The biggest flaw in this theory is that no nation state would be able to keep a secret of this magnitude from the geeks that are using it. Either through something carelessly being left in or being let slip by only one person on the team. Even a sufficiently large group of people working on it, reviewing it etc is likely to have one weak link.
As an example, JK Rowling released a book under a pseudonym. Very few people knew it was written by her, but one of those (a solicitor/lawyer) let slip to a friend, who then tweeted a tip to a journalist. It took a matter of weeks from publication for her to be outed. We are 4 years into bitcoin and there has not been anyything like this to suggest a large group worked on it.
If anything the lomger it goes the more likely it is that Satoshi Nakamoto was acting alone. Aditionally if there was a group of people then many of those would have had access to the numerous coins that were suposedly generated by SN during 2009. Surely some, one, any of those would have tried to access a portion of the coins to liquidate them.
Givent hat neither of these have happened it is more likely that a single individual was responsible and he/she is very strict with regard to their secuirty. i.e. they knwo that using any of those coins increases the chance that they will be tracked down. Whereas if it was a team then any one member may feel they could get away with it. Operational Security gets easier the fewer people that know about it.
counterexample: before Snowden revealed Prism, it had been in operation for years, with thousands of people knowing of its existence.
the day before that leak you could have used exactly the same argument against the existence of a comprehensive NSA surveillance program ... someone would have leaked it already, right?
good example but not sure they fall into the same field given that PRISM was inherently a hidden project and bitcoin is not. Releasing details of PRISM would have led to the NSA/CIA hunting you down and given the nature of PRISM those involved with it could have been faily certain that the NSA had the ability to do that. With bitcoin it is a public project so releasing details of the creator(s) would not impact on bitcoin and there is less chance of the creators "coming after the leaker". I think there is a vastly differnt risk analysis to releasing details of these 2 projects.
agreed it's not the same degree of risk - but I'd say that if a nation state was behind bitcoin, but purporting to be a lone engineer for some nefarious purpose, it's sure going to make leaking that classified fact a fairly serious crime.
As an example, JK Rowling released a book under a pseudonym. Very few people knew it was written by her, but one of those (a solicitor/lawyer) let slip to a friend, who then tweeted a tip to a journalist. It took a matter of weeks from publication for her to be outed. We are 4 years into bitcoin and there has not been anyything like this to suggest a large group worked on it.
If anything the lomger it goes the more likely it is that Satoshi Nakamoto was acting alone. Aditionally if there was a group of people then many of those would have had access to the numerous coins that were suposedly generated by SN during 2009. Surely some, one, any of those would have tried to access a portion of the coins to liquidate them.
Givent hat neither of these have happened it is more likely that a single individual was responsible and he/she is very strict with regard to their secuirty. i.e. they knwo that using any of those coins increases the chance that they will be tracked down. Whereas if it was a team then any one member may feel they could get away with it. Operational Security gets easier the fewer people that know about it.