Does Satoshi Nakamoto exist and who is he?
In 2008, someone with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin Whitepaper. And from there, Bitcoin had many highs. People made a fortune, the first investors became multi-millionaires. And nowadays, almost everyone wants to taste it.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto really?
Last January, bitcoin celebrated its 13th anniversary. Over time, bitcoin has made headlines in renowned newspapers, often to reach all-time highs, and other times to talk about its enigmatic creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Last year bitcoin reached a whopping $69,000. Yet one thing remains mysterious about him. Who is the founder of Bitcoin? This issue alone has garnered as much attention as its monetary value. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is also involved in the Satoshi Nakamoto case.
And at the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, bitcoin played a key role, helping Ukrainians raise funds through its fast and secure network. However, the mystery remains intact. And indeed, netizens have made up intriguing stories and guesses to unmask the mysterious creator of bitcoin.
We will decrypt each suspect in depth and try to find some clues. But before unraveling the enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto, let’s take a look at his traces.
The traces of Satoshi Nakamoto
Having come up with the grandest idea of the 21st century, i.e. the idea of a decentralized digital currency, tracking down Satoshi Nakamoto would not be an easy task.
On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin Whitepaper via the Metzdowd site.
After the launch of bitcoin in January 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto created a bitcoin discussion forum where bitcoin enthusiasts could connect. Satoshi Nakamoto himself used it to share ideas, interact with the community, and work to make bitcoin a safer network.
But it wasn’t for very long. Satoshi promptly left the forum on December 12, 2010, stating that he still had work to do to improve the bitcoin network. He handed over the keys to the source code to Gavin Andersen, who is now Bitcoin’s Chief Scientist.
According to reports, Satoshi Nakamoto mined around 1.1 million BTC when the network was still in development. Other sources estimate its reserve to be between 725,000 and 1.1 million BTC. Based on bitcoin trends, Satoshi Nakamoto’s net worth is estimated to be around $45 billion.
A tweet alert in 2020 notified the move of 40 BTC to an unknown wallet, a Satoshi-era wallet, which was mined within the first month of bitcoin’s inception. The price of BTC fell by 7% as a result, with users believing the founder was getting rid of his holy grail. The impact on bitcoin’s price would be huge if Satoshi really showed up.
Satoshi nakamoto: who are the main suspects?
In recent years many theories have been made around the character of Satoshi, some famous people would be suspected of being secretly.
Suspect n° 1 : Dorian Prentice
Our first candidate is a Japanese-American, whose birth name is Satoshi Nakamoto, he lives in California. However, in 1973, he added the prefix “Dorian Prentice,” according to federal court in Los Angeles. He holds a degree in physics and has previously worked on classified military projects.
Apart from his name, Dorian has strong freedom values. His daughter has revealed that he is highly suspicious of government agencies. In the 1990s, the family home was seized by banks and sold by because he was behind on his mortgage payments.
As Gavin Anderson (Chief Bitcoin Scientist) said, the real Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t like the idea of banks and bankers getting rich just because they hold the keys.
His family described him as intelligent, moody, and obsessively reserved. Someone who loves solitude, he screens his phone calls and anonymizes his emails. And her kids would get in trouble if they were found near her computer or her study room.
With his motivation and expertise, Dorian could think of creating a decentralized digital currency that would put banks and governments out of business. Is he the real founder of Bitcoin?
A week after the publication of a Newsweek article in New York, Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto dismissed these allegations.
Suspect n° 2 : Hal Finney
Hal Finney was the first person to receive bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto. He exchanged emails with Nakamoto, reported bugs in BTC software, and made security improvements.
Hal was the first member of the Cypherpunk mailing list. A community focused on cryptography, privacy-based technologies, computer science and mathematics.
And guess what, he lived a few blocks from Dorian Prentice S. Nakamoto, according to a Forbes reporter.
Andy Greenberg, another reporter, suggests that Hal may have been a ghostwriter by the name of Satoshi, or used his neighbor’s identity to remain anonymous. However, after meeting Hal Finney, seeing his emails from Satoshi Nakamoto, his bitcoin wallet history, Andy Greenberg accepted Hal Finney’s denial.
But the story does not end there. On January 11, 2009, Hal Finney tweeted : “Bitcoin running.” What can this mean? After all, he developed the reusable Proof of Work, the basis on which the Bitcoin consensus protocol operates.
And the last we heard of Satoshi Nakamoto was around the time Hal retired due to illness. His health deteriorated and he sadly passed away in 2014. This may be the reason why Satoshi’s stash (his 1 million BTC) did not move.
But to believe that Hal Finney was the real Satoshi Nakamoto, we have to assume that he went out of his way to remain anonymous by messaging himself early on.
And don’t forget, Hal and Dorian lived in the same neighborhood. America is the 4th largest country by landmass and these two leading contenders lived just a few blocks away. We are left with these options, either the late Hal Finney was the real Satoshi Nakamoto or he was just a crypto genius.
Suspect n°3 : Nick Szabo
Nick Szabo, like Hal, was also a member of the Cypherpunks. He is the founder of Bitgold, a precursor to Bitcoin which was never implemented.
In his personal blog, Szabo talked about the idea of mining with the help of Hal’s reusable Proof of Work protocol. Later, in the same blog, he spoke about the shortcomings of current financial systems. Something very similar to Bitcoin, however, this idea was proposed for Bitgold, its precursor project to bitcoin created in 1998.
This part is interesting, however, his blog was published on December 27, 2008. But any blog owner knows that it is easy to change the publication date. This is what happened with Szabo, during an investigation. It actually turned out that Szabo’s article on Bitgold was published on December 27, 2005.
Now, why did Nick change the date a few months later with the release of the Bitcoin Whitepaper? What was he trying to hide? Why was Bitgold never implemented? Instead, we had Bitcoin, the idea of which resonates hugely with that of Bitgold. Too many questions, however, Nick Szabo denied all guesses.
Suspect n°4 : Craig Wright, le vrai Satoshi Nakamoto ?
This candidate is more conspicuous than the others. Craig Steven Wright is an Australian businessman and computer scientist. And he openly claims to be the founder of bitcoin. In April 2019, he filed the US copyright for the Bitcoin 0.1 whitepaper and source code.
Wright claims the creation of bitcoin was a team effort led by him / and claims the involvement of Hal Finney and Dave Kleiman, who died in 2014 and 2013 respectively.
Wired and Gizmodo, the two separate articles published in 2015, say Craig could be the real Satoshi Nakamoto. However, in the next version, the case took a different turn, revealing a hoax by Craig Wright.
To this day, the Bitcoin community and many of its enthusiasts remain skeptical of Wright’s claim, as he fails to provide evidence for his extraordinary assertion. However, Bitcoin chief scientist Gavin Anderson, to whom Satoshi provided the source code keys, agrees with Craig Wright’s claims.