3 ms·

To be fair, the original Wired article did end with this sentence: > Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to beli

• jnbiche 11y ago
  > Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did. That's a total cop-out, and may represent the last sentence I ever read from Wired (used to love it). Anyone with a modicum of technical ability could have done all the "brilliant" hoaxing Wright has done, such as back-dating GPG keys and spoofing email. He even screwed up those (e.g., not realizing that he used GPG preferred hash algorithms that didn't even exist until 2009 when back-dating a key to 2008). In addition, Wright totally, completely ruined his scam with his ridiculous bragging about his half dozen of (non-existent) degrees, which set many people's Spidey senses tingling. Satoshi was a pretty low-key guy. A competent hoaxer would have made a bigger effort to match the personality and character of the person he was trying to emulate. This isn't Kaiser Soze level scheming here. This is a fairly uneducated, boastful man with a bit of technical knowledge and a load of dishonest intentions. It's horribly disappointing that so many people in both the journalist and Bitcoin communities were so quick to fall for it, especially after what happened with Dorian Nakamoto.
  • pbreit 11y ago
    Yeah, it didn't seem any more elaborate than, say a Stripe capture the flag. I'm guessing he did it to have a little fun. When the Wired article moved from all the compelling evidence to the part where they run down how all that compelling evidence was tampered with, I was shocked they continued on thinking they had their guy.