I'm going to be looking to write some what if threads which I'm going to be using to write research papers along for my degree. I thought it might be a good idea to look at the fascination that some people have with the identity of Bitcoin's creator. As far as I know there has only been two people on this forum which had contact with Satoshi. Gavin Andersen and theymos. I don't know the exact involvement or contact theymos has but he definitely has access to some of Satoshi's hidden posts on this forum and the whole history of the account. From password changes to ips logged. Yeah its certain that Satoshi used Tor or something similar. But theymos definitely knows a little more than the average person. I think Satoshi was active for around 2 years until one day he decided to up and leave. Theymos have you done any research on Satoshi's account data yourself or do respect his privacy and haven't really looked into it?
I can understand the fascination of solving one of Bitcoin's biggest mysteries but anyone thats interested in exposing the identity of someone who clearly wants to staya anonymous has to consider the pros and cons. You would shortly come to the conclusion that revealing the identity of the mysterious creator of Bitcoin would probably be detrimental to either Satoshi or Bitcoin.
First of all lets start off with the obvious and that Satoshi's health and well being could be put in harms way if his identity was revealed. He's an enemy to the banks and to the government. Probably why he remained security conscious when creating Bitcoin. Bitcoin has the potential to topple the control of the government and provide a decentralized way of trading goods. Most of the time anonymously. Therefore I think that the government and banks would not take it lightly into knowing the identity of Satoshi and could lead to assassination attempts and all sorts. Though the damage is done they would likely just pin some shit on him and lock him up for life preventing him from working on any other projects that may or may not be doing. Satoshi holds a great amount of coins which would also expose him to harm from the public.
Secondly the image of Bitcoin. What if Satoshi is criminal with very serious convictions? What if the government makes it seem that way? Would this not hurt the image of Bitcoin? Yes Bitcoin is completely independent from Satoshi but if he was involved in some serious crimes the news agencies around the world would lap this up and spin a story to negatively effect Bitcoin. Plus governments might actually have a legitimate reason for banning the cryptocurrency and imprisoning those that use it. Probably not and thats probably a over exaggeration. But its a possibly.
Now I'm obviously against the idea of exposing Satoshi's identity to the public. But what are the pros of doing so? I can't really think of any except for the satisfaction of being the guy that exposed it. There is no benefit and no reason why a Bitcoiner would want to expose it. Journalists, government and news agencies would want too of course to spin a story of Bitcoin to put it in a bad light.
So does anyone have any benefits of finding out the identity of Satoshi? Because all I see is cons to it.
