Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? The most mysterious character of the 21st century

In 2007, the global economy entered a period of depression and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 triggered the first economic crisis in the 21st century.

It was followed by the uncontrollable plunge of the stock market and a series of banks and large corporations went bankrupt. At this time, the Bitcoin – Satoshi Nakamoto name appeared for the first time.

In October 2007, to be exact, Bitcoin was first mentioned in an article on the peer-to-peer payment protocol by a character named Satoshi Nakamoto.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Surely when you first hear it, you will immediately think that this is a Japanese. Yes, this is definitely a Japanese name; But ironically, no one dares to claim that the “father” of Bitcoin is a Japanese even though we have Satoshi’s profile on the P2P Foundation.

Why? In the P2P Foundation file, this person claims to be a man from Japan, born on April 5, 1975. However, some people made some unusual points that this person did not look like he was from Japan.

First of all, the whitepaper and some of the posts that followed were perfectly written in English, as if someone came from a country that uses English as the native language. Second, his resting hours are very opposite for someone living in Japan.

A member of the Bitcointalk.org forum has a name Stefan Thomas have pointed out timelines from more than 500 Satoshi posts. These timelines show that the creator of Bitcoin did not post anything between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Japanese time.

So why hasn’t Satoshi Nakamoto published his real identity? This is an interesting question; And after more than 11 years since Bitcoin was born, many theories have emerged to answer the question above.

Why does Satoshi Nakamoto want to remain anonymous?

The first hypothesis: Avoid being “touched by the government”

In the past, a similar situation like this happened. In 1991, Phil Zimmermann – an activist who wanted to give dissidents a channel of communication not subject to government probation – launched Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software. This software allows people to send encrypted messages to each other.

However, the US government realized the potential of this technology and confiscated it. PGP and Zimmermann later became the subject of criminal investigations.

The only thing this technology does is allow two individuals to communicate without being eavesdropped. So imagine how the government would treat the creator of Bitcoin; as this technology allows free money transfers without the need for banks or third parties. A technology that keeps money out of government control.

The second theory: Due to being too rich

Currently, Satoshi is said to own more than 1 million Bitcoins; that is more than 7 billion USD (in present value terms).

This is a huge amount of money; is a good prey in the eyes of governments (for tax purposes) and super thieves.

Third hypothesis: Do is the father of a system that promotes anonymity

Bitcoin is a transaction system that allows anyone to transact anonymously. And the anonymous creator of Bitcoin could be the plan to promote this special feature.

Satoshi Nakamoto’s activities before disappearing

• August 2008: The domain name of the bitcoin.org site is registered by Satoshi or his colleague
• October 2008: Satoshi publishes Bitcoin whitepaper titled “Dorian Nakamoto”.
• Next, he created the bitcointalk forum and posted the first message under the pseudonym Satoshi
• January 3, 2019: Satoshi mines the first Bitcoin block. This block is called Genesis or block number 0 with a block reward of 50 BTC.
• Satoshi collaborated with many other developers to revise the source code until mid-2010.
• He then gave control of the source code repository and network alert key to Gavin Andresen. In addition, he passed some related domain names to some prominent members of the community and disappeared.
• During that time period, he said that he started coding Bitcoin in 2007.

The supposed characters are Satoshi Nakamoto

First Person: The Four Giants in the Technology Industry

Maybe you will find this quite “mythical” and most unlikely to happen. But when you combine the names of these corporations together, you will read the name Satoshi Nakamoto

Second character: Dorian Nakamoto

Dorian Nakamoto is credited with being Satoshi Nakamoto thanks to a March 2014 article by Newsweek.

The article has caused a stir in the crypto community because this is the first time a mainstream publication has attempted to find out the identity of the creator of Bitcoin.

Specifically, journalist Leah McGrath Goodman identified Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto as the creator of Bitcoin. This Japanese man is living in California

Leah gave a series of evidence to prove it. Among them, the most valuable proof was that she asked a Bitcoin-related question in a face-to-face interview, and Dorian replied:

I am not involved in that anymore and I cannot discuss them. They have been passed on to others. Now they are responsible for them. I have no connection anymore.

However, after that, Dorian denied any connections with Bitcoin. He said that he misunderstood the reporter’s question and said he had never heard of this currency before.

But surprisingly, Nakamoto’s account posted the first message in 5 years, stating:

I’m not Dorian Nakamoto.

An act that later, when many people claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the owner of this account did not appear to deny.

The third character: the deceased computer scientist – Hal Finney

It is known that Finney is a neighbor of Dorian Nakamoto. He is also one of the first members of the PGP project that CHK mentioned in the section“The first hypothesis: Avoid being” touched by the government “. This made many people suspect that Finney had borrowed the name of a neighbor to hide his true identity.

Besides, he was one of the first to have a positive outlook on the Bitcoin monetary system; a liberal with an extremely intelligent mind …

According to analysis by Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg, Finney is the character most likely Satoshi Nakamoto of all the candidates.

However, after being shown some emails between him and Nakamoto and his Bitcoin wallet history (including the first Bitcoin transaction Nakamoto sent to Finney); Greenberg concluded that he is not the father of Bitcoin.

Hal Finney died on August 28, 2014 of unilateral atrophic sclerosis (ALS).

But it is this death that reinforces the notion that he is the father of Bitcoin. Since then, about 1 million BTC has not been moved to this day.

Fourth character: Craig Wright

It can be said that this is the character causing the most noise out of all the candidates. According to his Wikipedia profile, Craig Wright is an Australian computer expert, scientist and businessman.

Everything started in November 2015. Meanwhile, the Gizmodo site received an anonymous email from an individual; say that Craig Wright is the creator of Bitcoin.

Then, Wired and Gizmodo opened two investigations and concluded that Wright could be Satoshi.

However, the above report has raised suspicions that Wright was essentially a swindler.

Specifically, two hours after Wried published the report, the Australian Federal police broke into Wright’s home in Gordon, New South Wales – part of an investigation by the Australian tax authorities.

As of May 2, 2016, BBC and The Economist have published articles stating that Wright signed digital messages using cryptographic keys generated in the early days of Bitcoin development.

These keys are closely linked to Bitcoin blocks that have been “mined” by Satoshi Nakamoto. On the same day, an article on the drcraigwright site posted a cryptographically signed message attached to it.

However, security researcher Dan Kaminsky later wrote on his blog that Wright was just a scam; and Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik also agrees that the evidence publicly provided by Wright does not prove anything.

Wright is simply reusing the old signature from a Bitcoin transaction made in 2009 by Satoshi.

Earlier, in an interview with the BBC, Wright had promised to present “extraordinary evidence for a special request”. So far, however, he has not provided any valid evidence of his copyright to the Bitcoin whitepaper.

Another Cointelegraph post also proved that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. Accordingly, in his writings, Craig revealed weaknesses in grammar and vocabulary. This is not the same as what Satoshi showed in the Bitcoin whitepaper.

More seriously, basic system security flaws frequently appear in his statements.

By May 2019, Wright began threatening to sue people who said he was not the father of Bitcoin and who called him a scam. Among them are Vitalik Buterin – founder of Ethereum; Roger Ver – a very early supporter of Bitcoin; and Peter McCormack, a podcaster.

In addition to the above characters, there are still some other names that are suspected of being Satoshi Nakamoto such as: Nick Szabo, David Lee Chaum, Vincent van Volkmer or even artificial intelligence (AI).

44th richest character voted by Forbes

Despite his anonymity, Satoshi is truly one of the world’s billionaires. In 2017, when the price of BTC peaked near $ 20,000, Forbes named Satoshi Nakamoto on the list of the 50 richest people in the world that year.

And with a hold of 1 million BTC, Satoshi Nakamoto will surely still be a character “favored” by the media to find out the true identity of one of the most mysterious characters in the 21st century.