Who is Satoshi Nakamoto ?

Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym of the person or group of people who, from 2009 to 2010, designed and created Bitcoin, and the Bitcoin-Qt software (now Bitcoin Core). He is also the founder of bitcoin.org and the bitcointalk forum.

There is no trace of his identity before the creation of Bitcoin. On his profile, Nakamoto claimed to be a 37-year-old Japanese, but this information is questionable if one considers the quality of his English, very British, and the lack of documents in Japanese on Bitcoin at that time.

Nakamoto said he has been working on Bitcoin since 2007. In 2008, he reserves the domain name bitcoin.org and then publishes a document on a mailing list describing his invention. In 2009, he released the first version of Bitcoin-QT software and created the first units of the currency.

Satoshi posts his latest message on the bitcointalk forum he created on December 12, 2010. Just before he leaves, he sets up Gavin Andresen as his successor by giving him access to the SourceForge Bitcoin project and a copy of the alert key. which helps prevent the network of important events by spreading a message to all Bitcoin customers.

In May 2011, he is last contacting other Bitcoin contributors, including Martti Malmi, to whom he writes: “I have moved on and I will probably not be here in the future. “

For a long time, Satoshi Nakamoto was the only miner in activity. According to an analysis by Sergio Lerner, his fortune would be close to a million bitcoins.

Suspect List

1) Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto

In 2014, Newsweek famously named Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, a 64-year-old Japanese American with a fondness for model trains, as Bitcoins creator. While originally supporting the narrative, Dorian Nakamoto later denied he was the founder of bitcoin. Mr. Nakamoto divorced his first wife, remarried and had a further five children with his second wife Grace Mitchell, 56, who lives in Aubodon, New Jersey. (source)

2) Elon Musk

The tech entrepreneur behind SpaceX denied the long-standing rumor after a former SpaceX intern compared his writing style. The results showed that Musk was telling the truth, and after hackers used Tesla to mine cryptocurrencies we think it’s even less likely! (source)

3) A Russian or Chinese agent

The Obama administration was concerned that Satoshi was an agent of Russia or China — that Bitcoin might be weaponized against us in the future. Knowing the source would help the administration understand their motives.

4) Craig Steven Wright

An Australian who claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto in 2015, withdrew from public life after supplying false evidence and later failing to provide new evidence to support his claims. His assertions were initially met with skepticism and not following through with the promised evidence leaves many wondering if he is, in fact, the elusive creator of bitcoin. (source)

Now, two publications once again claim to have outed Satoshi as an Australian computer scientist and entrepreneur named Craig Wright. Websites Wired and Gizmodo claim to have a series of emails, old blog posts, and eyewitness accounts that, in Wired’s words, show that “either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.” (source)

5) David Kleiman

A popular choice in forums, David Kleiman, was Craig Wright’s best friend, an Army veteran, a paraplegic, and a computing wizard sometimes consulted by national TV networks for his expertise in computer forensics and security. According to a month-long Gizmodo investigation published in 2015, Kleiman may also have been deeply involved with Bitcoin. Documents and on-the-record interviews obtained by Gizmodo and Wired in separate investigations show that Craig Wright, an Australian CEO whose home and office were raided hours after the stories were published, repeatedly claimed in private that he and Kleiman were part of Bitcoin’s creation. Gizmodo wrote a very interesting article on Kleiman. (source)

6) The CIA/NSA

A group named CIA Project claims that bitcoin is a creation of the CIA or NSA. While the group provided “evidence,” such as stating the name, Satoshi Nakamoto, roughly translates to “Central Intelligence” in Japanese, their perspective is considered to be no more than a conspiracy theory. (source)

7) Nick Szabo

A reclusive American, deeply involved in the Bitcoin project, released a blog expressing interest in the technology before Bitcoin’s release, but later reposted it to alter the publishing date. After the blog post about bit gold was determined to be from before bitcoins release, researchers at Aston University compared his writing style to Satoshi Nakamoto’s. According to Jack Grieve, a lecturer who led the project effort, the similarities were “uncanny.” (source)

8) Hal Finney

Many people believe that Hal Finney, the first person to receive a bitcoin transaction, was actually Satoshi Nakamoto. If so, the mystery of the founder’s identity may never be solved, as Finney passed away in 2014 from ALS. (source)

9) A Group of Companies

Some Bitcoin users have suggested (jokingly) that Satoshi Nakamoto could actually be a group of four Asian technology companies: Samsung, Toshiba, Nakamichi, and Motorola. The name can be created by taking the “sa” from Samsung, “toshi” from Toshiba, “naka” from Nakamichi, and “moto” from Motorola. (source)