Of What and Why

Quote from: gmaxwell on February 25, 2020, 08:41:55 AM

Quote from: AGD on February 25, 2020, 08:35:14 AM

Somebody at the 3 letters must have been called out Bitcoin as a national security threat.

This sort of explanation fails occams' razor. Not as badly as some things that many people believe, but you don't need to go there. All sorts of perfectly ordinary explanations work fine.

I think the big danger there is when people get obsessed with knowing THE TRUTH about some real or imagined secret, and then they wind up chasing phantoms made of their own confirmation biases.

The most important facts about Gavin Andresen are that he abused his reputation to give Faketoshi instant credibility in the mass media, and also that he supported XT and BCH fork attacks on Bitcoin (and also that he mishandled the Bitcoin Foundation, and also...). These are easily verifiable factsverifiable without fine parsing of minute details. It is unnecessary to know why he did it, to assess the damage of what he did. The why is an interesting question in its own rightbut the what is the important part, and there are no questions there.

A Small Datum

Quote from: gmaxwell on February 25, 2020, 08:41:55 AM

If you believe the dates provided by hearn. I saw no indication of that until many years after its claimed date.

I just noticed a small datum to add to the balance of probabilities, with an eye toward some oddly effective heuristic about happenstance and coincidence.

Quote from: AGD on February 25, 2020, 08:35:14 AM

It was way before that. About 4 month after satoshis last forum post

https://pastebin.com/syrmi3ET

Quote

From: Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshin@gmx.com>
Date: Sat, Apr 23, 2011 at 3:40 PM
To: Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net>

[...]

I've moved on to other things. It's [Bitcoin is] in good hands with Gavin and everyone.

So, this unauthenticated e-mail was allegedly sent by Satoshi to Mike Mr Surveillance & Taint Hearn four days before Gavin Andresen publicly announced his visit to the CIA:

Subject: Gavin will visit the CIA

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on April 27, 2011, 07:00:26 PM

I want to get this out in the open because it is the kind of thing that will generate conspiracy theories: I'm going to give a presentation about Bitcoin at CIA headquarters in June at an emerging technologies conference for the US intelligence community.

If Satoshi actually sent that e-mail, then its timing would raise the question of whether he knew about Gavins upcoming announcement. (I would presume not; but that would mean considerable active deception by Gavin.) Whereas if Satoshi did not send that e-mail, then the timing would be an awfully big coincidence if it were produced on its alleged dateand an even bigger coincidence, if Hearn cooked it up later and backdated it.

I think thats interesting for those delving into the details and potential whyshowever, this thread is more about the what. I request that the discussion be kept more focused there.