Can anybody witness else confirm that "Cryptonote creators called bytecoin their reference implementation" in that time?
There are two possibilities:
1. As you proved in that thread, and as commonly known this days, Bytecoin had been hiddenly premined. So if some witnesses do confirm that Cryptonote creators (proven by SSL certificate) did call Bytecoin their reference implementation, it will completely disconsider Cryptonote creators.
I don't agree with all your statements, but that statement is still there:
https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11That is where I found it, and as its in the forum, it may not be official, my bad.