• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, May 2, 2016

An Australian polymath, entrepreneur and IT executive who Wired and Gizmodo identified in December as the creator of Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer currency, said this morning that it was indeed he who was the fictional Satoshi Nakamoto. Still, doubters remain, with a subreddit post asking, “When will the media learn?”

“Satoshi is dead,” Craig Steven Wright writes. “But this is only the beginning.” 

The post on his Web site — whose “vision is to create a forum about bitcoin, which dispels myths and helps to unleash its potential” — quickly evolves into a esoteric explanation of the process of verifying a set of cryptographic keys: “To ensure that we can successfully sign and validate messages using the correct elliptic curve parameters in OpenSSL, it is necessary to ensure that the secp256k1 curve is loaded…”

Wright also granted interviews to the BBC, GQ and the Economist.

“I don’t want money, I don’t want fame, I don’t want adoration. I just want to be left alone,” Wright says in a video interview posted on the BBC’s Twitter account. He credited others with helping with the creation, but admits he was “the main part of it.”

Wright, 46, is a computer scientist, businessman and inventor with a doctorate in theology. A second doctorate in computer science is shy only of the approval of his thesis. He holds several masters degrees as well and is “currently undertaking a Master of Science and Finance at University of London,” according to his bio. He has lectured at Charles Sturt University, written books and articles on IT security, and held several senior executive positions with companies focused on cryptocurrency and smart contracts, digital forensics and IT security.

“Wright provided technical evidence, including the original encryption keys, that have been confirmed by prominent members of the bitcoin community, the BBC reported,” write Edward Johnson and Yuji Nakamura for Bloomberg Technology. 

But, they also write, “the evidence Wright provided didn’t completely dispel all doubts about his claim to be Nakamoto, according to the Economist. The magazine said Wright did not definitively show he had control over an original stash of bitcoin suspected to be owned by Nakamoto. He also had a potential personal interest in influencing debate within the bitcoin community, and claiming he is Nakamoto would strengthen his argument, the magazine said.”

“Bitcoins are now accepted as payment for a vast variety of goods and services — everything from international money transfers to ransoms for data encrypted by computer viruses. There are currently about 15.5 million bitcoins in circulation. Each one is worth about $449,” according to the BBC report.

“While many in the tech and crypto crowd would probably be more than happy to take credit for launching the Bitcoin movement, it is not without its risks and frustrations. Along with it being an easily transferable currency and having played a big role in helping to advance the ledger technology in the public discourse, Bitcoin has had its darker sides as well,” writes Gabriel Avner for Geektime.

“Bitcoin is often used by trouble makers on the internet to pay for illicit goods and services, like hacking, scams, piracy, and in the case of the Silk Road, drugs and murder for hire. This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of legitimate uses for Bitcoin and its Blockchain technology ...”

Mashable’s Stan Schroeder points out that Gavin Andresen, the chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation, “has recently met with Wright and subsequently wrote a blog post saying he believes Wright's claims to be genuine.”

As for GQ, which also points out that Wired itself backtracked on its definitive assertion that Wright was Nakamoto, we’ll apparently have to wait for what promises to be a fiery exchange.

“Via Mr. Wright’s representatives, GQ’s senior commissioning editor Stuart McGurk was afforded a remarkably rare and candid interview with Dr. Wright to verify his claims: an encounter that was also occasionally fractious and incredibly heated,” according to a piece on the publication’s UK Web site this morning.

“‘Look, I’m doing this, then I’m disappearing,’ he said at one point. ‘I’m not doing this to try and get in the media. This will never happen again. You’ve got this one thing. If you don’t like it, fuck off.’”

So, if you were a betting person, is Wright Nakamoto? And would you make that bet in bitcoins?