Yeah I get the generalities of "so he can be rich". What can he do with the reputation of "the guy who claimed to be Satoshi"? He's smart enough to know people wouldn't have believed him with the proof he's released.
He just expected for uncertainty to last a little longer. Even now he has the chance to sell the book and movie rights. "How I made BBC believe me."
From the Economist's article:
"About six months ago, before he was publicly outed in the technology press, he approached Andrew O’Hagan, a Scottish novelist who wrote an “unauthorised autobiography” of Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks. Since then the author, whose most recent novel, “The Illuminations”, was longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, has had complete access to Mr Wright and his family, as well as to his research and business colleagues. Mr O’Hagan is writing a long article for the London Review of Books on Mr Wright and “his journey towards revealing his work.” (Mr O’Hagan, too, has come to be convinced that Mr Wright is Mr Nakamoto.)"
"Online exclusive · 1 May 2016: The full, long-form account will be published here later this month." "In a world exclusive for the London Review of Books, Andrew O’Hagan spent many months with Craig Wright, the man responsible for what Bill Gates has called ‘the technical tour de force of this generation’."
As I've already said in another comment, I can't wait reading O’Hagan's story. He should publish it even if he understands that he'll thus show how credulous he was.
Even days or even hours count: he already broke some nice records. His first "outing" and his PGP trick was found and discredited in December, and yet he still managed to do it the second time, even bigger, better and shinier! He is already much more famous than he was in December. I can imagine Leonardo di Caprio to play him in a new variation on the "Catch me if you can" subject. Note there's already a book author who "spent many months" with this fake Satoshi.
Also read about big-blockians, the conference in NY that started exactly yesterday etc.
"What can he do with the reputation of "the guy who claimed to be Satoshi"?"
The guy in question apparently makes a living creating faux companies and filling fraudulent tax returns in Australia, it doesn't sound like he cares of his reputation that much.
Well, for his sake I hope he has some sort of direct price manipulation scam going, or at the very least is about to issue some sort of "it was all a test lol!" message -- he has committed reputation suicide regarding his quest to "remove the fear surrounding bitcoin and the blockchain"[1] in every other case.
This is where I'm coming from. It's not like this is some attention-seeking teenager on Reddit.
My best guess is that he thought 99% of people would take what he said at face value, and the other 1% would be ignored as nutters, but he judged it wrong.
I guess another alternative is that this is some kind of long-play by the Bitcoin Foundation. They need to establish who Satoshi is for the general public in order for Bitcoin to gain further credibility, but since the real Satoshi won't come forward, they have agreed to put up Craig Wright. They can't put forward the real proof everyone is demanding, but they're hoping that enough good PR will make it widely believed. However, even then, it would only take one bit of evidence from the real Satoshi to prove it wasn't Craig Wright so even this theory doesn't seem very good.
> It's not like this is some attention-seeking teenager
He is just not a teenager but he is absolutely attention-seeking. Hint: don't believe the statements he gave, do your own research. He has a history of doing exactly the kind of tricks he did this time again.
Edit (I can't post new posts):
An answer to your next comment where you write "he was clearly making good money out of being an IT consultant:"
As far as I understand, the biggest money he tried to make was to get millions from Australia as tax returns for the bitcoin transactions between the companies he made.
Far from having a history of a "clean IT consultant."
> the details of how he convinced some of the leading Bitcoin devs and major journalists will be fascinating.
The expectation of fascination can also be nicely sold.
One nice detail is already for all of us to see, on his page and Dan Kaminsky explains it in the title post.
I also need less than a minute to send to you anything you want "from the e-mail" "satoshi@vistamail.com" I don't understand why you'd refer to such an e-mail as an argument for anything.
So let's say he's assuming the real Satoshi will never come forward or otherwise be proved, so he's taking advantage of the vacuum. He gets lots of attention, and along with that attention comes more cash than he would ever have earned as an IT consultant. He couldn't care less whether the majority of people on Reddit and HN actually believe he is the real Satoshi.
When I asked "why would he do this?" it was a genuine question, and I think you've given some good answers.
So how did he manage to fool Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis? Again, serious question.
> how did he manage to fool Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis?
Neither from them claims to be in possession of any digital proof, which would be a trivial and the only reasonable way to show that somebody actually has an access to any of Satoshi's keys.
And we, the general public, even have an access to two examples of something that was supposed to be a digital proof but it surely isn't, and that something was presented in a way to make the chance for verification as small (or the process slow) as possible (first example: the fake "Satoshi" PGP message, second case: the Sartre blog post). We see that the author is quite capable of presenting something as something that it isn't.
Yeah, I've read all of that stuff, the fake PhD and your comment above about the PGP key.
But, still, he was clearly making good money out of being an IT consultant. How's he going to do that now? I believe more people thought he was Satoshi after the Wired article than believe it today. So he has a lot to lose.
I'm not saying he is Satoshi, but I am being sceptical of the sceptics claims. A lot about Craig Wright doesn't add up. Perhaps he is just the Frank Abagnale Jr of our age, but even then, the details of how he convinced some of the leading Bitcoin devs and major journalists will be fascinating.
The sceptics claim one thing - he didn't provide any proof. The information he provided is intentionally misleading. (and this is something you can verify yourself)
Why should we waste any time to consider whether he is or isn't the right person? The situation did not change from 2 days ago apart from him being more of an ass.
If I want to waste my time, then it's my time to waste. If you don't want to waste your time, then don't.
I believe it's worth wasting my time because two of the leading people involved in Bitcoin, as well as two leading news organisations, have all reported on this so it's interesting.
Leading news orgs still report on Trump, so that's a low bar ;) I'd recommend looking at people who actually tried to dissect and reproduce the proof instead.
My best guess is that he thought 99% of people would take what he said at face value, and the other 1% would be ignored as nutters, but he judged it wrong.
This is close to my theory. He thought he would get the media on his side, to write articles about how he is Satoshi, and then it would go into Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia cares about what journalists say, not some bitcoin basement guy who can mathematically prove he's lying.
...and then he can say to the Australian tax authorities "see I mined these Bitcoins legally, I didn't get them through money laundering". That's a suggestion on a BBC article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36191165). But even then, he could have said "I mined them" without saying "I'm Satoshi".
Maybe his big mouth got the better of him, and/or, like many compulsive liars, suffers from strong denial. He spent so much time pretending to be SN to impress investors he believes his own BS.
All I'm saying is people are looking for some rational master plan, perhaps there isn't one. Maybe this lie just snowballed out of control.
Truth, facts, reality, don't matter. Only the media narrative is relevant. He doesn't need to trick a single computer scientist, he just needs to provide a story that the media can sell, and magically the rationalists become conspiracy theorists. See: the current POTUS front-runner according to yesterday's Rasmussen poll.
EDIT: I didn't attempt to explain why the establishment/media would like to enshrine his narrative. They really like having a face to their enemies, someone they can ad-hominem and quote out of context to support the global finance agenda.
