What the latest search for Satoshi means for the crypto industry |
What the latest search for Satoshi means for the crypto industry
My heart sank last week when I woke up to discover that The New York Times had “identified” Satoshi Nakamoto. I was less worried about the impact on the market than I was about the flood of well-meaning “Hey, did you see they found the inventor of Bitcoin” texts and emails I would soon be receiving. I suspected, correctly it turned out, that the Times had probably got it wrong like other publications had before.
In case you’ve been living under the crypto world’s version of a rock, the Times claims Adam Back, a crypto OG who founded the Bitcoin precursor Hashcash, is Satoshi. It’s not a bad guess but, for reasons I outline here, the reporter appears to have been led astray due to confirmation bias.
Laura Shin, who like me has been on this beat forever and doesn’t have a dog in this fight, likewise thinks the Times whiffed. She delicately points out that Back has been all over the media in the last week, which would be odd behavior if he really were Satoshi—but is not so odd for someone who is trying to whip up enthusiasm for his Bitcoin treasury company.
Ultimately, the Times piece is interesting not so much for its conclusion but for what the piece says about the........