CCN.com finally caught up with Bitcoin Cash lead developer Amaury Sechet, who recently graced our headlines with a bit of a stunt: claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

Amaury Sechet: I Didn’t Create Bitcoin

Obviously, this was our first question for him. Sechet says the move was “a demonstration of what other scammers have done.” To clarify, he says that Craig Wright and others have made false claims to the throne of Satoshi Nakamoto. As Gregory Maxwell once explained on StackExchange, it’s sadly easily done:

“So, for example, a couple years ago Craig Wright claimed to ‘prove he was Satoshi’ by simply copying some pre-existing signatures out of the blockchain and posting somewhat obfuscated instructions on verifying them. It was figured out pretty quickly, but still managed to fool a lot of people– they were too caught up in the mumbojumbo to think of the obvious.”

Sechet tells CCN.com:

“It was a demonstration of what other scammers have done. It takes the wind out of their sails. Craig Wright, others before him. Others will do it after.”

Lightning Network ‘Very Bad as a General Purpose Payment System’

Of course, CCN.com took the opportunity to ask Sechet some other questions. Readers might have an interest in the Bitcoin Cash developer’s opinion on #LNTorch and Lightning Network generally.

Sechet pulled no punches:

“#LNTorch is a cool PR stunt, but ultimately someone will run with the money and there will be no way to know who took it.”

It is interesting that the experiment has no safeguards. If the tens of thousands of Bitcoin users eventually “take the torch,” the value of the torch could grow into the hundreds or thousands of dollars. The element of required trust is an interesting juxtaposition to the nature of crypto finance systems.

True to form, the TakeTheTorch.online website already demonstrates that someone has “stolen” the torch at least once.

As to the Lightning Network generally, Sechet feels that it’s inadequate for general purposes. This view will be unpopular for those who see the Lightning Network as the way forward for Bitcoin, which is very much intended to be a general purpose system.

“LN is great for some use cases, but very bad as a general purpose payment system. If you run the numbers they just don’t add up. It’s foolish to bet the farm on it.”

Bitcoin Cash Confirmations Coming Down to Two Seconds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDmJcloSiCs

The Bitcoin Cash community has been excited about a project called Avalanche. Similar to the way the Lightning Network speeds up confirmation times for actual usage of Bitcoin, Avalanche will, according to Sechet, bring confirmation times down to as low as two seconds.

“BCH is doing very good on the technical front. There is a ton of cool stuff going on, notably Avalanche, which will bring confirmation time to something like 2s. And CashShuffle, which will increase privacy.”

As to the animosity surrounding the Bitcoin Cash community after last year’s hard fork, Sechet says:

“It seems like there is a lot of confusion out there, numerous people have made sure of that. But like in a video game, you know you are moving in the right direction when you encounter new enemies.”

As Sechet says, plenty of impostors will come along and claim the work of Satoshi Nakamoto. The best guesses are probably the farthest off the mark, though many believe that there’s a significant chance that Satoshi died in the form of famed cryptographer Hal Finney.

Amaury Sechet Image from CoinSpice/YouTube