Craig Wright tried to 'come out' as Satoshi today, through The economist no less, and was once again proven in an incredibly short span of time that the (now deleted) 'proof' he offered was not really proof, but an intentional attempt to misdirect ( *cough* con *cough*) the public. It's possible that he contributed to bitcoin, but highly unlikely that he *is* satoshi, the way that he's claiming.
This man just does not give up, and this whole thing is very baffling, it almost prompts you to wander into conspiracy theory territory where you start questioning whether there are anything darker/sinister behind his motives eg Is someone paying him to keep pulling these stunts ?
In a decentralized system like bitcoin, the identify of Satoshi does not matter. However, in reality, it would certainly be very helpful having the founder of bitcoin on your side in any bitcoin debates, in the same way that linus torvalds currently presides over linux. why should we have bigger blocks ? because satoshi said so! *end of discussion*).
This also demonstrates the situations where a typical expert/reputation system, which i generally favor as a decision making mechanism, would fall apart. I think Craig Wright is selling snake oil ( this is self evident in a lot of things he writes but is also backed up by technical evidence ) but I have a lot of respect for Gavin Andresen and Nick Szabo who obviously knows more about bitcoin and satoshi than me and they seem to think that Craig Wright is legit. ( In fact, when CW was 'outted' a while ago I had a very strong intuition that he was a scam man trying to pull off a long con, but suspended my disbelief because nick szabo retweeted a panel which they both sat on, which I interpreted as an implicit endorsement ).
It's hard to reconcile this internal conflict without ignoring facts or invalidating their expertise, hence the conclusion I'm leaning towards is that he is just a very very good conman.
UPDATE: On May 5, he backs out of his claim, removing his original proof post and replacing it with an apology note for potentially damaging the reputation of Andresen and Jon.
Recommended reading
Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto - a list of reasons for and against CW as Satoshi
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