Bitcoin community remains sceptical about the statement of Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. The evidence presented by Wright has not been approved by bitcoin enthusiasts.
Most bitcoin users have not agreed to recognise Wright as the legendary and mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of bitcoin. After a thorough analysis of the cryptographic data provided by Wright to prove his claim, bitcoin community specialists revealed that at least part of the evidence could have been generated using a line from a seven years’ old Nakamoto’s transaction, which can be found in open access using a search engine.
Furthermore, Reddit users have noticed that the code contains a typo: instead of “signature” it says “signiture”.
Other bitcoin enthusiasts pointed out that Wright launched base64 and openssl commands simultaneously, creating a race condition which allows openssl to finish before base64. As a result, any signature or text could be placed in the environment variable $signiture.
Gavin Andresen, one of the first developers of the Bitcoin Core initially hastened to support Wright’s claim and wrote in his blog that he was “convinced beyond a reasonable doubt” that the Australian was the real creator of bitcoin. However, later Andresen declared Wright’s evidence insufficient. In the following message he explained:
“It was a mistake to agree to publish my post before I saw his - I assumed his post would simply be a signed message anybody could easily verify… Of course he should just publish a signed message or (equivalently) move some bitcoins through the key associated with an early block.”
The media that were quick to spread the news of Satoshi’s sensational deanonymisation have also received their share of scorn. Thus, WikiLeaks have reacted to the hype with a sarcastic tweet:
“We'd like to thank #Satoshi hoaxer Dr Craig Wright for showing how bankrupt the fact-checking standards are at the BBC, LRB & Economist.”
Still, Craig Wright does not show any intention to take his words back. In his latest blog post he goes:
“For some there is no burden of proof high enough, no evidence that cannot be dismissed as fabrication or manipulation. This is the nature of belief and swimming against this current would be futile.”
After his statement a few days ago that he was the person behind the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto, Wright published a set of cryptographic data supposed to verify his ownership of Nakamoto’s bitcoin addresses. It was not the first time Wright was declared the creator of bitcoin. In December 2015, Gizmodo and Wired first made this claim referring to some financial data leaks. According to them, Wright had a large sum in the cryptocurrency and even tried to create a bitcoin bank.
Elena Platonova
