BB should fact-check all cryptozoology stories.
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Iām with you on that one. Itās not like either Satoshi or Nakamoto are particularly uncommon names. Iād bet itās an alias picked for itās commonness (i.e. he could just have easily picked a different āgenericā name like Haruki Ito or Satou Yamamotoā¦). Hiding in plain sight, and this guy pays the price for the confluence of a good trick, a common name, and an unethical reporter.
If he were Vietnamese, Iād have suggested going with Minh Nguyen. Korean, Min-jun Kimā¦ You get the picture.
Most amazing thing about this? A must-read article in Newsweek.
Itās like 1952 all over again.
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Exactly. Heās not a public figure, and not publicly accountable for anything. There is no āpublic interestā (as opposed to public prurience) in revealing his identity, and no justification for this story.
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Thatā¦ seems to be completely untrue. Plenty of people have made real fortunes off of Bitcoins, and have that fortune now in real money, not Bitcoins.
Iām guessing you probably couldnāt sell $400M overnight, or without affecting the price, of course. But you could sell $500K in one day without it being a blip in the bucket.
I thought it was believed that Nakamoto was some white geek who was using a Japanese name because his cultural touchstones were still stuck in the 1980s when Japan and cyberpunk were cool rather than played out.
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I disagree with this. Heās most definitely a public figure. He wrote a whitepaper on Bitcoin, used the technology to self mine over 1,000,000 coins for himself, and then helped push it into production and use. On the whitepaper, he signed his own name. He was found by someone looking for a Satoshi Nakamoto.
Nobody ārevealed his identityā, someone just looked up Satoshi Nakamoto. 
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Yeah. Not to in any way defend Newsweekās behavior, but if Nakamoto hadnāt reserved a ton of Bitcoins and kept them to cash in on later, his outing wouldnāt be anything like as much of an issue. His worst problem would probably be getting too much fan mail.
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What exchange are you going to use today to convert those coins into Dollars? Even back in the day Mt. Gox had strict limits on withdraws.
Really? I canāt believe he had Billionsā¦ It may be of interest to you that $400M now is equivalent to at most a $400 investment close to the start.
I know this, because I came this close to mining in the first few monthsā¦ but jumped to some other interesting project and forgot about it.
Itās not a matter of whether he can, in fact, easily convert his stash into dollars. Itās a matter of whether some criminals might think itās possible.
He could turn ONE coin into $600 
āThe punctuation in the proposal is also consistent with how Dorian S. Nakamoto writes, with double spaces after periods and other format quirks.ā
Iām not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou.
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Double spaces after periods? I think I might be Nakamoto then.
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Re-read the article.
The police were called to the house because a phone call from a citizen. The police questioned the inter loper,
āSo, what is it you want to ask this man aboutā
At that point, our intrepid reporter almost certainly described the story she was working on. No prior knowledge of Bitcoin on the part of Temple City police required.
You do know that quotes in news articles are edited versions of the conversation, not direct transcripts, right?
Journalists have started to gather at the house:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/newsweek-unmasks-bitcoin-founder-stirring-ire/
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Iāve been enjoying all the people telling me bitcoin is dead because of the recent hacks, etc. - I just tell them that I agree and we should also shut down US currency because of all the major hacks at stores like Target, etc., etc., etc.
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I should hope that the actual parts in quotes are direct transcripts though. And the direct quote attributed to that cop, even if there was a bunch of explanation from the reporter before that, still sounds like an unlikely response.
Not in my personal experience, sadlyā¦
