"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.
