The evidence is good. What was more interesting to me is the section where he explains how he eliminated all the other asserted and likely candidates. Since the story is already a very long read, I imagine much of this section got left out. So some of the reasons for eliminations are too brief to be convincing on their own. For example:

> What about other leading Satoshi suspects, I wondered? Were there any who fit the Satoshi profile better than Mr. Back? A 2015 article in this newspaper put forward the thesis that Satoshi was Nick Szabo, an American computer scientist of Hungarian descent who proposed a Bitcoin-like idea called “bit gold” in 1998. Mr. Szabo remained at the top of many people’s lists until recently, but a heated debate that played out on X about a proposed update to the Bitcoin Core software exposed his ignorance of basic technical aspects of Bitcoin.

A 2015 article in this newspaper — Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto and the Birth of Bitcoin, by Nathaniel Popper [0]

[Szabo] proposed a Bitcoin-like idea called “bit gold” in 1998 — Szabo's post on his Blogger site [1]

but a heated debate that played out on X about a proposed update to the Bitcoin Core software exposed his ignorance — links to a Sept 29, 2025 tweet by Adam Back replying to Szabo, who had tweeted:

> Good info thanks. Follow-up questions: (1) to what extent is such an OP_RETURN-delete-switch feasible in practice? (I know it is feasible in theory, but there are many details of core that I am not familiar with). (2) has such a thing been seriously proposed or pursued as part of Core's roadmap?

exposed [Szabo's] ignorance of basic technical aspects of Bitcoin — links to another reply tweet by Back in October 2025 [3]:

> Nick, you're actually wrong because there is a unified weight resource. eg byte undiscounted chain space reduces by 4 bytes segwit discounted weight. no need for insults - people who are rational here are just talking about technical and risk tradeoffs like rational humans.

Szabo's tweet was: "Another coretard who thinks their followers are mind-numbingly stupid."

----

Can someone explain why this relatively recent tweet fight is convincing evidence that Szabo is too ignorant to have been behind Bitcoin? I know he went silent for a bit when Bitcoin first got big, but he hadn't revealed his ostensibly overwhelming ignorance until a few months ago?

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/business/decoding-the-eni...

[1] https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html

[2] https://x.com/adam3us/status/1972888761257415129

[3] https://x.com/adam3us/status/1981329274721149396

If dozens of people affiliated on a mailing list knew that Sbazo was Satoshi is a decade ago, would’t his identity be treated as an open secret by now?

Since the story doesn't end with: "And then Adam Back bowed his head and said, 'You have found me, Satoshi'", I'm guessing they preferred to go for the softer "how we did this story" first-person narrative. There is no explicit smoking gun, like an official document or eyewitness who asserts Satoshi's identity. But the circumstantial and technical evidence is quite thorough, to the point where the most likeliest conclusions are:

1. Adam Back is Satoshi

2. Satoshi is someone who is either a close friend or frenemy of Back, and deliberately chose to leave a obfuscated trail that correlates with Back's persona and personal timeline.

https://sc2.sourceforge.net/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47668818

Points: 31

# Comments: 31

(which might not be that unusual, he’s old enough to have opened a gmail account upon launch, before extra info hoops were put in place, and maybe he never touched his account config in the past 2 decades?

[0] https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/11447

Generally, such highly-motivated people end up being thieves and grifters

AI is being used by bureaucrats and enforcers to justify lazy, harmful conclusions. You don't live in the real world if you think "just punish the bureaucrats, don't make it about AI" is going to remotely rectify this toxic feedback loop and ecosystem.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47359136

Points: 105

# Comments: 28

Context from the OP:

> Today at 4:00 I will go over to Raleigh and sit in on a show-cause hearing. This will be my first time attempting to live-post a hearing in person. The case is Fivehouse v. DOD and the question is whether the DOJ attorney fabricated quotes in a brief.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328990

Points: 8

# Comments: 1

[0] https://github.com/skorokithakis/dracula

Imagine how flimsy Ars' story about a blog post would look like if the story had correctly attributed the quotes (fabricated or not) to, "according to Claude AI's analysis of the blog post". The reader would have the right to wonder if the reporter had even read the blog post.