Comment by pas
6 days ago
Thanks for the details! I assumed he had at least some access, control or leverage.
(But losing keys is very easy, especially if the feds take your devices and your means of buying new ones, and freely accessing potential backups.)
We'll never know but I honestly think it might be him, there's other evidence:
Commonwealth English speaker (grew up in Rhodesia/SA) - Sassaman was american and it would be odd for him to adopt British english as Satoshi
Known Windows user and there are supposedly similarities in the tech stack and code between early Bitcoin client versions and TrueCrypt which Le Roux is widely believed to have developed
Early Bitcoin client versions included poker game code for some reason - Le Roux is known to have been interested in this and at one point was considering opening an online casino
On the other hand, evidence against Le Roux and in favour of Sassaman:
The whitepaper has weird references that suggest the author was involved in cryptography academically in the Benelux countries. Le Roux did live in the Netherlands at one point but afaik wasn't involved in anything academic whereas Sassaman very much was