Satoshi Nakamoto Unmasked
Since Ryan X Charles tweeted on August 31st that Satoshi Nakamoto is Craig Steven Wright, the debate has once again ignited on the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. Ryan explained in his video that the best way to disapprove Craig Wright is Satoshi is for another party to prove he/she is Satoshi and do it convincingly with evidence.
Phil Wilson's Involvement in Team Satoshi
During August 29th this year, Phil Wilson, who claims to have worked with David Kleinman and Craig Wright on the creation of Bitcoin, explained that Bitcoin evolved from his original work on the project, most of the code used for Bitcoin was his own, and that very little was derived from the original codebase created by Craig.
He argues that the whitepaper was created from loose writings of Craigs and that Craig had promised he would never out himself as Satoshi or make people believe he was Bitcoins progenitor.
"Craig gave his word that he’d never ever claim to be Satoshi. He’d never claim to be the inventor of the tech. He’d never allow others to believe he invented the tech. And, when I gave him permission, Wilsons to post publicly using the Satoshi handle on Bitcointalk that I was the one behind it all. Craig has broken his word. " - Phil Wilson
Phil has nonetheless provided no keys or hard evidence for his claims and Craig vehemently refutes Phil Wilson's account claiming "Scronty" aka Phil Wilson, had nothing do with the creation of Bitcoin. Craig claims Sconty extorted him for money in 2016 and that the knowledge he posseses of Bitcoin is due to theft of information that took place in 2015.
"According to Wright, an “old employee” made off with several hard drives belonging to his company that year, though the motivations of the speculative employee remain unclear thus far. This would account for the high level of insider info possessed by Wilson, which has served as a lynchpin of his claim to involvement with the creation of Bitcoin."
Craig said he will be releasing subsequent evidence to prove Phil Wilsons fraud.
Craig Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto
In 2015 a hacker hacked into Craig Steven Wrights email account and exposed that email correspondence between David Kleinman and Craig Steven Wright confirmed both parties had worked on the creation of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Craig Wright, however, acknowledged on a 'BCH Boys Podcast' that he did 90% of the work, as is the case with most of his projects.
In 2016 Gavin Andresen (The key developer of Bitcoin), Ian Grigg, and John Matonis (Head of the Bitcoin Foundation) came out and confirmed Craig Wright as being 'Satoshi Nakamoto' on the same day.
"Craig Wright has just outed himself as the leader of the Satoshi Nakamoto team. I confirm that this is true, both from direct knowledge and a base of evidence." - Ian Grigg
Gavin Andresen and John Matonis claim to have witnessed Craig sign the genesis block with the private key. An hour later Gavin Andresen's commit access to the Bitcoin repository was revoked by the Bitcoin Core Developers despite Gavin being given exclusive access by Satoshi Nakamoto and handing access to the Core Devs.
The claim of Craig Wrights fraud during the official public key signing published by 'Motherboard' attributed to Greg Maxwell, a Bitcoin core developer, has been proven to be false. Greg Maxwell claimed that the two PGP keys could not have been created in 2008 as the functionality to create them was not available until July 2009, However a document entitled "Appeal to authority: A failure of trust" reported to have been written by Satoshi Nakamoto explains the process of creating a PGP key using GnuPG version 1.4.7 (a release that was available in 2008). In short, the claims made by the motherboard article were wrong, and there is no real evidence to suggest C.S.W's original public key signing was fraudulent.
Unless one believes in a mass conspiracy between John Matonis, Ian Grigg, and Gavin Andresen, orchestrated with the finesse of a magician craftier than David Blaine, then C.S.W has the private keys. That's proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he's been involved in Bitcoin since it's origin.
Craig had planned to go ahead and transfer coins from an address associated with Satoshi but backed down before doing so sending an email to Andrew O'hagan, the Journalist involved in the story around his public outing. It linked to an article headlined “UK law enforcement sources hint at impending Craig Wright arrest”. The article suggested that the father of Bitcoin might be liable, under the Terrorism Act, for the actions of people who used Bitcoin to buy weapons. (Similar thing happened to Ross Ulbricht who is serving 3 life sentences). Under the link, Wright had written an explanation:
“I walk from 1 billion [dollars] or I go to jail. I never wanted to be out, but if I prove it, they destroy me and my family. I am the source of terrorist funds as Bitcoin creator or I am a fraud to the world. At least a fraud is able to see his family. There is nothing I can do.”
Satoshi would risk being in Jail if he came out and definitively proved to the world he was Satoshi. It's called plausible deniability.
Circumstantial evidence ..
C.S.W's mother claims that he was obsessed with Japanese culture growing up as a kid and had samurai swords. The non-public emails and posts of Satoshi found on forums make use of certain words that would only likely be used by a British/Australian/New Zealander.
Joseph Vaughn Perling famously told a story of meeting a hacker at a conference who went by the name Satoshi Nakamoto (Also referenced by Bernard von NotHaus in his interview for the film Bitcoin: The End of Money).
After the CSW media debacle in 2015/2016, Joseph tweeted confirming it was in fact .....Wait for it...CSW who he'd met years before!Craig Wright's technical understanding of Bitcoin is second to none and he certainly has the credentials to be Satoshi.
The Bitcoin whitepaper was first listed on a server in Melbourne, Australia (Craig's Hometown) and if you take the time to study C.S.W's background and work on blockchain based gaming in casinos prior 2009, the origins of Bitcoin become clear as day.
The eyewitness evidence provided with the public key signing and circumstantial evidence makes it clear to anyone outside of the most sceptical that Satoshi was a team of which Craig as he initially attested to, was the main part.
If we are to assign the mantle of Satoshi to anyone, however, it is Craig Steven Wright, the progenitor of Bitcoin, and the Satoshi behind the Whitepaper.