[Aqueous]

Ok, I'm sorry but there are some serious inconsistencies here.

Leah McGrath Goodman said that after she asked him about BitCoin he promptly stopped emailing her. The timeline is unclear, but it seems like this was before Goodman contacted his family members. Why would she contact his family members if she was directly talking to him and they could blow her pretext of wanting to talk about model trains?

This strongly suggests that he knew enough about BitCoin to be chased away by the question. He uses English and American spellings, just like Satoshi's mailing list postings. He has a computer engineering background.

When she came to his house he said, verbatim, exactly what happened with BitCoin - "I'm not involved in that anymore." And something to the effect of "That's been handed over to others, I have no involvement with that anymore." This, if it was said, strongly suggests to me that this is in fact Satoshi.

Given that this would be catastrophe for both the journalist and Newsweek if it turned out to be wrong, and they must have seen some compelling evidence if they went forward with the story - I'm skeptical about Dorian Nakamoto's denial here.

[bhouston]

I agree as much as one can. Unless there are outright fabrications in the Newsweek story, you really can not then start denying his role after he seemed to be admitting it. The chance of a random guy just admitting his role, being eccentric and really smart in this area and then later denying it -- and then not being the guy behind Bitcoin, seems implausible.

That said, if the guy wants his privacy, we can afford it to him, and if the only way to do that is to pretend he isn't the founder, so be it. So that is how I am going to interpret these denials and those agreeing with them.

[declan]

Another possibility is that the Newsweek reporter was overly convinced she was right, and ignored inconsistencies that disagreed with her premise. We don't have audio of the exchange where Dorian Nakamoto allegedly quasi-admitted to being involved in Bitcoin. I could be wrong, of course, but misquotes do happen.

[selmnoo]

My theory: Dorian thought the reporter was asking him about his past at the defense contractor. Doing work for a defense contractor sometimes gets you crap, so maybe he was trying to distance himself from that, like, "No, I used to work for a company that did potentially evil for the government, I'm no longer involved with it". I know some people who did work for defense, and they're not very open about it.

The reason why he thought the reporter was asking about his work at a defense contractor vs. bitcoin? Plain ole' miscommunication... Leah perhaps presented herself in an unconfident, possibly suspicious manner like she's out to get him and the guy's like "nope, not gonna get into this". And to be fair, English is this guy's second language.

[declan]

Take a look at the writethru. That's it.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-exclusive-man-denies-hes-b...

[bpicolo]

That or he's trying to remain "anonymous" after being outed. Which is totally reasonable.

[Aqueous]

Absolutely - I think he should be given privacy. Those are his wishes.

[gamblor956]

Must also point out:

Lance Armstrong and the members of the US Postal Service team denied using performance-enhancing drugs for more than a decade before finally confessing.

JK Rowling denied writing the Cuckoo's Calling for months.

The Duke Lacrosse Stripper changed her story at least a dozen times before finally admitted nothing happened.

JJ Abrams claimed that Star Trek Into Darkness wouldn't be about Khan for months.

IOW, unsupported denials mean nothing. The Newsweek story may not be right, but it at least has compelling supporting evidence that it could be right.

(There are more examples; these are just the ones I remembered off the top of my head.)

[e15ctr0n]

JK Rowling never denied writing the Cuckoo's Calling. When The Sunday Times broke the news on July 14, 2013[1], she said “We can confirm the story in The Sunday Times was correct, and it was not a leak or elaborate marketing campaign to boost sales. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.”[2]

[1] http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Arts/articl...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/business/media/rowling-boo...

[SimHacker]

How about some Star Wars examples for some balance, please?

[nilkn]

Those quotes are extremely suggestive that he was indeed involved in Bitcoin--so suggestive that it's clear that either they are fabricated or he is not being truthful in the newer interviews.

[declan]

Or the reporter misunderstood, and English wasn't his first language. Which certainly seems to be the case. See the AP's updated story.

[infodroid]

If you are skeptical of Dorian's denial then you have to wonder why would he first suggest to Newsweek that he was involved with it and then later clarify to AP that it was a misunderstanding.

But there isn't any good explanation of why he would later deny it unless it really was a misunderstanding in the first place.

> This strongly suggests that he knew enough about BitCoin to be chased away by the question.

No it does not. Not understanding why a reporter out of nowhere would contact him, he thought that "Bitcom" was one of the confidential engineering projects that he was previously involved in. Which he could not discuss under NDA.

Add to that the ambitions of a reporter looking to score a cover story for her magazine's "relaunch of its print edition after 15 months and reorganization under new ownership".

[ktsmith]

Let's not forget that Newsweek has changed hands recently and has published at least one provably false story since then. They are relaunching their print version tomorrow, and even if they are wrong everyone is talking about them. There isn't any compelling evidence provided in the article just circumstantial.