Australian Entrepreneur Says He Created Bitcoin, but Doubts Persist
By PAUL MOZUR and NATHANIEL POPPER

An Australian entrepreneur claimed on Monday to be the creator of the online currency Bitcoin. Within hours, the skepticism started.

Whether the truth is ultimately uncovered, the hunt for the founder’s identity is part of the new reality of the online age. A vast array of new tools and technologies make it ever easier to hide in the vast digital ocean that is the Internet — and all the more difficult to put a face to every screen name.

The identity debate is crucial for Bitcoin as those in the virtual currency community take sides over its direction. Some purists want to maintain Bitcoin’s outsider status, underscored by the mystique surrounding its founder. Others see an opportunity to expand Bitcoin into the commercial realm, making it more vulnerable to speculation and uncertainty.

Craig Steven Wright, the computer programmer who claimed in interviews with the BBC, The Economist and GQ to be the currency’s progenitor, said that he had come forward to quell the rumors. While Mr. Wright was first identified as Bitcoin’s founder in December 2015 by Wired magazine and the technology website Gizmodo, he remained silent then.

Mr. Wright said that he now wanted to “dispel any negative myths and fears” about the virtual currency. “I cannot allow the misinformation that has been spread to impact the future of Bitcoin,” he said.

He didn’t offer further insight in the timing of his announcement. And he declined an interview request through a representative at the Outside Organisation, a public relations company.

If his claims prove true, Mr. Wright could help shape the debate over the future of Bitcoin. The direction of the virtual currency is at an impasse ahead of a major Bitcoin conference on Monday.

But many technical experts, including some of the leading Bitcoin developers, said that Mr. Wright’s evidence did not prove he was the digital currency’s creator, identified by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

“It would take the real Satoshi about five minutes to provide conclusive proof to the entire Bitcoin community, if the real Satoshi wanted to do that,” said Joseph Bonneau, a researcher at the Applied Crypto Group at Stanford University.

Then there were the enthusiasts who sought to play down the importance of the founder’s identity. The creator, they argued, has remained anonymous for years and the currency’s popularity has grown regardless.

Mr. Wright is “a lot like those very difficult geek/nerd/blatherers that turn minor I.T. support into a social drama,” Ian Grigg, a crypto-currency researcher, wrote in a blog entry.

“Satoshi was more than a name, it was a concept, a secret, a team, a vision. Now Satoshi lives on in a new form — changed,” he added. “Much of the secret is gone, but the vision is still there.”

In the world of cybercrimes and encryption, finding the human behind the computer is the exception, not the rule.

The leaker of the Panama Papers, the trove of documents that exposed offshore accounts used by the rich and powerful, remains anonymous. The digital culprits who stole more than $80 million from Bangladesh’s central bank remain at large. And there is still no concrete indication of the perpetrators of the hack against Sony in 2014.

The creator of the illicit Internet market called the Silk Road, known in part for its reliance on Bitcoin, was confirmed only by an operation in which he was grabbed at a San Francisco library with his laptop open. Before that, all that was known about him was an intriguing screen name: Dread Pirate Roberts.

The latest twist in Bitcoin’s origins story is likely to feed the power vacuum that has plagued the virtual currency.

While a decentralized nature is at Bitcoin’s core, it has also led to internal reflection over its evolution. Bitcoin’s longtime backers have recently split over the proper way to expand the network.

Founded as a digital competitor to existing currencies, Bitcoin has moved more into the mainstream of late. Financial institutions are putting resources into researching how they can use the blockchain, the currency’s communal digital ledger, to make transactions faster and cheaper. Competition, too, has risen, with a host of new virtual currencies, like Ethereum. And the growth of the Bitcoin system has stalled.

The mystery of Bitcoin’s founder has been central to its cachet ever since it surfaced in 2009. Yet the creator has also been mostly silent since Bitcoin rose to prominence.

If Mr. Wright’s claims can be confirmed, they open a whole new set of issues for Bitcoin. Does its creator have more power than others who have played a major role in its development? If the founder asserts authority over its direction, does that undercut the very power of the currency as a decentralized system?

Mr. Wright’s revelation was made just before a large Bitcoin conference began in New York on Monday. After the announcement, the price of Bitcoin fell about $10.

Satoshi, as the creator became known, communicated only by electronic message and never revealed his or her true identity before cutting off all communication in 2011. That has led to frequent speculation about the identity of Satoshi — speculation that has so far proved wrong.

In perhaps the most notable case, Newsweek claimed in 2014 that the founder was Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, a physicist living in California. The revelation fueled a reporter-driven car chase of Mr. Nakamoto across Los Angeles, an indication of the tabloid-level curiosity behind Bitcoin’s originator. Dorian Nakamoto eventually denied being the Bitcoin founder.

If Mr. Wright is perpetrating a hoax, it is a rather elaborate one.

To back up his claims, the BBC said Mr. Wright had provided digitally signed messages using cryptographic keys inextricably linked to Bitcoins generated by Satoshi Nakamoto. Mr. Wright also posted evidence on his blog, including a technical walk through of how to verify cryptographic keys.

“I didn’t take the decision lightly to make my identity public,” Mr. Wright said in a news release, “and I want to be clear that I’m doing this because I care so passionately about my work.”

Soon after the stories were published in Wired and Gizmodo, the Australian Federal Police raided Mr. Wright’s home in suburban Sydney in connection with a tax investigation. The Australian tax authorities said at the time that they had determined that Mr. Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto.

Gavin Andresen, who succeeded Satoshi Nakamoto as the lead Bitcoin developer, wrote Monday on his blog that he believed Mr. Wright’s claim. Mr. Andresen has pushed for a bigger Bitcoin, a strategy Mr. Wright also appears to back.

“After spending time with him, I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt: Craig Wright is Satoshi,” Mr. Andresen wrote. “During our meeting, I saw the brilliant, opinionated, focused, generous — and privacy-seeking — person that matches the Satoshi I worked with six years ago.

But the Bitcoin community was not in consensus.

Another of the leading developers working on Bitcoin’s basic software, Gregory Maxwell, said that the evidence presented by Mr. Wright was not enough to convince him. “It demonstrates no connection between this person and Bitcoin’s creation,” Mr. Maxwell wrote in an email to the Times.

A programmer who is in charge of the Bitcoin discussion boards, Michael Marquardt, wrote on Reddit — under the screen name “theymos” — that Mr. Wright’s new writings suggest an effort to deceive the public. And the main Reddit page dedicated to Bitcoin was full of discussion on Monday about the legitimacy of Mr. Wright’s claims.

“Altogether, the weight of the new evidence tips the scales very little, and the scales were already stacked against him being Satoshi,” said Jeremy Clark, an assistant professor at the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering in Montreal.

就是他！澳洲企業家 認了發明比特幣

澳洲電腦企業家萊特（Craig Wright）二日告訴英國廣播公司（BBC）、經濟學人和GQ雜誌，自己就是虛擬貨幣比特幣的發明人，他說，有太多人追查他的身分，連帶影響到他關心的人，所以他只好承認。

消息傳出，比特幣貶值逾百分之三，從一比特幣兌四五四點八九美元跌到低於四四○美元，後來微幅拉回。

萊特與BBC記者見面時，使用在比特幣早期開發階段創造出來的加密鑰匙，撰寫電子訊息，這種鑰匙與化名「中本聰」二○○九年首創的比特幣密不可分。此外，萊特二日還在自己的部落格上貼出技術解釋文，內容包括電腦編碼範例、創造比特幣的過程等，但他並未講明自己就是中本聰，還說「中本聰死了」。

不過，比特幣圈子對萊特的說法仍無共識。萊特拒絕經濟學人的要求，不願進一步證明自己就是中本聰。紐約時報說，中本聰只用電子訊息與外界聯繫，二○一一年起完全失聯。接手主導比特幣系統發展的安德森說，他相信萊特就是中本聰。但另一個比特幣程式主要開發者麥克斯威爾說，萊特提出的證據，還不足以證明他就是發明人。二○一四年媒體曾經肉搜到美國加州一個名叫「中本聰」的日裔物理學家，指他就是比特幣發明人，但他斷然否認。

去年十二月，「連線」雜誌與科技網站Gizmodo率先報導萊特就是「中本聰」，不久，澳洲稅務局就到萊特家中查稅，但局方說這次調查跟比特幣無關，當局早就在調查萊特的納稅情形。萊特說，自己完全配合稅務局調查。萊特說，「媒體捏造許多故事，我不希望媒體傷害我關心的人，不希望他們受影響」。他嘆道，他對必須公開真實身分感到遺憾，「我寧願不這樣做，我想工作，我想繼續做我想做的事，我不要錢，不要名聲，不要掌聲，只想一個人」。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/business/dealbook/bitcoin-craig-wright-satoshi-nakamoto.html

2016-05-03．聯合報．A1．要聞．編譯李京倫