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The Nick Szabo hypothesis is plausible, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Nick_Szabo

>In December 2013, a blogger named Skye Grey linked Nick Szabo to the bitcoin's whitepaper using a stylometric analysis.

All that, and the NS/NS: Nakamoto Satoshi / Nick Szabo. :)

I assign a low probability to the proposition that Nakamoto is other than Szabo.

Suppose Nakamoto isn't Szabo. Why the various similarities? They could be deliberate: Nakamoto isn't Szabo but another researcher who not only runs with the same ideas, but mimics the elements of writing, duplicates the timezone of activity and so on. Even chooses the letters N and S for his pseudonym to tantalize people with the hypothesis that he is Szabo. The problem under this hypothesized scenario is that Szabo would almost certainly have cried foul: "Hey, world, this Bitcoin Nakamoto dude is ripping off my research without crediting me at all!" Secondly, why would someone who wants to create a digital currency system based on Szabo's ideas go to the trouble of creating all these irrelevant similarities.

On the other hand, there is the why: why wouldn't someone who obviously knows a lot about security an privacy issues not put more effort into building plausible deniability? Maybe Szabo simply doesn't care about having anything near air-tight claim that he isn't Nakamoto, and so just let himself be sloppy. Perhaps he actually wants there to be all that circumstantial evidence, and is biding his time until the right moment to admit that he is Nakamoto, at which time with just some small piece of proof, it will be iron-clad to everyone.



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