Interesting argument

Keeping up with this topic because I got obsessed with it earlier. I don’t have enough spare energy or time at the moment to dig in again.

Carreyrou has identified Adam Back as Satoshi. I’m inclined to listen to Carreyrou because his story about Elizabeth Holmes rang true. For me this particular ident doesn’t ring true. Back is intensely British. I didn’t catch a British flavor in Satoshi’s writing.

Yahoo interviews Back.

I’d say he knows who Satoshi is, but he carefully avoids sounding like he knows, and he doesn’t want the ident to be known. He makes an interesting argument that I haven’t heard before. If the personality is known, bitcoin will be treated as a tech company with a strong Founder like Zuck, Elon or Bezos. If the ident remains mysterious, bitcoin can be an ethereal mystery. Obviously the latter will benefit people who make money from the mystery.

We’ve seen what happens when a company is too closely connected to a personality. Famous people can take political or cultural positions that alienate half of the customers, and famous people can get into scandals that alienate another segment.