Not so long ago, I watched a series of videos on the Barely Sociable (I'll just call him Barely from here on out) YouTube channel regarding his theory on Satoshi Nakamoto's real identity. I'm guessing many of you also watched this fairly popular series of videos or at least know that he fingered one Adam Back as the pseudonymous Nakamoto. It was a really interesting and well put together film. Barely is clearly well informed and he makes some good points. One of those points is that Nakamoto, whoever he is, isn't a person with flawless opsec, nor did he know how successful the Bitcoin project would become or that his identity would be right up there with MH370 as the world's greatest unsolved mystery. As such, and according to Barely, we should take the clues he left behind, like the use of British English in the Bitcoin white paper, at face value rather than interpreting them as intentional misdirection. I tend to agree.
However, there is one clue left by Nakamoto that Barely clearly thinks was misdirection, and that is Nakamoto's birthday, which Nakamoto listed on one of the forums that he used. Further, his reason for discarding this information seemed incredibly flimsy to me. Allow me to elaborate.
Barely notes that Nakamoto always used a double space after a period. He then asserts that this would be inconsistent with someone born in 1975, as Nakamoto claimed that he was. According to Barely, this is indicative of someone who learned to type on a typewriter rather than a keyboard, and since someone born in 1975 would have learned typing sometimes in the mid to late 90s, either in late high school (or whatever they call high school in Britain) or college, he must have been older than he stated. Barely also notes that double spacing after a period took place mostly in academic settings and that many academic writing style guides have changed from double to single spacing after a period.
This assertion is problematic at best. Starting in 1998, I wrote almost exclusively in an academic environment for nearly a decade. For that entire time, I, like Nakamoto, used a double space after a period reflexively as a force of habit. I did it in undergraduate, graduate and law school, and in all that time, not once did anyone ever correct me or even note the fact. Similarly, as far as I can remember, in all three settings, all of my colleagues did the same. In fact, it wasn't even until I had watched Barely's video that I knew anything had changed. Only when I rewatched that video and examined my previous post did I note that my own word processor had corrected me to a single space. I immediately turned that shit off because single spacing after a period is for losers. It's like when people correct me for using "B.C." instead of "B.C.E." It isn't like I'm doing that out of religious conviction, because I'm not religious. I'm just doing it that way because that's the way it's done, and I'm not changing to some phony system that still revolves around the birth of Christ because someone who is or isn't Christian might or might not be offended. What next, peoplekind instead of mankind? If you don't understand that "mankind" is a universal, move to fucking Canada. The old ways are the best ways, but I digress.
By instinct, I'm tempted to think that whoever Nakamoto is, he isn't on anyone's radar. We can see this at work in the world of true crime, where the authorities have way more resources and access to databases than journalist or curious newbs, but still routinely fail to find the perp. Do you remember when they finally caught the golden state serial killer? Remember how quick the authorities were to point out how closely he matched their profile? Well, so did everyone else on their suspect list, and who wasn't on the list? That's right, the killer.
My point is that a birthdate of August 5th 1975 is one hell of a filter to throw out on such flimsy speculation. How many people were even born in Britain on that day? How many of them are fluent in C++ and cryptography? Further, how many of those have an academic background in economics, mathematics or a related field? It seems to me that's not so large a pool that they couldn't be ruled out before moving on to other candidates. That's how I would proceed with an investigation, if I weren't to lazy to do one in the first place. At any rate, at least we know he's not Faketoshi. Did I mention that Craig Wright is a principal conspirator in the 9/11 attacks, a serial child molester and the Zodiac killer? Sue me Craig. I dare you.
