“If he is Satoshi, then why doesn’t he just move the Satoshi coins and prove it to everyone?” This has been one of the biggest weapons critics have continued to use to justify their skepticism that Dr. Craig Wright is Satoshi. This isn’t going to happen, and if you’re waiting for Dr. Wright to dump these coins to prove his identity, you’ll be waiting for a long time, Joshua Henslee believes.
In an interview on the Darntons podcast, the Bitcoin expert talked about why Dr. Wright is unlikely to dump his BTC, why there’s more than enough evidence to prove Craig is Satoshi and why the BTC cult has continued to receive the support of some of the world’s brightest minds and leading innovators despite the obvious drawbacks.
Henslee acknowledged that Dr. Wright possibly lost the keys and couldn’t access the stash. However, for him, it’s more of an incentive for the nChain chief scientist. With a million BTC, BCH and BSV, he is more incentivized to keep the prices of these projects riding high than anyone else, even more than the BTC maxis who have been pushing the project relentlessly.
“Everyone knows that if Satoshi ever moved the coins, the market would collapse because everybody would try to front-run him. Everyone would say, ‘he’s dumping, sell.’ If you’re Satoshi, why would you do that? I would argue that you have an incentive to convince everybody you do not have access over these coins and then cash out slowly,” Henslee said.
Henslee pointed out that this is not a new strategy that Satoshi invented. Those who own large chunks of stock for any company also don’t dump all their stock at once, even if they need the money. Instead, they cash out discreetly and slowly to avoid spooking the market.
“If Tesla pumps and you’re Elon, you don’t want to just dump because that sends a signal to the market—the leader is getting out, everybody dump,” he noted.
Throwing off the market with a 2020 signed message
Henslee also aimed at a 2020 incident that Craig’s critics have so often referred to. In his court case against Ira Kleiman (which he won convincingly), Dr. Wright stated that he was in control of 145 addresses belonging to the Tulip Trust that held the Satoshi coins. These coins were later used to sign a message calling him a fraud and touting the Lightning Network as a significant achievement.
“Honestly, in my opinion the person who had the most incentive to do that was Craig because now the market knows he doesn’t control those coins, at least they think he doesn’t. If they are Satoshi coins, he gets all the benefits of being Satoshi without any of the disadvantages,” Henslee explained.
And while Dr. Wright has ‘refused’ to prove himself to be Satoshi in the way his critics want him to today, he has done it in the past. Back then, when he was doxxed as Satoshi by Wired and other publications, he signed these private keys before some of the key Bitcoin developers, led by the revered Gavin Andresen. Gavin has held onto his conviction that Craig is Satoshi since then.
Aside from the Satoshi debate, Henslee also talked about BTC and the false narrative it has continued to sell to people over the years. In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele made it legal tender despite the network charging exorbitant fees and a majority of his people living on a few dollars a day.
“Now they all support a straight dictator in El Salvador…The contrast and hypocrisy there is ridiculous,” Henslee stated. Bukele has not shied away from acknowledging his ways, labeling himself last year as ‘the world’s coolest dictator.’
And despite BTC not being able to deliver Bitcoin’s promise of P2P cash, it still gets the backing of some of the world’s most brilliant minds. But as Henslee observed, sometimes even the brightest fall on the wrong side of history. He referred to the CTO of Motorola, who reportedly said back in the late ’90s that communication would never go digital, only to be proven wrong over the next decade.
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