I actually thought carefully whether or not I would get involved in Bitcoin under my real identity; at the time whether or not it was even legal to be involved was a lot less certain. I decided to be public ultimately because I realized that I'm good at things like public speaking, I enjoyed it, and someone needed to take on those kinds of roles.

In general having a mix of public and pseudonymous devs is probably ideal. Each category has advantages and disadvantages. Public devs can interact with the public in a way that's much more difficult if you're trying to hide your identity. Public devs have a lot more to lose if they try to defraud people. But pseudonymous devs are less vulnerable to many kinds of legal attacks. Though as CobraBitcoin found in the UK, that's not always true either: in the UK you can't defend yourself in a lawsuit without doxing yourself.