This is an interesting piece of journalism from the NYT.

Tl;DR There is of course no hard evidence here, and it does feel as if the author was (despite his attempts at being impartial) looking for something, anything, to confirm his beliefs after a year of research - ultimately ending up with little more than "vibes" based on writing style and his ability to "read" people.

The use of stylometry is cool, analysing language and "style" of the writing between Adam Back and Satoshi. Some interesting things here including the way Satoshi and Back both hyphenated "proof-of-work" as a unique word that was not widely used before Bitcoin. There were some other notes around writing style that are worth considering.

The author makes some good points about the crossover between Back's earlier writing on digital money in the 90s and Bitcoin, and the timelines of Satoshi's departure and Back's arrival on the scene.

Ultimately the conclusion is circumstantial. If I was being questioned by the NYT like this I wonder if I would start giving off "vibes" as well.

I was not there in the early days of the Cypherpunk mailing list and Bitcoin, and I don't have a real grasp on the landscape of the scene at that time, but I do wonder how many others were "beneath the surface" and whom we know nothing about.