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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Cornell computer science professor Emin Gün Sirer has posted a blog on MIT Technology Review reacting to the recent news 'outing' the Australian Craig Steven Wright as the person most likely to be 'Satoshi Nakamoto', the creator of Bitcoin. The WIRED story presents evidence both for and against the Wright-as-Satoshi hypothesis; for starters, Wright is supposedly a polymath with two Ph.Ds who has dabbled in finance, has spent considerable time in the cyber-underground, and has a huge stash of coin. Most tellingly, there are a series of blog posts and emails referencing Bitcoin made by Wright in 2008 and 2009, coinciding almost to the day with posts made by Satoshi to the cryptography mailing list. But the WIRED story points out that there is evidence that the blog posts were edited by Wright in 2013 to include the Bitcoin references, raising the possibility of a hoax. And Wright's awesome Linkedin profile seems to have been recently deleted.

More doubts about Wright (warning: possible paywall) here.

Sirer thinks the press, and the Internet, are looking for Satoshi in the wrong place. Rather than look for a polymath and uber geek with an amazingly broad range of knowledge and interests, we should look at the limited community of individuals who have expertise in consensus algorithms and protocols; in other words, a specialist. Furthermore, the person would almost certainly be one who makes mental models and presents arguments in the same manner as Satoshi; Sirer calls this a "mental signature". Sirer says that Wright doesn't satisfy either of these criteria, based on his personal dealings with the man.

But who could be a match? Sirer:

Sirer then goes on to say why he won't disclose his suspect - not that he's 100 percent sure he's got the man (or woman).

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