Earlier today Craig Wright, an Australian entrepreneur, penned a post claiming he was the original inventor of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency.
The BBC reported that it had verified the claims and information was released in other respectable big-name titles, like The Economist. However, since those reports, and our own, serious doubt has been cast across the Web on the claims.
Prompted by reports in December of Wright apparently trying to take credit for creating Bitcoin, it’s now being widely reported that the proof he offered up in a blog post doesn’t verify his claims.
Reddit and Hacker News users, as is often the case, were straight on the hunt, and quickly claimed that the verification provided didn’t check out.
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Wright went into detail to discuss explicit and unquestionable verification in the blog post, but stopped short of providing anything that would stand up to scrutiny.
Peter Todd, a cryptography consultant, agreed that the evidence presented isn’t conclusive.
FYI: signing any block after the genesis block isn't good evidence you're Satoshi as Bitcoin was released publicly w/o a pre-mine.
— Peter Todd (@petertoddbtc) May 2, 2016
Part of the reason Wright’s claims have been given weight second time around comes from the support of Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation.
Since the initial reports, however, it seems questions have also arisen over whether Andresen is indeed in control of his accounts.
FYI, @gavinandresen's commit access just got removed – Core team members are concerned that he may have been hacked. https://t.co/7re7z16TeR
— Peter Todd (@petertoddbtc) May 2, 2016
Last time Wright tried to convince the world that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, backdated PGP keys were used to add credibility to the claims.
And the question remains as to, after more than a decade and knowing what a fuss it would stir up, why Wright would want to be legitimized as the creator now?
Perhaps he still has ambitions to launch that Bitcoin bank.
Or perhaps he really is Satoshi Nakamoto and is just doing a really, really bad job of convincing the world of the truth.
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