[xorcist]

The Craig Wright story is interesting because Gavin Andresen, who probably interacted more with Satoshi than anybody else, was dead set on Wright being Satoshi. He referred to evidence shown in private that he was unable to share the details of.

Later after Wright couldn't (or didn't want to) prove the Satoshi connection in public Andresen later expressed regrets going public with these statements, but never really took them back. It's hard to know, really. Andresen was release manager of the reference implementation for several years and widely regarded as trustworthy.

Other people made business investments based on these statements. Well known investor Roger Ver now seems to regard Wright a fraud, but not before headlining conferences with him and releasing a cryptocurrency together. So Wright has been quite influential, at least with some select people, and is absolutely newsworthy.