Comment by adastra22
7 days ago
> Can someone explain why this relatively recent tweet fight is convincing evidence that Szabo is too ignorant to have been behind Bitcoin?
I’m a primary player in this sad saga. I can tell you that neither Szabo nor Back are Satoshi, as anyone who knows them would attest.
But to your question, all this does is make this “journalist” look dumb. The thing being discussed by Adam and Nick wasn’t wven proposed for bitcoin until 6 years after Satoshi disappeared.
> I can tell you that neither Szabo nor Back are Satoshi, as anyone who knows them would attest.
I'm sure you can tell us, and I'm sure you all will attest it, but is it true though?
You probably wouldn't "out" Satoshi if it was one of you working on anonymous payment systems on the mailing list, and it very obviously is - there were like ten people at most, if we're generous, who were working on what was at the time an extremely nice cryptography topic.
Which is fine I guess, bit the attestation doesn't mean much.
I co-founded a company with Adam Back. If he is Satoshi, I'd be pissed that we had to take money on really bad terms while he was sitting on billions. And I'd find it strange that I had to correct minor misconceptions about how bitcoin worked back in 2013/2014. That's all non-transferable evidence though that you just have to take, or not take at face value.
On the other hand, just go read Adam's twitter. Half the time it is incomprehensible word salad because Adam clearly still does not proof-read his communications. Yet Satoshi's emails and forum posts were always considered and well-crafted.
In any case, I have no stake in this. I don't even own bitcoin anymore. It's just frustrating to see people's lives continuously turned upside down for no reason other than to drive clicks towards the NYT, without even the most basic journalistic integrity.
I'm not one of those who thinks it's Adam Back, I believe it's Szabo - which means of course that I find your anecdotes perfectly convincing :)
And it seems also the thing you mention about taking money on bad terms should be independently verifiable, which the journalist writing this article should probably have checked.
I have trouble believing Satoshi would pursue a venture capital startup founder life in his personal life, assuming he didn't burn his wallets. I would find it a lot more likely that he pursued an academic career at his own tempo, writing a paper here and there, maybe teaching undergraduates even, etc. But that's a lot closer to my dream life, so maybe I'm biased there as well!
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