When Jameson Lopp attempted to debunk the theory that Jack Dorsey is Satoshi Nakamoto by comparing the timing of tweets made by Jack to the timing of Bitcointalk forum posts made by Satoshi, he made his arguments with the presumption that Satoshi could not and would not have made posts online from a cell phone, even though it was already a pretty standard thing for folks to do in 2010. (After he read this post debunking his rebuttal, he updated his own with new arguments. Let’s examine and consider them:
Lopp: Is it reasonable to believe that Satoshi would be logged into the BitcoinTalk forum and posting from his phone while he was in public? Such that if someone saw his screen or gained possession of his phone for any reason, they would see what was happening on it? Given what we know of Satoshi’s focus on privacy, this is simply not believable.
Answer: Yes, it is reasonable and believable.
What was Bitcoin in 2010? Not much but a niche tech that few people knew about and few people cared about. There wouldn’t of been anything suspicious for a tech entrepreneur to be seen posting to an online message board from their phone about software. Being doxxed as the creator in 2010 if the phone was stolen would’ve been fairly meaningless in the context of what Bitcoin was then, which at the time had been proposed by Satoshi as a peer-to-peer version of electronic cash without the need for a trusted third party, not the sort of digital gold asset that it has blossomed into today. Satoshi was not sure that Bitcoin would become anything at all. For example:
Satoshi on January 15, 2009: “Even if it doesn’t take off straight away, it’s now available for use by the next guy who comes up with a plan that needs some kind of token or electronic currency. It could get started in a closed system or narrow niche like reward points, donation tokens, currency for a game or micropayments for adult sites. Once it gets bootstrapped, there are so many applications if you could effortlessly pay a few cents to a website as easily as dropping coins in a vending machine. It can already be used for pay-to-send e-mail.”
Satoshi on July 21, 2009: “It would help if there was something for people to use it for. We need an application to bootstrap it. Any ideas?”
In the context of the above it is extremely reasonable and believable that Satoshi would post comments from a cell phone without an ultra paranoid fear that someone might see his screen or steal his phone and discover his big secret…
Lopp: “Jack Dorsey worked with the US Federal Government to visit several countries (Iraq, Mexico, Russia) on behalf of the US tech industry. Does anyone truly believe that Satoshi Nakamoto, who was extremely wary of gaining attention from governments, would be working directly with them?”
Answer: Satoshi working with governments is actually one of the most widely held public beliefs about why he has not been identified. Publications like Vice were floating the possibility in 2013 and it has persisted to this day. So yes, A LOT of people truly believe it.
For myself, meanwhile, I don’t see it as a fatal conflict or even any kind of a conflict at all that Satoshi would have been capable of doing tag-along tours in 2009 and 2010 with the US State Department as an ambassador for Twitter. Lopp says that Satoshi “was extremely wary of gaining attention from governments” but this appears to be an overgeneralization of Satoshi’s reaction to WikiLeaks donations being made with bitcoins. (See here and here) As I’ve previously explained, Twitter had been hit with a secret court order in December 2010 with a demand to turn over all the information it had on WikiLeaks. Given the circumstances and the timing, it’s an excellent fit for why Satoshi (if he’s Jack Dorsey) would advocate against donations to WikiLeaks using bitcoins at the same time and why he would have gone dark on the forum. So yes, I can believe that Jack Dorsey can be himself, go on a tour with the State Department, and also be Satoshi.