I'm not buying it. It would be like saying that 1 man wasn't capable of creating Linux but that was in fact the case. Then more and more people started helping on the project and now we see a very developed operating system that is extremely scalable and continually improve upon.
Bitcoin is an accumulation of previously existing technologies and concepts assembled together.
I think there is a 20% chance that Satoshi is Gavin Andresen and possibly 20% chance it was Hal Finney.
Hal Finney helped invent modern encryption, an essential part of Bitcoin. The actual idea is straightforward, but the code surely required borrowed talent. I believe most of the code had a single mastermind, but was somewhat pieced together between 2-4 people... and open-source. Remember the twin-primes conjecture was partly solved by a then basically unknown individual in the math world, and his paper was extremely technical.
Therefore, please consider that brilliant people and groups exist without being known by the scientific/university community. (As for me I literally cannot even spell brilliant at this moment. Hah.)
One more thing, I do not believe S. Nakamoto is still alive.
It is very possible it was a reclusive genius or group of them.
It is quite possible that the creator was in fact a group. But attributing a beatiful piece of software to nefarious elements of Goverment is overrating their capacities. If it would concern bright scientists achieving breakthroughs in Goverment funded projects, ok (but that would not be kept such a secret), but not the bad parts of Government. Why release the keys to permissionless decentralised value transfer over the Internet if your aim is control over Society?
I agree. It wouldn't make sense.
Precisely. I think a lot of people are just hooked on the idea that there is "some force out there" that's behind everything great ever created and individuals are simply not capable of anything like this. It's completely bizarre.