The Mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto

2 August 2023

5m read

TL;DR
The person who created Bitcoin is known only by the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. People have said they are Satoshi Nakamoto and speculated about their genuine identity in response to the inquiry "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?"
For more than ten years, the identity of Bitcoin's founder has remained a secret. But since the public keys for these coins can be traced back to the genesis block that Satoshi created, it is obvious that Satoshi still has these bitcoins.

Introduction

The whitepaper for Bitcoin, written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, was released in 2008. The article is titled Bitcoin: a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Despite not having invented blockchain, Satoshi was the first to use it to build decentralized money.
2009 saw the formal introduction of Bitcoin. However, emails and forum posts with the enigmatic moniker had already started to circulate much before that.
But in 2011, all of their connections to the outside world stopped, and Satoshi vanished. Since then, there has been much arguing and accusations around the mystery behind all this.
Who, however, is Satoshi Nakamoto? Who is it that brought us one of the most revolutionary inventions of the twenty-first century, if not the most? Now let's investigate that.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto, exactly?

We must first ask ourselves, "Is this a single person or a group of people?" before we can respond to this question. Unfortunately, there is not much data to support either claim. Many people think Satoshi is an individual, but others think he is part of a group, such as a group of computer scientists, cryptography professionals, or cypherpunks.
They claimed to be male, Japanese, and born on April 5, 1975, before Satoshi broke off all connection in April 2011. However, some have noted that Satoshi's knowledge of English was so strong that they are probably from a place where English is the native tongue. Additionally, since most of their conversations took place during European business hours, it is assumed that they did not reside in Japan.
Since Satoshi Nakamoto and the rest of the world are no longer on speaking terms, rumors about their genuine identity have run rampant. Many people and organizations have claimed to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto, but only a select few have emerged as noteworthy.

Hal Finney

Hal Finney is one of the people who has the best chance of being Satoshi Nakamoto out of everyone else. Hal was a pioneering Bitcoin user and the beneficiary of the initial Bitcoin transaction. He was one of the first cypherpunks in the 1990s and also worked as a software engineer.
Hal Finney sadly went away in 2014 as a result of a nerve condition that caused him to be immobile for a while prior to passing away. He consistently denied being Satoshi Nakamoto.

Nick Szabo

Nick Szabo, a well-known computer scientist who developed the digital money "bit gold" years before Bitcoin, is another very likely contender. His interactions with the cypherpunk community, as well as his writing style and communication epochs, were quite similar to Satoshi's.
Despite Nick Szabo's denials, many people in the cryptocurrency world aren't persuaded. Nick and Satoshi share many similarities that might or might not be coincidences.

Dorian Nakamoto

Dorian Nakamoto is a Japanese-American who was given the name Satoshi Nakamoto as a child. He has worked as a computer engineer for technology and financial services firms and even spent more than ten years living in the same California neighborhood as Hal Finney.
Dorian said in an interview that he had worked on the creation of Bitcoin, but then said he had misinterpreted the topic. He has since denied ever working on the project and claims he was unaware it even existed until the media circus that followed it.

The value of Satoshi Nakamoto

Whoever the true Satoshi Nakamoto is, they are undoubtedly extremely wealthy. Due to the discovery of Satoshi's bitcoin storage locations by forensic technology, the amount of money he is worth is now public knowledge.
Satoshi Nakamoto has not spent a single coin since the beginning of 2009. Most people assume that Satoshi holds about 1 million bitcoins, but different estimates of his exact holdings exist. Satoshi would then rank among the richest billionaires on the earth.

Concluding remarks

Many people have made allegations about Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity. They could consist of a single person or several persons. They might be alive or deceased. But we won't ever be able to identify Satoshi Nakamoto without strong, unambiguous proof. One thing, nevertheless, is certain: Satoshi Nakamoto holds onto a significant amount of bitcoin.

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