1. Craig actually is Satoshi but is withholding the only real proof anyone cares about for some unknown reason
2. Craig is a fraud and Gavin was tricked
3. There's some other strange situation going on (Gavin is in on it? Gavin is being coerced? Gavin's reddit account was also hacked?)
EDIT: I'm inclined to believe #2. If Craig were Satoshi he wouldn't need a coordinated "Official Announcement" with major publications and a long hand-wavy blog post describing how to verify a signature. He could just sign the message "Craig Steven Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin" using a known Satoshi Bitcoin address' private key and post it anywhere. The community will know what to do. This is literally the only proof any who knows more than a little about Bitcoin will accept.
It's possible that the "brand new laptop" Gavin received wasn't brand new at all and was opened, flashed, and resealed, or perhaps Craig has obtained a fake trusted certificate for electrum.org and MITM'd the connection on his home/work wifi.
The explanations for how Craig Wright could have deceived so many credible people are getting incredibly complicated. If in the end Craig managed to dup four major news media outlets, Bitcoin devs, Matonis, and apparently other members of the so-called "Satoshi Team," then fuck, he deserves the win - maybe not credit for having invented Bitcoin, but for being such a brilliant conman!
The easily-debunked cryptographic proof offered up so far has in fact supported suspicions that he is a conman. If Craig Wright turns out not to be Satoshi, and Gavin was not hacked or coerced, then I feel sad for Gavin Andresen's reputation, as well as Bitcoin's as a whole.
I'll also be relieved if he is a conman, because anything else would be sorely disappointing...
It is unreasonable to assume that someone who is not an expert in stage magic can detect/defeat basic deception techniques. I don't know about this particular case but I see no reason to rule out deception, anyone can be fooled especially if they are specifically targeted.
I've been victim to a fraud a couple of years ago, and in retrospect it's amazing how gullible I was -- conning is so easy because we tend to trust people by default. And in this case, all the people who fell for the fraud probably really wanted this to be true, which probably affected their judgement.
Social engineering works. This is why being conned feels like such a violation. People think it can't happen to them. Just like advertising only works on those other dumb sheeple.
EDIT> Also, re: media. If you've ever given an interview and then been surprised at what was actually written / reported, this wouldn't surprise you. In this case, the media is relying heavily on the tech experts. It's only necessary to con the techies.
You would think that Satoshi, who has been in hiding for so long, would have a fully planned reveal. He/she has had a long time to plan. As long as Satoshi is not outed unintentionally, I would think he/she would have a long list of lawyers and accountants. Roughly 1 million btc could be 400 million in assets. That's a heck of a lot of capital to be dealing with reporters directly.
- Satoshi died somewhere along the line and there will never be a reveal since he didn't pass the keys to someone else.
- Satoshi enlisted Wright to take over for him if/when he would pass away. He did and now Wright is bungling the whole affair
- Wright either knew Satoshi or was with him at the very beginning of BTC. This would explain his possession of very early block chain keys (#9 instead of #0.
- Wright had been working with Satoshi since the beginning, and now Wright (who many have commented is crazy) had a falling out of some sorts and is rushing to take credit as BTC's creator.
- Wright is simply a con man trying to flush Satoshi out by claiming he is BTC creator and then waiting for him to appear. Not sure what the end game would be in this scenario
- Wright is crazy AND a con man and is trying to claim credit as BTC creator for several reasons, many of which are probably motivated by money.
This could go several different ways, but for my money, it seems like Wright was probably around in the early days, and got in right away with a bunch of early keys to earlier block chains. From the outside it looks like his life as a fraud is starting to unravel and catch up with him. I feel like this is the last gasp to try and retain some respectability in the community. He already has a litany of legal problems his facing, and considering very few people believe he is Satoshi, this isn't going to end well for him.
