It's entirely circumstantial but that doesn't make it ridiculous. What is ridiculous is trying to prove who Satoshi is through semantic analysis when there are so few forum posts to analyse and when he clearly guarded against this by deliberately writing blandly.

Nobody will ever scientifically prove who Satoshi is, hence why one needs to think more creatively. All the other strong candidates are most certainly not Satoshi as they have been pored over endlessly by the entire web for 13 years and there is nothing more than circumstantial evidence to suggest it is them. However there is more circumstantial evidence to suggest it is Snowden. He had the skills, the motives and means. He has an earth shatteringly large amount of Bitcoin. And he knows better than almost anyone how to remain digitally anonymous.

But the hipsters choice is that it can't be anyone who is already famous. It has to be some obscure cryptographer living in their mom's basement. Someone with the brilliance of Satoshi is most certainly not whittling away their lives inconspicuously, they are probably very prominent in some field or maybe many, in a way that would give them a large profile. How many people as brilliant as Satoshi do you know are living the life of a regular civilian, going completely unnoticed by society?

But if I'm completely wrong in saying that Snowden ought to be considered a serious candidate for Satoshi then tell me why? What are the reasons to exclude him?

Thanks for asking.

1. Considering Satoshi has kept himself a secret for so long despite so much intrigue as to who he is, it probably makes sense that he was a spy. So that's matches Snowden.

2. Whoever created bitcoin was an expert in cryptography. Snowden worked for the NSA which does a lot of cryptography and he had access to the latest cryptographic research projects.  He also used advanced cryptography to create multiple layers of encryption for the documents that he took from the NSA in order to stop them falling into the wrong hands. He used multiple 4096 and 8192 bit encryption keys for example. This is all detailed in his book the Permanent Record. To this day no one has managed to access the files that Snowden stole, apart from Snowden when he gave heavily redacted versions to the newspapers. This top secret info has been outside of the NSA for ten years now, and no foreign government have gotten their hands on it. Not one US service man had come a cropper due to Snowden's leaks. Snowden distributed the multiple encryption keys in a way not dissimilar to how blockchain works. Again, there is a paragraph about this in his book, i can quote if you like.

3. Timeline. Bitcoin started to be developed around 2008/2009, this is around the same time that Snowden started to suspect the Government were badly misbehaving around surveillance. He started to develop a radical libertarian philosophy. This obviously led to him becoming a whistleblower but might also have motivated Satoshi to hit overreaching governments where it hurts, their currencies.

4. Necessity. When Snowden was on run from the US Government he could only pay in two ways, cash or bitcoin. He used Bitcoin in his escape. Maybe this wasn't a lucky break for Snowden. Snowden leaked the documents in May 2013, only a few months after Bitcoin had gained some monetary value and became useable as an underground currency. Maybe he realised some years before that he would very much like a P2P e-cash when he eventually blew the whistle? Maybe he decided to create it.

5. Snowden has a ton of Bitcoin and i mean a ton. Snowden mentioned to a journalist in Hong Kong in 2013 that he had been sent enough Bitcoin and I quote "to live on until the fucking sun dies". At that time Bitcoin was trading at around $1,000 a bitcoin. If he already had enough Bitcoin then to live on for the rest of his life and then some, it means he had and has a lot of Bitcoin. And it also is unlikely people would have donated him that much bitcoin. Also note, this quote by Snowden was meant to be off the record but the journalist included it in the article. Satoshi also has enough bitcoin to live on until the fucking sun dies.

6. Snowden was aware of the risks of being exposed due to semantic analysis (recognising patterns of language). Satoshi's forum posts are notably bland and devoid of personality and style. This is clearly by design and Snowden used the same approach when communicating with journalists before he leaked the NSA documents. There is a reference to Snowden's awareness of this risk in a Washington Post article titled "Code name "Verax": Snowden in exchanges with Post reporter, made clear he knew risks." Google the article if you like.

7. Snowden keeps saying same things Satoshi said in his tweets. like the recent Snowden tweet on Feb 18th. "If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry". this obviously could just be Snowden playing homage to Satoshi, but still it's weird to just quote someone else without making it clear you're quoting someone else. Most people who are quoting someone will reference the person they are quoting. But you wouldn't if you were quoting yourself.

I'm almost convinced Edward Snowden is Satoshi