> a heated debate ... exposed his ignorance

Didnt follow everything here, but wouldn't that make for a perfect cover story? If you're Satoshi, and people are getting close to verifying (or at least nominating you as "most likely candidate"), what better way to throw people off than to engage in a public conversation in which you (creatively) get all kinds of technical details wrong and make yourself look too ignorant or dumb to ever have been Satoshi?

The funny thing is that the author uses your exact logic when he finds evidence that goes against his hypothesis. He made posts that asked questions about things that Satoshi definitely would've known? Misdirection! Somebody else does it? Strong evidence against them!

There’s no bottom to this line of reasoning, however.

One can always suppose the identified individual is a double, triple, quadruple agent.