Adam Back is far too jealous of Satoshi inventing Bitcoin. He put, “Bitcoin is HashCash extended with inflation control” in his Twitter profile for years after he got into Bitcoin after initially dismissing it when contacted by Satoshi. Back definitely isn’t Satoshi.
Yeah, there are many, many reasons why Back is not and cannot be Satoshi. These emails also provide more evidence that Satoshi was what would later be called a “Big Blocker” in favor of on-chain scaling and minimal tx fees set by nodes independently (though likely converging). Back is famously a Small Blocker who employed all the major Small Blocker devs with Blockstream, which ended up effectively controlling Bitcoin Core. Thankfully, we still have Bitcoin Cash following Satoshi’s intended path for scaling.
Even if this is correct (which it probably is) it doesn't matter because bch is worthless because it doesn't have the name bitcoin. Whoever controls bitcoin core controls the meaning of the word "bitcoin" so if the bch people never find a way to wrest back control from the blockstream people then this whole thing is just irrelevant. History is written by the victors, etc
That perspective is valid, but it’s not mine. BCH is bigger than Bitcoin circa Satoshi’s days already. I’m honestly not too concerned about it. The Bitcoin that I became interested in still exists. It just isn’t called BTC/“Bitcoin” anymore.
There are, but SV and ABC (now called eCash/XEC) also made departures from Bitcoin that I feel are pretty significant:
BSV: completely removed any concept of a tx spam cap and encouraged use of its blockchain for random data storage. Neither of these are things Satoshi supported. Its spiritual leader is also a charlatan.
XEC: changed both the mining algorithm and added in a "dev tax" on block rewards. The dev tax in particular is something I don't imagine Satoshi would have supported, or he would have added it himself from the start.
Bitcoin SV is the Craig Wright-backed crypto that is pretty different from Bitcoin, and is only "following Satoshi's intended path" if you actually believe that hack is Satoshi