In a sudden reversal, Craig Steven Wright–an Australian entrepreneur and computer scientist also the most recent person to claim to be the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Bitcoin—has rolled up his blog and quit.

Screenshot from http://www.drcraigwright.net/

I’m Sorry

I believed that I could do this. I believed that I could put the years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot.

When the rumors began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this.

I know that this weakness will cause great damage to those that have supported me, and particularly to Jon Matonis and Gavin Andresen. I can only hope that their honour and credibility is not irreparably tainted by my actions. They were not deceived, but I know that the world will never believe that now. I can only say I’m sorry.

And goodbye.

Earlier this week, Wright began by publishing a blog post claiming that he is Satoshi Nakamoto in full view of the Bitcoin community. He laid the foundation for this coming out by approaching members of the Bitcoin Foundation (Chief Scientist Gavin Andresen and Founding Director Jon Matonis) as well as members of the press from the BBC, GQ Magazine and The Economist under NDA (a Non-Disclosure Agreement).

During the private meetings, Wright allegedly demonstrated proof that he had the private key (or keys) to early Bitcoin blocks that Satoshi most likely had access to. Andresen and Matonis took to blogs to state that Wright had convinced them that he, indeed, must be Satoshi Nakamoto.

Wright’s legal team used the NDAs to time article publication about his claim to begin on Monday, May 2, 2016. The same day that CoinDesk’s Bitcoin conference Consensus 2016 would begin in New York.

For a detailed analysis of the evidence that Wright could be Satoshi alongside criticism of that proof read yesterday’s Bitcoin Weekly.

Wright’s claim split the community on message boards and Twitter between apparent believers—who accepted Andresen’s and Matonis’s belief that Wright must be Satoshi—and critics who felt that private meetings were insufficient when public cryptographic proof was trivial. Critics also complained that Wright’s first blog post was misleading as it was poorly written and led to the expectation it would have cryptographic proof (but had none).

The easy way for Wright to prove his connection to Satoshi, critics say, would be for him to use private Bitcoin keys that only Satoshi would likely have access to and sign a message in a publicly verifiable way. Due to the public-private key nature of Bitcoin’s cryptographic security doing this would be trivial—in fact, the signature and the signed message text from Wright’s private meetings could have been released publicly as proof.

Or, other critics demanded, Wright could just state, “I am going to move X bitcoins believed to belong to Satoshi on May 5, 2016 to Bitcoin address Y,” and then move those coins. (He would eventually promise to do this as proof.)

Critics further noted that Wright had been “outed” as Satoshi Nakamoto almost six months ago by Wired and Gizmodo; but the single strongest evidence that linked him to Satoshi, a PGP key thought to belong to the Bitcoin inventor, was shown to probably be backdated.

As a result of the strong criticism leveled at him, Wright published another blog post on May 3, 2016 lamenting “personal attacks” and offering that he would slowly reveal proof that he was indeed Satoshi Nakamoto. He promised this proof would including moving bitcoins stored in early Bitcoin blocks—which could in fact be good evidence that he has access to something only Satoshi would have access to.

Two days later the community has been waiting for this proof. Instead Wright shuttered his blog and quit.

Cover of Newsweek; March 13, 2014

What did Wright expect to happen with this claim?

In his goodbye blog post, Wright says, “When the rumors began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this.”

Previous individuals outed by news organizations as allegedly Satoshi Nakamoto also faced  scrutiny from the community—however, unlike Wright, none of them ever claimed to be Satoshi at any point. In fact, Dorian Nakamoto—outed by Newsweek in 2014—is considered a cautionary tale to news media not to unmask people as Satoshi because of the damage the attention did to his family and health.

Wright has allegedly had good proof of his connection to Satoshi Nakamoto—private keys he signed messages with that proved sufficient to convince Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis. He even promised in a blog post to use his access to provide public proof.

If he did so at least the conversation could shift from, “Does Wright actually have access to the private keys he alleges that he has access to?” to “Does the community agree that Satoshi would have access to these private keys?”

Instead, on the cusp of the best evidence of his connection to Satoshi Nakamoto, Wright has run away.

Is this the last we’ll see of the newest “unmasked” creator of Bitcoin, Craig Wright? At this point, it’s hard to tell. After the last round of seeming proof that he might be Satoshi released six months ago was discredited, he still came back to attempt to prove it again, this time with NDAs, private press appointments, misleading blog posts and promises that did not materialize.

Image credit: Soldierx.com