[alchemist1e9]

Now it is starting to look to me almost like you and Peter Todd are panicking and making huge slip ups.

Let me explain.

I see that you are now also arguing the IP leak is questionable and that others were running Bitcoin or could have been. Now combine this with the absurd idea that “retep” could have just been abandoned and it means nothing, even peter backwards, there are a million Peters whatever.

This is crazy you guys are basically accidentally admitting to technical somewhat knowledgable people like myself that retep is Satoshi because the excuses don’t pass the smell test. We know Peter was an actual wiz kid, it’s clear, Hal was emailing him in 2000, all using the email address that included … wait for it … “retep”, his IRC, his website, his freenode. It’s now obvious that he likely changed to his real name because the “cat was out of the bag” among the insiders. Hal would have immediately known Satoshi was Peter.

OMG guys get your act together fast. You need a plan B, no pun intended, because real investigators will tease it out, the top people doing that, have almost supernatural human intuition.

Regarding IP leak. Come on. Obviously it’s his IP. Was there a conference or vacation he was on maybe?

I’m just a dumb ass Bitcoiner from OG days and I can see though this charade so easily. I’m concerned.

Bitcoin is a gift to humanity from Satoshi (perhaps not retep!) and if the keys aren’t destroyed already and Satoshi is alive and has them then perhaps he should consider publicly burning the 1M coins or at least most of them. The nebulous case of supposedly the keys are destroyed is not a good situation tbh.

To answer your question. Yes I can definitely figure out where I was on January 10th, 2009. I know where I lived and worked then. I know if I took any vacations.

I’m hoping Peter Todd has a good alibi if he isn’t Satoshi. If he is … well time to confess and handle it in a way that doesn’t hurt the amazing invention.

EDIT: I wish I didn’t open this can of worms on HN. But I can’t delete it now …

[olalonde]

You obviously haven't done much research on the topic. There are far, far more likely candidates, like Len Sassaman. Anyone that knew a bit about Bitcoin at the time could have made that BitcoinTalk post, it's not a "slip up".

Also, Satoshi almost certainly lived in the Benelux region when he released Bitcoin. See this paper for some actual evidence-based research: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.10257

[alchemist1e9]

I have done a lot and have read that paper.

I’ve been camp Szabo for a while. also have considered Sassaman however it’s not just his anti Bitcoin tweets, which could be misdirection, but people have reported he had genuine conversations with them with same sentiments.

I also initially thought Peter Todd theory was a joke. Wasn’t convinced by doc at all. However once you dig into his life from teen onward and see his current attempts to downplay himself and retell history in strange ways … I don’t know … my position has changed significantly, I think it’s looking more and more possible.

[olalonde]

Not only is there not much evidence backing the Peter Todd theory, but there are many issues with it:

1) Why wouldn't he have used his Satoshi identity to discredit Craig Wright and save himself and fellow core developers a lot of pain and suffering?

2) Why wouldn't he have spent any of his large BTC stash?

3) Why is he fine being known as an early Bitcoin developer and adopter, but not fine being known as its creator?

4) How would he have a copy of the "20th Symposium on Information Theory in the Benelux", given that it was only distributed to attendants and university libraries in the Benelux?

5) How would he have gotten his hands on the British version of a newspaper on 03/Jan/2009?

Due to 1), I highly doubt that Satoshi remained an active member of the Bitcoin community following his departure. The fact that he stayed silent during the "block wars" and the Craig Wright shitshow shows a complete indifference towards Bitcoin or more likely, that he was dead or incapacitated.

I'm not saying Sassaman is Satoshi, but simply that Sassaman is a much better candidate. This is a picture that Sassaman took of his office in 2007: https://www.flickr.com/photos/enochsmiles/488460964/. Notice anything interesting?

[nullc]

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I have late 2010 backups with a copy of the "Design of a secure timestamping service with minimal trust requirements" paper. It was rendered with a January 2009 copy of ghostscript. Just based on the dates there are reasonable odds my copy is the same one Satoshi had. Satoshi contacted the authors he cited for information on how to correctly cite their work, he didn't actually have to have seen the symposium document. Considering that it's title used the same language as Satoshi, it wouldn't have been surprising for him to have turned it up -- or one of the people Satoshi contacted might have suggested it.

Lots of possibilities.

I would take the source that you're taking these arguments from with a huge grain of salt.

> I'm not saying Sassaman is Satoshi, but simply that Sassaman is a much better candidate.

A hand full of random coincidences which are unsurprising for people of their interests isn't good evidence for any of them.

And it's also not unusual for people to have access to proceedings for events they didn't attend, or even to have them outright, e.g. I have a big set of FC proceedings but only was actually attending for a couple-- https://files.catbox.moe/w1dhwn.jpeg.

[olalonde]

> I don't have a dog in this fight

Neither do I, I was simply comparing them from a Bayesian point of view. There is indeed no "smoking gun". What you say about the citation is possible but I estimate that it's more likely he had a physical copy (I would change my mind about that if we found out he had indeed contacted the authors for citation information).

Also, Sassaman has some important points in his favor that Peter Todd lacks:

1) he is dead. I find it unlikely that Satoshi is still alive and even more unlikely that he is still alive and very publicly involved in Bitcoin.

2) strong connection to one of the white paper's citations

3) cares a lot about privacy/anonymity, e.g. he tried to convince Bram Cohen to release BitTorrent anonymously

But he also has some points that work against him: not being known as a Windows C++ programmer, his wife not believing him to be Satoshi, etc.

Overall I feel Sassaman is more likely than Todd, but I am not convinced he is Satoshi.

[alchemist1e9]

> 1) he is dead. I find it unlikely that Satoshi is still alive and even more unlikely that he is still alive and very publicly involved in Bitcoin.

As morbid as it is we should all admit we want Sassaman to be Satoshi. It would be undeniably a better outcome for Bitcoin. I hope it can be proved personally.

What I don’t understand is why his wife wouldn’t help prove this. It would be in her interest in my opinion and likely the drives and systems he used can be tracked down and confirmed as either destroyed or still encrypted.

Satoshi’s coins are the elephant in the room. If the world is really headed towards a Bitcoin reserve world and value of a coin comtinuing to increase… then the Satoshi hoard can make him the first trillionare. The uncertainty around control of those coins is probably already a tail risk uncertainty that is holding back Bitcoin.

Back to Peter Todd it’s curious he was also actively working on distributed timestamping in 2007/8 apparently. Though I have yet to track down his code and only recently learned this.

If you didn’t watch the doc you probably should we have to acknowledge Todd’s and Back’s body language was definitely at a minimum curious.

My biggest concern is all 3 identified - Back, Maxwell, and Todd appear to be engaged in deflection and confusion tactics. They seem to promote this narrative that it’s best we don’t know who Satoshi was and so many people could be etc, I don’t buy that reasoning.

I hope Sassaman is Satoshi. Why not start having candidates show some alibis like Mike Kern has done for Finney … which curiously nullc has just questioned, though I’m glad he has, we should see the email headers the more we know to help track down Satoshi the better at this point imho. I’m aware many Bitcoiners seem to disagree with that opinion and it’s notable Back has not released his supposed correspondence with Satoshi at all.

[alchemist1e9]

We all want Sassaman to be Satoshi. For the sake of debate I’ll reply to your issues with the Peter Todd theory:

> 1) Why wouldn't he have used his Satoshi identity to discredit Craig Wright and save himself and fellow core developers a lot of pain and suffering?

In the documentary he tells you himself. He destroyed Satoshi thats “what he would do if he was Satoshi”. I can relate even. I’ve “destroyed” one of my own pseudonyms once and it was probably a panic move on his part.

Also don’t forget the 2015 “satoshi” email which people assume is “hacked” yet it’s completely possible it’s authentic. Satoshi may have retained access to the email address after all other data was “destroyed” simply because he remembered the passwords and didn’t delete the email account. Yet what was the lesson from that? nobody would believe it’s Satoshi unless the message is signed … which Satoshi can’t do … because the PGP keys are deleted.

> 2) Why wouldn't he have spent any of his large BTC stash?

Again because he destroyed Satoshi. But alternatively why move or spend coins if you don’t need to? I have unmoved coins from 2013. Somebody from very very early felt the need to move their coins recently, likely for security reasons as it moved to multisig.

29 Jan 2009 - mined coinbase transaction ——> !! https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/77fe7a6eb5e98bf53...

> 3) Why is he fine being known as an early Bitcoin developer and adopter, but not fine being known as its creator?

There is a LOT of baggage being Satoshi. Without PGP keys or other keys to sign with NOBODY will believe him anyway, is that not true?

> 4) How would he have a copy of the "20th Symposium on Information Theory in the Benelux", given that it was only distributed to attendants and university libraries in the Benelux?

retep could have easily been emailed this. He was also working on timestamping project like Sassaman though I have yet to see this project and code that supposedly exists.

> 5) How would he have gotten his hands on the British version of a newspaper on 03/Jan/2009?

Borders. It was awesome back then. My wife and I often reminisce over the foreign newspapers section of Borders. They were only 1 or 2 days old and very enjoyable. In Toronto Borders they would have had an excellent selection of newspapers from all over the world and especially British newspapers. They were flown in air mail since 1980s like that. I miss Borders over Barnes and Noble A LOT.

> Due to 1), I highly doubt that Satoshi remained an active member of the Bitcoin community following his departure. The fact that he stayed silent during the "block wars" and the Craig Wright shitshow shows a complete indifference towards Bitcoin or more likely, that he was dead or incapacitated.

As we can see your issues with Todd are not as solid as you think.

> I'm not saying Sassaman is Satoshi, but simply that Sassaman is a much better candidate. This is a picture that Sassaman took of his office in 2007: https://www.flickr.com/photos/enochsmiles/488460964/. Notice anything interesting?

I wish his wife could help prove it was him. She is clearly traumatized overall so perhaps she doesn’t yet accept she should help. The tweet about “according to it’s creator” is almost a smoking gun.

Let’s hope Satoshi is Sassaman, however I fear the case for Todd is much stronger than we all would think initially.

[midmagico]

lol, no.

[alchemist1e9]

to which aspect does the lol correspond?

[nullc]

Your tone makes it sound like you're about to break out gematria next. :) You're deep into confirmation bias.

Try considering an alternative hypothesis: This is a new absurd allegation which has only just shown up. Petertodd only learned the documentary would run with this claim hours before it came out as a result of journalists who saw a screener asking him questions. I am not petertodd.

At some point surprising late I realized that the retep account on the forum was petertodd, so it sounded like a fine reason to me that this would be surprising. But it turns out that when you reason backwards from having information after the fact there were already a number of links. Okay so what?

Consider how your logic would work if Todd was maliciously trying to falsely convince people he was a reluctant satoshi-- by e.g. using ineffectual arguments that he wasn't? or failing to to provide "proof".

You would be totally taken by him. Good reasoning doesn't have that vulnerability.

It's not even a speculative attack, this is part of what Wright did to him that enabled him to defraud so many. The kind of reasoning you're using is so vulnerable that it's being accidentally exploited by someone who isn't even trying to do so.

> Regarding IP leak. Come on. Obviously it’s his IP. Was there a conference or vacation he was on maybe?

simply reiterating a position isn't an argument.

> Yes I can definitely figure out where I was on January 10th, 2009. I know where I lived and worked then. I know if I took any vacations.

Where's the proof? That's what you demanded above.

[alchemist1e9]

> Where's the proof? That's what you demanded above.

Most people have jobs or school and maybe kids in school. It means there are records and also we can often have our emails. It’s actually very likely in my opinion that Todd could easily figure out where he was that specific day and there would be corroborating evidence of that.

However it’s not limited to that. It could come from any of the Satoshi timestamps, being on an airplane (no internet back then) somewhere or in some situation that would make it impossible for him to be Satoshi.

You guys are a bit younger than my generation and so you still think 15 years is a long time. It’s not really.

I noticed you are also now questioning the Finney alibi and asking for DKIM email message. I mean yeah not a bad idea to check but interesting that you and petertodd seem to be actively questioning things, which honestly is also good. I mean these details are important.

For example I see you raise something about freenode and IPs with the IP leak. I’m planning to study what you said tomorrow. I don’t on the surface understand what you mean about that. It seems pretty clear the IP in the debug.log file is Satoshi’s node and IRC connection, likely a configuration mistake for the windows VM networking.

> I am not petertodd

I know that. However you and him I believe have a long history together.

> This is a new absurd allegation which has only just shown up.

Yes that’s exactly what I initially thought. But once people look closer I’m not so sure.

A few questions for you: - didn’t Hal actually know retep for a long time? and invite him to join the bluesky list?

- isn’t retep remarkably skilled for his age in 2009 and earlier? he worked professionally on a C++ large codebase at 17! and was clearly very gifted based on an early resume.

- petertodd/retep appears to be trying to misdirect. for instance claiming to he a poor C++ coder?

A good alibi will clear this up if he has it.

[nullc]

> It’s actually very likely in my opinion that Todd could easily figure out where he was that specific day and there would be corroborating evidence of that.

Yet you can't produce it for yourself, you don't see the issue here? I know I absolutely cannot prove anything about my whereabouts on most random days in 2009, I might be able to reason out where I was on some days but even that wouldn't result in transferable proof. Like I can say, 2009 was before I retired from Juniper and the tenth was a saturday-- so maybe I was home which wouldn't leave any evidence. Or maybe I was on a work trip. But if I was I wouldn't have any evidence of it, and even if I did it quite possibly would have been to California (though not socal, thankfully for my kidnapping risk).

Maybe some people can, if you could then I'd have to argue that just because you can it's no reason to assume everyone can, but it seems you can't prove where you were on that day.

So I guess you're Satoshi! Glad we settled it. :D

> It seems pretty clear the IP in the debug.log file is Satoshi’s node and IRC connection

Why do you believe these is clear?

> I know that. However you and him I believe have a long history together.

Sure, but that doesn't extend to knowing what usernames he used where back before I met him, except by chance.

> didn’t Hal actually know retep for a long time?

As far as I can tell the people on the bluesky list were sort of the expected fallout from the dying cypherpunks lists. But I communicated with Hal extensively in 2004-ish about RPOW, am I suddenly Satoshi?

My SO interacted with him due to the extropians list, I guess she's Satoshi now too?

> isn’t retep remarkably skilled for his age in 2009 and earlier?

Petertodd was 24 in 2009. Here is a wired article about a project of mine in 1997, when I was 18: https://archive.is/UT9NE

When I was 20 I helped crack the cryptography underlying CSS, addressing the risk of player key cancellation wack-a-mole. https://web.archive.org/web/20000226011228/http://www.emedia... (not specifically on the crack however)

It's always fun to talk about myself, but also I could give similar or better examples from other early Bitcoin developers, but I don't want to say anything that would drive this sort of bad logic to accusing them of being Satoshi... but an example:

Another early Bitcoin developer created a novel kind of arithmetic coder as a teenager, starting a line of development that eventually became JPEG-XL.

> for instance claiming to he a poor C++ coder?

He is, as am I. (I'm competent in _C_ however).

The standard for claiming proficiency when you are 18 and clueless is different than when you're 40 and competent. C++ has also evolved significantly over the time. While I can't speak for him, after working and Mozilla and with some of the other Bitcoin developers my idea of what qualifies as a good level of skill in C++ has changed radically.

Petertodd's about being poor re-C++ were specifically related to the Bitcoin codebase. And he like me would generally needs to get someone else to explain varrious fancy C++ features in it these days.

> he worked professionally on a C++ large codebase at 17!

I'm missing the context for this, his webpage from around that age says things like " A mass and springs physics sim I wrote in C++ I didn't manage to finish it though, the physics and math proved too difficult for me. :( The code is more messy then I'd like, I didn't have a good mental picture of what I was working on and my usual good commenting and clear style was hurt because of that." and "I was working on a nice large C++ TradeWars like game called Corporate Raiders. However I got bored of it and stopped work around June 2000. The last thing I did for it was make a compiler which I did manage to get working. Oh well, good learning experience. :) "

I don't think this supports what you're saying? But so what?

We may be suffering from a disconnect about the caliber of people that contributed to Bitcoin early on. Every one of them was weird, every one was exceptional. Bitcoin was the most interesting and radical new thing at least since P2P file trading.

But beyond that there are over three hundred million people in North America, so even if you're looking for one-in-a-million people there are hundreds of them, plenty to have a few show up in Bitcoin development, or even in a particularly interesting HN thread.

[alchemist1e9]

Let’s clarify a few things.

First, thank you for posting on HN and for your time. I also want to express my deep respect for you and all developers who helped build Bitcoin. I recognize it has come at a personal cost.

A brief disclaimer - I’m not a significant open-source developer, but my life trajectory is entirely due to open source software, and I’ve achieved substantial financial success through my C++ and Linux skills. I became interested in Bitcoin in early 2011, yet I’ve never contributed directly, but have followed it closely, own it, and used it extensively for various purposes. I did spend some time on the wizards IRC and read the Bitcointalk forum, where I made a few minor posts.

I mention myself as there’s an interesting asymmetry with pseudonyms online. I know a lot about you since your username is a handle, but you likely know little about me, which is intentional on my part. You jokingly refer to me as a potential Satoshi candidate. The distinction between handle and pseudonym is important.

retep was a handle. Satoshi is a pseudonym. Many usernames are handles, some are pseudonyms like mine. Both you and Peter Todd are pretending that retep was a pseudonym. This is misleading and puzzling, as I’m confident you both understand the difference and its significance in this case. I sense misdirection.

Now, let’s address the foundational question:

Should we try to identify Satoshi?

You, Peter Todd, and the “We are Satoshi” crowd argue against it. This is absurd if we agree that Bitcoin could ideally become a global reserve asset and continue to gain value. Satoshi’s 1.1 million coins are the elephant in the room. They likely hold back Bitcoin significantly due to the uncertainty surrounding their status and intentions.

> We may be suffering from a disconnect about the caliber of people that contributed to Bitcoin early on. Every one of them was weird, every one was exceptional. Bitcoin was the most interesting and radical new thing at least since P2P file trading

There is no disconnect. We can agree that Satoshi could have been any number of them. The question is: Who?

> Petertodd's about being poor re-C++ were specifically related to the Bitcoin codebase.

As a professional C++ developer since the mid-'90s, I respectfully disagree with the narrative that something is "different" or "special" about either the nov08 draft code and version 0.1. There are two variants of this narrative - the Amir Taaki view that the coder was an amateur or scientist, and your and Todd’s claim that it was a skilled C++ coder. I find both takes to be misguided. The genius lies in the design, the code itself is neither amateur nor professional, but something in between. Version 0.1, with roughly 7000 loc, isn’t particularly impressive stylistically, the design, however, is stunning, as is the whitepaper.

> And he like me would generally needs to get someone else to explain varrious fancy C++ features in it these days.

This is strange because we’re discussing Satoshi’s code from 2008/2009, not C++17 or contemporary features. Again, I sense misdirection in claiming that Todd or you couldn’t have written the code.

> > It’s actually very likely in my opinion that Todd could easily figure out where he was that specific day and there would be corroborating evidence of that. > Yet you can't produce it for yourself, you don't see the issue here?

I can. I looked through my old emails and know exactly where I was that day. It’s not particularly hard for many people. It was right after Christmas '08, during the market crisis, while CES was happening. I could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

> Or maybe I was on a work trip. But if I was I wouldn't have any evidence of it, and even if I did it quite possibly would have been to California (though not socal, thankfully for my kidnapping risk).

Let’s revisit this later. I have a question for you

> So I guess you're Satoshi! Glad we settled it. :D

People who know me in real life but lack deep technical knowledge have asked me this seriously it seemed. It was amusing. One pointed out I used hashes of hashes in a tool I wrote at work! Very suspicious!

If someone genuinely believes this, what would I do? I’d release evidence to prove I’m not Satoshi. It’s not particularly difficult, there are 575 posts on Bitcointalk alone. I’ve likely been verifiably present in various locations during that time—presentations, on a plane, in a family video, at dinner, in a doctor's office. Those timestamps can serve as alibis. It seems like you don’t like Hal’s alibi based on the timestamps approach, but it can be a pretty solid approach I think.

Why don’t more candidates show alibis? Are they “protecting” Satoshi or objecting on principle? Adam Back should release all his emails (with DKIM-signed headers). Seriously, he should. Why? Because money is a social construct. If anything, Bitcoin has proven this threefold. Satoshi’s privacy cannot trump the need to determine the status and intentions of his coins. It’s the coins, stupid! should be the slogan.

> (though not socal, thankfully for my kidnapping risk).

I deeply sympathize with any trouble bad actors may have caused you. It’s horrific and outrageous. I fully understand. Personally, I carry multiple weapons for self-defense. Unfortunately, there will be a cost to the "disintermediation of the nation-state." I should read up on your experience if it’s been described, unfortunately, I’m unfamiliar with the details, just that I’ve seen it mentioned several times.

That said, did you have a risk in 2008/9 for some reason?

Before I say something extremely controversial, I want to draw an analogy about conspiracy theories and why, in my opinion, their purpose and function are often misunderstood and under appreciated. We understand that truth can’t be based on a central authority, they will corrupt it. Like economics, it must be messy, organic, distributed, and even error-prone. Conspiracy theories are like boundary conditions in math for the collective consciousness of a sociological system; they are designed to explore and push limits.

Can you explain this?

----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE----

This Transaction was made by Paul Leroux to Hal Finney on January 12, 2009 #bitcoin

----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNATURE---- Version: Bitcoin-qt (1.0) Address: 1Q2TWHE3GMdB6BZKafqwxXtWAWgFt5Jvm3

HM7vpPSUbNsfDHRX6gv8xxWcVNHEc/3pOk0YrVehaGoUdbWizznfzOdELkLd1EjSXsW1oE5vHAkNAPzrAVzhuoI= ----END BITCOIN SIGNATURE----

How does this exist? What is a logical explanation? It appears to show that the private keys to the address where Hal received the first Bitcoin transaction signed the message. At what date we have no idea, most likely after Hal’s passing. Yet it seems to exist and be properly signed. Did Hal lose his keys? To whom? When? Why?

Paul Le Roux is a certifiable madman, likely a sociopath, a mafia boss turned agency informant, and yet also likely a genius.

Did his people kidnap you once? Did he hire Craig Wright? Does he somehow have a copy of one of Hal’s drives with his keys?

What is going on here?

Are you sure identifying Satoshi isn’t the right thing to do?

[nullc]

> Satoshi’s 1.1 million coins are the elephant in the room

The 1.1 million claim is a part of Craig Wright's fraud and is pedantically false (it's too many coins-- we know too many other owners).

What is actually known is that starting two weeks after bitcoin's release and running up to about a year after some person or organization mined with custom software that makes it possible to identify their blocks. None of these 13 thousand-ish blocks have been spent (the ish comes from the fact that the fingerprint is fuzzy). There is no evidence connecting this mining to Satoshi specifically though it's surely not a entirely crazy guess. The blocks that are known to be connected to Satoshi aren't part of this pattern.

The people most interested in this seem to be the pathological liars and so the claim gets continually expanded. Someone on reddit a day or two ago even insisted it was 2 million coins.

In any case even at the upper limit of common (false) claims it's 5% of all coins. Other entities are known to control more coins than that and it normally goes without remark. I think your argument is a grasping justification for abusive and unethical conduct, and the _pursuit_ of Satoshi is a gross prurient interest. You're not entitled to Satoshi's identity, full stop. If that makes you not want to use Bitcoin-- that's a choice you're free to make, no one is forcing you to use it.

> This is strange because we’re discussing Satoshi’s code from 2008/2009, not C++17 or contemporary features.

No. You're being sloppy. You and HBO have faulted Todd for making public statements about not being much of a C++ coder. These were statements made in the context of bitcoin conferences regarding his own ongoing contributions to Bitcoin. HBO implied that this was untrue and deceptive and constituted evidence that he was Satoshi because he was trying to mislead people about his background.

When it comes to "could someone have done it" -- it doesn't go very far, as Satoshi could have learned C++ specifically for that project precisely because it wasn't their preferred language. If your willing to believe a very young and inexperienced person could have created Bitcoin (still learning as they went) then someone writing in something other than their favorite language should seem even more likely.

In any case, feel free to go find some actual similarity in published code and bring it up. Absent that it's just a bunch of handwaving befitting only the code-illiterate.

> People who know me in real life but lack deep technical knowledge have asked me this seriously it seemed. It was amusing. One pointed out I used hashes of hashes in a tool I wrote at work! Very suspicious!

Yes, so you've seen the kind of fallacious reasoning people can engage in. "I know of a couple technical people interest in bitcoin, among them this one has some extra factor-- so they're probably satoshi". It doesn't just happen to people who lack deep technical knowledge.

> If someone genuinely believes this, what would I do? I’d release evidence to prove I’m not Satoshi. It’s not particularly difficult,

You keep reiterating how easy it is to produce proof. But when you first did it I requested you do so. You still haven't!

> I carry multiple weapons for self-defense.

The concern of many people isn't just the self-defense. It's what comes after. So you killed the idiot that was threatening you? Now you have to live with the consequence of that, which may include arrest and imprisonment. People who kill in obvious self defense still often go through a world of trouble for it.

Certainly it's better to be alive and charged with murder than dead. But it is very bad.

Harms like those created by being accused of being satoshi can be somewhat mitigated but they can't be eliminated except by not making the accusation in the first place.

The most recent attack pattern used by the cryptokidnappers seems to be to break into your home when you're not there and hide. You come home and find yourself facing a gun. It's pretty hard to secure against that without considerable cost.

> Can you explain this?

Yes, I can: https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-inte... search maxwell.

> At what date we have no idea, most likely after Hal’s passing

Certainly after because the particular signing algorithm used postdates him.

Le roux was in custody since September 2013, I don't think there is any reason to believe he was involved in that message. Considering that the message is reported to have been made public by an investor that previously went to prison from securities fraud, my assumption is that the key was purchased from the extortionists that attacked Hal's family and then was deployed in that manner in lame market manipulation attempt that was thwarted by competent journalism.

> Are you sure identifying Satoshi isn’t the right thing to do?

As much as one can be sure of anything of that sort, but it's also an irrelevant question: I don't know who Satoshi is, and as far as I can tell no one does.