[toinewx]

I read that Len was a heavy linux user with no Windows experience. Meanwhile, the first bitcoin implementation is done on Windows for Windows.

Some people may remember better this aspect.

[dboreham]

I'm skeptical about this. Although I have been a Linux user since 1992, in my (fairly wide) experience Linux was not used in commercial settings until around 2000. Len was a professional developer working for SV companies during that period. So was I. I did have colleagues with no Windows experience, but they would have been Solaris users (or HPUX or...). Anyone writing code to be used by regular end-users would have had to have targeted Windows because there simply wasn't much of any installed base for any other OS at the time. Plus, according to the Medium article, Len worked on the PGP codebase. PGP ran on Windows (Win32, not sure about Win16).

[FileSorter]

Yep, I make this point often.

The only two that match up with the Windows piece of the puzzle are Dave Kleiman and Paul Le Roux. Of those two, Paul Le Roux had a interest in online gambling. Guess what the first Bitcoin release had references to.

[CSMastermind]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux

I was unfamiliar and that was the wildest Wikipedia article I've read in a long time.

[sdeep27]

There’s one more man you are missing that fits better with the Windows piece that is more likely than those two. A man that was obsessed with anonymity (with no real picture of him on the net), an active writer still today, and with the coding and cryptography chops to have actually built it.

[dist-epoch]

That would be exactly the kind of thing to do to obfuscate your identity.

[mrkramer]

You guys are overthinking or just having fun claiming such stuff. Satoshi covered his tracks at communication and distribution layer e.g. using fake name, using TOR, using anon email, anon host etc.

I'm almost certain from everything I've seen about Bitcoin over the years that he wasn't a Linux developer who learnt Windows and C++ just to "obfuscate" his identity, he wasn't a non-native English speaker who learnt perfect English just to "obfuscate" his origin. He wasn't a professional cryptographer or even up to date with the latest cryptographic research according to Gavin Andresen[0]. It's most likely that he was indeed a native English speaker and a C++ Windows programmer who happened to be very passionate about digital cash payment solutions.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uWigVKslYg

[dstroot]

That would be done because the user base of windows at the time dwarfed that of Linux. There are other better ways to cover your identity.

[Waterluvian]

That seems possible. But this kind of explanation is also indistinguishable from “it’s just part of the conspiracy” type of logical track.