I can think of several compelling possibilities for it to be a lie, the options would be:
1. He is telling the truth:
He has some crazy incentive that for one reason or another makes it beneficial for him in some way to be known as Bitcoin's creator - a business venture or something whatever. A venture like this would be an equally compelling reason for him (Wright / Nakamoto) to want to remain anonymous for so long too.
He is obviously somebody who is very libertarian and doesn't like paying tax - the distrust in government and belief in not paying tax that would potentially be a driver in Bitcoin's creation is also there.
2. He is lying:It is beneficial for him to be Nakamoto because of the new fame that he would ascertain - and book deals and contracts and speaking fees would be made possible to give juice to his new business ventures. I imagine he would also be needing money rather urgently if the Australian tax authority is trying to screw him. It also works well for Nakamoto to have the world think he is somebody else. Nakamoto has been quiet for so long - so why would he just change tac and let everybody know who he is? Deception is a preferable option to having every man and his dog looking out for his real identity. Satoshi has more than 1 million bitcoins and the moment he moves them people will begin trying to use the forensic evidence to work out his true identity no matter what - at least if Satoshi can collaborate with somebody else to pretend they're him, then he can work with them to smuggle around the money without getting absolutely rolled over by the government who will be watching that account very closely for any transactions and exchange endpoints that lead to a bank account, revealing his true identity.
In this part, one of the crux's is of course that other prominent Bitcoin people claim to have seen enough evidence to believe that Wright was the man they worked on Bitcoin with back in 2009/10. More importantly, it also rests on whether the evidence that Wright has provided is trustworthy - he seems unprepared to make more proof for everybody (i.e. sign another transaction) because he doesn't want to "jump through hoops" or whatever he said.
There is also the possibility that with a tax investigation going on about him, he may have made this claim to crash the price of Bitcoin, so to buy up a large order or Bitcoin, and then sell once the price recovered. It would be pretty easy to pull off if you knew that the real Satoshi Nakamoto had passed away, or was allowing you to do so uncontested.
He could also be compelled to lie with threats - there are many parties who would benefit from somebody like Wright claiming to be Bitcoin's creator (whether true or not). This wouldn't be limited to people who would use Wright to destroy the Bitcoin network after the community demand that the father of Bitcoin return to further its development.
Then, the Australian Tax Authority raids in December 2015 part:All I know at this stage is that within hours of the original Wired and Gizmodo stories claiming that he was Bitcoin's creator in December, that his home was raided by the Government. There are several reasons for why this would have been directly as a result of the media release, and not the result of an *unrelated* long-running tax investigation that led to Wright's home being raided only hours after the claims release... One would be that the moment that his identity was revealed, he would be more likely to make a mistake, or have his Private cryptographic key lying around (paper wallet) or have his computer wallets opened while considering what to do with his Bitcoin's if he was worried about being extorted, or about unwelcome visits from the government and/or people who suddenly knew how wealthy he was. Given the government had a *long-running* investigation on him, it would be highly probable that the government would believe the story to be true (because nothing is more convenient for the government to look at libertarians like Wright as tax evaders, and of course, Bitcoin = tax evasion, drugs, and terrorism). The government probably figured that if Wright was indeed Satoshi then right then and there would have been the most opportune moment to raid Wright's home and seize all of his Bitcoins which they would otherwise never have been able to tax. They could also force collaboration from him to rejoin the project / develop it further in line with their desires and then destroy the system and blame its "unregulated nature" to be the cause. This would allow the fiat money boom/bust cycle to go one more round (less likely).
Then again, being raided only hours after a media release, is there something the government knows that we don't? It wouldn't even be worth asking if his house was bugged and all his communications monitored - however the creator of Bitcoin is probably quite interested in end to end encryption
. Perhaps the Australian government were just concerned Wright would try to disappear with $500m of Bitcoin if he was, in fact, Satoshi - and then prudentially raided his property to ensure that he 1. didn't get away, and 2. maximised the probability of seizing the bitcoins.
I guess there will be a lot in the media about why this is important - I personally prefer Satoshi to remain anonymous. This is probably a better layout of the potential scenarios than you will ever find on coindesk or any other media blog who will just post whatever somebody says, and ignore the motivations. Personally I find the best way to figure out what the truth is in the absence of information and proof is to list the possibilities, and then analyse which options are the most likely given restraints of both capability and probability. There are other more obscure angles, but people can make up their own mind which are most likely. Perhaps our resident Australian IMZ has a view on this.
And with that I'll switch off my thinking hat so nobody thinks it is made of tinfoil! While I think this is all very interesting, I also think finding Satoshi's identity to be irrelevant. The technology has been released, and it is what we do with it from here that is important.
