Please note that this is pure speculation. I have no insider knowledge of who the real Satoshi is. And in many ways this is a homage to Linus, because, in my humble opinion, he is one of the few people who has the intelligence, knowledge, wisdom and competence to pull
"In many ways, I actually think the real idea of open source is for it to allow everybody to be "selfish", not about trying to get everybody to contribute to some common good ... No, open source only really works if everybody is contributing for their own selfish reasons."
This quote is quite an accurate way to also describe Bitcoin. In many ways, this is how Bitcoin was designed to work, everyone in the bitcoin ecosystem acts in their own "selfish" way. This quote comes from Linus Torvalds.
Philosophically, Linux and Bitcoin are both similar. Both lean towards Anarchy (in the traditional sense). Order out of chaos. Everyone can act in their own interests, as long as you follow a set of rules that are accepted by the community.
I came to this hypothesis, and it is only a hypothesis as I have no insider information, after starting a deep dive into Git.
I did a search on Google to see if others had come up with this hypothesis and came across this
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2diuer/thoughts_on_linus_torvalds_or_someone_in_this/
Now I have been a big admirer of Linux and now use Ubuntu as my main OS, but I had little knowledge of who Linus is. So the talk Linus' talk at Google was the first time I've ever heard him speak.
The reason for this is that Linus is a very private person. Why do I mention this? Because in order to become truly anonymous, you need to have a true appreciation of popularity and fame, and must actively shun it. If you you are not sufficiently paranoid, and if you do not have sufficient understanding of how networking works, you will not remain anonymous for long. Linus clearly understands the importance of anonymity, and more importantly, how to actually achieve it.
*I started writing this in mid 2019, but decided to publish it now because I saw this. now I'm more convinced than ever that Linus is the inventor. https://www.trustnodes.com/2019/10/02/linus-torvalds-wont-say-if-he-invented-bitcoin