Wow, I new this would generate discussion... but wow!
A couple of quick notes:
noagenda nailed it-- I was contacted specifically by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's "look for interesting/promising new private technologies and then invest in them" spin-off. I get the impression they organize the conference. This year the conference is about money.
They are serious about security; there will be no recording, and I will not be allowed to bring any electronic devices with me. I am planning on posting my talk, and if I get my act together in time I'll try to post it before I give it so y'all can give me feedback.
I'll be signing an agreement that I, or my company, will not use my appearance for publicity purposes. So please, no unofficial "from the bitcoin community" press releases about this.
If talking to them makes y'all trust me less... then good! I'd like to see more careful code review, and, as others have pointed out, if bitcoin can be destroyed by one person, or requires the leadership of one person, then it has failed to be the strong, decentralized system that I think it is.RE: me == satoshi: here's some C++ code I wrote 15 years ago:
http://oss.sgi.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/inventor/apps/demos/revo/RevClass.c%2B%2B?rev=1.1.1.1I have a very different coding style from Mr. Nakamoto. And I don't know nearly enough crypto to build something like bitcoin by myself.
And one final note: the US government is a really, really, really big organization. Like any big organization, different parts have different motives and goals. I hope I'll get a little tiny glimpse into what one part of that big organization thinks about bitcoin.
