Early this morning Newsweek published an article claiming to have found Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. It's certainly worth a read, but I'm not totally convinced they have the right guy.

Leah McGrath Goodman doesn't give any conclusive evidence that this man is, in fact, the Satoshi that everyone has been looking for. There is lots of compelling circumstantial evidence, but nothing concrete. The Reddit world has already gotten to work today on comparing writing styles between the "real" Satoshi and Satoshi Nakamoto, who Newsweek claims is the same guy. There seems to be some serious skepticism already that their writing styles are far too different to be the same person.

I also found an interesting error — or, at the very least, misleading — figure in the article.

Even so, Bitcoin is vulnerable to massive theft, fraud and scandal, which has seen the price of Bitcoins whipsaw from more than $1,200 each last year to as little as $130 in late February.

That just isn't true. Those prices quoted are for MtGox only, and we all know what happened to MtGox. When BTC got down to $130 on MtGox in late February, that was a totally misleading number because no one could actually withdraw their BTC. Some speculators may have been buying some BTC at a very discounted rate on the gamble that MtGox would pull through, but that's all it was. Some MtGox customers wanted to get something instead of nothing for their BTC, and others were willing to take on that risk. So, the fact that Goodman quotes those prices, quite frankly, scares me. If she was really researching this article for two months and interviewed many people high up in the Bitcoin Foundation, then she should understand Bitcoin better than to make that mistake. For me, it takes away from the credibility of the rest of the article.

Either way, this should bring more scrutiny to the matter and we may actually end up finding out the real story sooner than later. Maybe he is the Satoshi we're looking for, maybe he isn't.