Wired thinks it has unmasked Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto as an Australian security personality Craig Wright. Plenty of others beg to differ.
Curiously, I had an ugly argument with Wright and a handful of Bitcoin enthusiasts on Twitter in May 2015.
It started after I asked a simple question about why some people had started advocating blockchain for identity. I didn’t get a straight answer, but instead copped a fair bit of abuse. Wright’s Twitter account has since been deleted, so it’s hard to reconstruct the thread (I’d love it if someone out there knows how to extract a more complete Twitter archive; I don’t suppose anyone Storified the thread?).
Reproduced below is one side of the spat. I only have my own archived tweets from the time in question but you should get the gist. Wright could never stick to the point – what does blockchain have to offer identity management? Instead he took all inquiries as an attack. He’s passionate about Bitcoin changing the world, and if I recall correctly, boasted of his own enormous wealth from Bitcoin mining (he’s no crypto-anarchist, as is clear from his exhorbitant LinkedIn profile, one of the longest you’ll ever see). Wright’s arguments were all deflections; he even dredged up a PKI project from 17 years ago on which we worked together, where evidently he and I had some difference of opinion, something I honestly can’t remember.
For what it’s worth, in my wildest dreams I can’t imagine the confusing, self-important Craig Wright being Nakamoto.