Ask HN: How has Satoshi Nakamoto been so good at opsec all this time?

I don't understand it. Every other major figure online who people wanted to identify has slipped up at some time or another. Leakers like Edward Snowden? Got identified by the government. People running black market services like Dread Pirate Roberts and the guys behind AlphaBay? Identified by law enforcement. Hoaxers in the media world like JT LeRoy and the guy behind the blog 'A Gay Girl in Damascus' got identified by the public or press.

Same goes for everything from famous authors with pen names and infamous internet personalities like violentacrez from Reddit.

So how has Satoshi Nakamoto avoided all this? Has he really never made a single mistake that could give away his identity? Is he some super expert at keeping his identity secret compared to the thousands of others who've tried and been exposed.

How has Satoshi avoided having his name and personal details revealed online?

Planning and prudence. Otherwise unknown to date.

Dead people have the best opsec.

One of the most fun theories I've heard came from a friend of mine. He believes Satoshi hasn't been found because there isn't a Satoshi, but rather that it was a code name for a major research project.

Creating, designing and building the first version of Bitcoin is complicated and spans a number of fields of expertise.

Most of these fields of expertise only have a few truly exceptional practitioners who would be capable of the original thought.

You then have to factor in the peculiar nature of:

1) Not touching his new wealth of initial Bitcoins.

2) Disappearing into obscurity.

3) Being able to avoid being discovered (or nobody actually trying that hard to find him).

Occam's Razor principle would suggest all of that is less likely to have some altruistic single brilliant individual create Bitcoin and then leave. It's more likely a team of individuals would create it under a pseudonym, dissolve after completion of the project and then no longer have access to the accounts/keys.

Large government agencies would have the ability to bring top minds together, and less interest in liquidating the initial Satoshi Bitcoins.

Why would they want it? There are plenty of reasons governments would want a public ledger system. Unlike some of Bitcoin's spin-offs, Bitcoin isn't actually really private at all. It would be great for tracking and stopping crime.

Of course this is all a theory that sounds like it's out of a spy novel, but I think it's good fun.

The other likely possibilities is that Satoshi could have been older and passed away, or he truly is some brilliant mind who is well hidden.

I suspect he is either long dead or in prison.

Another thing is, unlike people like Snowden he does not have much heat after him. He is a mystery, but that's it - looking for him is pointless, since it's not like he can do something governments want him to stop doing or have something governments want to seize from him.

It would be like going after the parents of Osama Bin Laden - it's not like they could have told him to stop terrorizing.