When the global economic condition was going through a crisis in 2008, a person or group of people called “Satoshi Nakamoto” came like a knight in shining armor with the Bitcoin whitepaper to rescue the falling global economy with digital currencies. However, They were more like a dark knight, hiding their original identity behind the name “Satoshi Nakamoto”.
Today, a whole new industry that sprouted from that single Bitcoin whitepaper has become humongous, with branches like DeFi, NFTs, GameFi, meme coins, and more. Although cryptocurrencies grew in popularity and adoption, the original Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto remained anonymous. Let us look at the possibilities of who could be the original identity behind the Bitcoin founder.
On October 31, 2008, A Bitcoin whitepaper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, was published under the pseudonymous “Satoshi Nakamoto” name. The code behind this Bitcoin project was already started in Q2 2007 and a dedicated domain name Bitcoin.org was registered in August 2008.
Later, on January 09, 2009, Nakamoto released the first version of Bitcoin software on SourceForge”. And, he developed the genesis Bitcoin block, which is the first step before expanding the Bitcoin blockchain across the globe through nodes or participants. Since then the person or group of people called Satoshi Nakamoto has remained active in the community of Bitcoin enthusiasts.
The last message from Satoshi on the Bitcoin form was recorded in December 2010. After the disappearance of pseudonymous Satoshi, the concept of blockchain and cryptocurrencies picked up gradually and grew into a trillion dollar market today. As the popularity of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin increased, the curiosity to find the original creator of Bitcoin has also piqued for early adopters.
Several speculations were made, claiming or assuming the original identity of Nakamoto. But, none of them have been proved absolutely so far. As a result, the question – “who is Satoshi Nakamoto?” remained unanswered.
Over the years, several discussions, or for that matter debates, have happened to know the real identity of the Bitcoin founder. Among the multiple assumed identities, four of them show strong possibilities to actually be Satoshi Nakamoto.
In an article published by a reputed “Newsweek magazine” in March 2014, Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto was identified as the Bitcoin creator. There are several reasons behind this assumption, one being that the birth name of this person is Satoshi Nakamoto.
Another major reason is his education as Dorian was trained as a physicist at California State Polytechnic University. Additionally, he worked as a systems engineer on high-profile defense projects and as a computer engineer in fintech service companies.
All these things led to believing Dorian Nakamoto as Satoshi Nakamoto but during his interview, he denied having any connection to Bitcoin. Reporters chased Dorian from his home as he was going to the interview. He repeatedly said that he was hearing about the currency for the first time in that interview and is not the founder of Bitcoin. The interview didn’t bring any positive results and the identity of the Bitcoin founder remained in question.
Hal Finney was one of the early pioneers in cryptography and it was natural for reporters to suspect he is the Bitcoin founder. Surprisingly, Finney lived a few blocks away from Dorian Nakamoto in California, as per a Forbes article. Another interesting fact is the handwriting of Finney has the closest resemblance to Dorian’s as per Juola writing analysis consultancy.
Finney was the first person to make a transaction using the Bitcoin blockchain in January 2009. After a comprehensive interview with Finney, which involved checking his emails with Nakamoto and his Bitcoin wallet’s history, journalists confirmed that he was telling the truth and is not the founder of Bitcoin.
However, other researchers and bloggers claimed that Finney is involved more with Bitcoin than what he said in the interview. And, there is a possibility that Finney and Dorian worked together or involved more in Bitcoin creation than what they were saying in interviews. Nonetheless, Hal Finney passed away in August 2014 and the search for Bitcoin creator’s identity is still going on.
While all the other assumpted individuals either remained silent or denied that they are the founder of Bitcoin, Craig Wright admitted that he was the one. Craig Wright is an Australian Scientist and his name surfaced when Wired Magazine published a profile on Wright saying that he is the founder of Bitcoin.
The incident that led Wired magazine to believe Wright is the founder of Bitcoin is his appearance via Skype on Bitcoin Investors Conference in Las Vegas. Another story by Gizmodo was published saying that Satoshi Nakamoto is a joint pseudonym used by Wright and computer forensics analyst David Kleiman.
Wright has a master’s in statistics and two doctorates and he claimed to be the Satoshi Nakamoto saying, “I’ve been involved with all of this for a long time”. While the original article by Wired showed a cryptocurrency paper that was published way before Bitcoin whitepaper as evidence, later it was found that it is backdated.
All the claims of Craig Wright were questioned but Wright continued to sue people who called him fraud and even filed US copyright for Bitcoin Whitepaper and Bitcoin 0.1 code. Dismissing all the allegations, Wright continued to use his image and led a Bitcoin Cask fork by forming Bitcoin SV.
Despite years of hunting for Satoshi Nakamoto’s original identity, reporters, journalists, and other industry officials couldn’t find him. In addition to Hal Finney, Dorian Nakamoto, Craig Wright, several other theories were also made at different points in time. However, all of them went in vain, keeping the identity of the Bitcoin founder in shadows!
What is Satoshi Nakamoto net worth?
Being the developer of Bitcoin, Nakamoto holds over a million of Bitcoins, which amount to $55 billion, as per the current Bitcoin price as of February 2024.
Is Satoshi Nakamoto alive?
Since the identity of Satoshi is unknown, we cannot say if it is a single person or a group of people. Thus, there is no way of finding whether he is alive or not.
What is Satoshi Nakamoto’s age?
When Satoshi registered the pseudonym with P2P Foundation, he mentioned birth date as April 5, 1975. According to this, Nakamoto is 49 years old as of February 2024.
Does Satoshi Nakamoto exist?
No one knows whether Satoshi Nakamoto exists or if it is just a name used by a group of smart people. Investigations are going on to find out the identity and to know if he really exists.
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