Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? That has been the key question for anyone who has anything to do with crypto for a long time. It is generally believed that Satoshi Nakamoto is the alias of Bitcoin’s one and only inventor(s). The man, woman, or group who in October 2008 described the white paper on the technology behind Bitcoin, known as blockchain. The title of this report was Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

He asked fellow cyberpunks to help develop the system. On January 9 2009, he launched the technology himself and called it version 0.1 of Bitcoin software. We all know what happened next.

Satoshi left many details about his identity unanswered in the document and since then his identity has been feeding the most wild speculation. Some of his posts at the beginning of technology development are dated, but after he saw that more and more people began to have an interest in blockchain, he disappeared.

Since the boom of Bitcoin and blockchain, so around the year 2014, several investigative journalists have tried to solve the mystery, but so far without real success. Google Search Trends teaches us that the name Satoshi Nakamoto was typed in millions of times in the search engine during the Bitcoin bull run at the end of 2017.

Satoshi not Japanese but English speaking

At the beginning of the journalistic search it was assumed that Satoshi should not be Japanese but British or Australian. Some of the expressions in the white paper were typically English terms known only to British or Australians.

Satoshi had hidden the phrase Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks in the hidden code in the first Bitcoin block (a newspaper title from the London newspaper The Times of that time) and described a problem related to the development of blockchain as bloody hard.

According to experts, both expressions could not really come from a Japanese person, but rather from an Englishman, a Canadian or an Australian. In other words, only someone who actually speaks English would make such statements. And so began the years of unbelievable search.

Furthermore, a Swiss tech enthusiast, who was very active on the Bitcoin forum, created a timeline of Nakamoto’s updates in the early years. The Swiss, named Stefan Thomas, was able to prove that Satoshi’s updates were never done between 2pm and 8pm Japanese time. This indicates either a very strange sleeping pattern or a lie about Satoshi’s location.

Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto

According to the official version he would currently be a 44-year-old Japanese man, born on 5 April 1975. As the popularity of blockchain grew and blockchain got mentioned more and more in the global media, journalists from renowned magazines have been competing with theories about who Satoshi could possibly be.

For example, on the 6^th of March 2014 there was a long article in Newsweek by the renowned journalist Leah McGrath Goodman, called: The Face Behind Bitcoin. McGrath Goodman was certain that the man she had found, a 64-year-old Japanese citizen with dual American-Japanese nationality who lived and worked in California, was the real Satoshi. His name: Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto.

When she asked a question about Bitcoin, Dorian answered that he has nothing to do with it anymore, other people have now taken over. After publication of the article, Dorian Nakamoto found more and more journalists at his doorstep and states that his answer to McGrath Goodman was a mistake. Afterwards, he claimed to answer a question about his work at Citibank.

After Dorian Nakamoto gets tired of all the media attention, he gives an Ask Me Anything interview on Reddit, where he again denies the story. Later that day, for the first time in five years, a message appears on Satoshi Nakamoto’s mail account saying: I’m not Dorian Nakamoto. However, McGrath Goodman, who sees a bestseller passing by because of the many holes in her theory, insists that Dorian is the real Satoshi. However, after a linguist at Aston University finds differences between Nakamoto’s writings and the retired Dorian’s answers, the theory is buried.

Is Craig Wright Satoshi Nakamoto?

Wired, the famous magazine for everything that has to do with tech, geeks and nerds, goes to research itself. In a series of articles from December 2015 to mid-2016, multiple authors try to prove that Craig Wright, an Australian businessman and cryptographer, is the one and only Satoshi Nakamoto.

Wired is supported in its research by business magazine Gizmodo, but several tech geeks remain convinced that Wright has nothing to do with Nakamoto. They claim that the Australian has set up a hoax in order to make the claim. In early 2019, Wired decides they have been fooled and places disclaimers along their articles. The whole Wright story could be a hoax. Self-published by Wright to claim ownership over the entire Bitcoin story.

Law cases Craig Wright

After Vitalik Buterin, the inventor of Ethereum, openly calls Wright a fraudster, the Australian goes to court and files a complaint for slander and defamation. The verdict may follow within a few months.

Meanwhile, Wright is also in court with Ira Kleiman, the brother of his former business partner David Kleiman, who died in 2013. Rumor has it that Kleiman and Wright have mined about 8.3 billion euros worth of Bitcoins since the creation of the most famous cryptocurrency. If Wright gets access to that absolute fortune, he’ll have to give half to Kleiman. He tries to change that with yet another lawsuit in 2020.

However, we still don’t know the answer to the very first question: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?