There was a recent episode of House of Cards where the protagonists were exposed in the media over something. They came up with a false cover story, but they also deliberately bungled their response (asked another party to deny the claims completely, then somewhat contracted them in their own statement). The reasoning was that people would smell a cover up if everything was too neat.
I wonder if Dorian Satoshi used the same tactic. Once a journalist discovers him, he tacitly admits to being the Bitcoiner, then in his next public statement retracts this and says it was a misunderstanding. Now everyone's going about saying the real Satoshi would never have responded to the journalist like that.
Probably not but arguably it would be the best way to handle the situation if you wanted the story to blow over.
"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
For all we know he was confused and thought she was talking about his previous, possibly classified, work.
Or the reporter was talking about his previous work, and took the quote completely out of context. Or the reporter was told to deliver the story, and just plain lied. Have you ever dealt with an actual reporter?
It's well-known that journalists get things wrong, but to outright swap the referent of a pronoun for a completely different one? Is that typical for reporters?
Given that he did not really admit to it, but that the journalist chose a quote where there were only pronouns and not the word "BitCoin," my guess would be that this is not the tactic that he employed. It would rely too much on the reporter exactly quoting ambiguous phrasing and also giving it the desired interpretation.
I wonder if Dorian Satoshi used the same tactic. Once a journalist discovers him, he tacitly admits to being the Bitcoiner, then in his next public statement retracts this and says it was a misunderstanding. Now everyone's going about saying the real Satoshi would never have responded to the journalist like that.
Probably not but arguably it would be the best way to handle the situation if you wanted the story to blow over.