Recent surge in publicity over who the mysterious identity of Bitcoin creator “Satoshi Nakamoto” is showing no signs of dying down. After Bitcoin SV founder Craig Wright’s turn in the media spotlight of late, attention has expanded now to John McAfee, founder of computer security company McAfee Associates, who claims he knows who Satoshi really is.

However, after telling Bloomberg he would reveal Satoshi’s identity “within a week”,  McAfee has instead backed down. He took to Twitter to say that his change in decision is because the Satoshi controversy could make it harder for him to separately fight a possible extradition to the US.

McAfee’s entry into the controversy is but the latest in a string of events, which seemed to begin after Wright offered a bounty of $5,000 in BSV for information on the identity of Hodlonaut, who kickstarted The Lightning Torch relay on Twitter. The crypto community responded on Twitter in defense of Hodlonaut, using the hashtag #WeAreAllHodlonaut.

Wright has also been publicly claiming that he is the real Satoshi Nakamoto, earning the ire of many in the crypto community, including Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao who tweeted, “Craig Wright is not Satoshi. Anymore of this sh!t, we delist!” Subsequently, Binance did indeed delist BSV although it did not explicitly name Wright as the reason. Fellow cryptocurrency exchanges Kraken, OKex, and Shapeshift followed suit.

Less than a week ago, TheCryptoSight reported that Wright even filed a libel suit against podcaster Peter McCormack for disagreeing that Wright is Satoshi.  

McAfee has so far only revealed that Satoshi is a man, and lives in the US.

“I’ve spoken with him, and he is not a happy camper about my attempt to out him,”  McAfee told Bloomberg via telephone from the Bahamas. McAfee said his extradition lawyer had also advised him that exposing Satoshi could bring him lawsuits, or more.

“Releasing the identity of Satoshi at this time could influence the trial and risk my extradition. I cannot risk that. I’ll wait,” tweeted McAfee.