Recently, I saw Adam Back come out to clarify that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto. On the cypherpunk mailing list, he spoke a lot, so the New York Times’ investigation may well have been because of how many comments he posted—making it naturally leave more traces in the electronic cash topic. That way, it’s easier to be mistakenly associated with Satoshi Nakamoto. Back said this is a matter of statistical bias.

His logic is that those other similarities are actually just coincidences, plus many people in that era had similar ideas and phrasing. But Back also admitted that inventing Bitcoin requires a specific combination of skills, and he—along with many other cypherpunks—had spent ten years trying, getting “very close” to the final solution, but never truly managing to crack it.

Back said he doesn’t know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, and he thinks the mystery around Satoshi’s identity is actually a good thing for Bitcoin—so that Bitcoin can be seen as a purely mathematical scarcity asset, rather than being tied to any specific person. What do you think—does this explanation make sense?