Bitcoin. I would put absolutely NOTHING past the original architect. Honestly, I would expect nothing else.

Would you expect him to not even be able to afford internet service or suffer financially while recovering from cancer and a stroke despite having an estimated 400MM worth of BTC?

Then you get into the "he deleted that BTC because it was just an experiment and he wasn't in it for the money" theories. There's no end to it.

> We are talking about the anonymous person behind Bitcoin.

If they wanted to be anonymous, wouldn't they use a pseudonym?To create a decentralized identity protecting project as an anonymous individual using your real name (because you don't want to be found) seems... poorly thought out.

I doubt it's him.

Hindsight is 20/20. By this I mean: the name was linked when the white paper was written. Do you think Satoshi anticipated that everyone would ignore the white paper and that he would have to spend two years building it by himself?

My point is: he didn't choose his alias aided by the benefit of knowing what bitcoin would become. So it's suspect to deduce that his actions had been perfectly targeted to the facts of the present.

>Honestly, I would expect nothing else.

You would expect the original architect to confess to being involved and then deny it hours later. Is there something about the original whitepaper that makes you think this person is mentally ill?

You don't have to be mentally ill to act mentally ill. The charade has pretty much removed all credence to the idea that he is the creator of bitcoin. Perhaps that's what he wants.

"Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right, I AM the Messiah!"

> You would expect the original architect to confess to being involved and then deny it hours later.

Yes. Yes, I would.

> I would put absolutely NOTHING past the original architect.

An thus create a unfalsifiable, worthless hypothesis. Al Gore could be Satoshi then.

My girlfriend works at a bakery. She swears that one day an elderly Elvis and Tupac came in together, bought some pastries with bitcoin, then told her they invented the entire thing.

I believe it.

Score:5 Funny

Al Gore has never denied being Satoshi:

Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxnXo1o_XnQ

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