There’s a lot we don’t know about Satoshi Nakamoto — but does unmasking the creator of Bitcoin even matter?
The Birth of Bitcoin
The Bitcoin white paper was the document that fired the starting gun on the cryptocurrency movement — painting the compelling vision of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
It was pseudonymously written by Satoshi Nakamoto, a cryptographic pioneer who demonstrated how digital currencies could mount a challenge to central banks. A few months later, the genesis block was mined, and Bitcoin transactions took place for the first time.
Although the white paper was exceptionally detailed, there’s one burning question that cryptocurrency enthusiasts still have, 12 years on: who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
Unmasking the Creator of Bitcoin
There’s a lot we don’t know about Satoshi Nakamoto. Is the author a he or a she? Does this name represent one person, or does it collectively describe a group of people? Is Satoshi from the United States or elsewhere?
Extensive effort has gone into revealing the true identity of Bitcoin’s creator — after all, central banks would probably like to give them a firm talking to. Linguistic analysis has even been used to try and find the coder or cypherpunk who is Bitcoin’s creator.
The Options
Several media outlets have claimed they’ve found the real Satoshi Nakamoto over the years. Publications such as the New Yorker have insisted Bitcoin’s creator needs to be revealed. Newsweek made a splash in 2014 when it claimed that a Japanese-American man called Dorian Nakamoto was the Bitcoin founder. He took part in a face-to-face interview, but claims he misunderstood a question when he was asked about the cryptocurrency. Later, Nakamoto told the Associated Press: “The main reason I’m here is to clear my name that I have nothing to do with Bitcoin.” Forbes also established links to Hal Finney, the late cryptographic pioneer who happened to live next door to Dorian Nakomoto.
OK, so that’s one name we can cross out in our quest to discover who invented BTC. Let’s move on to our next candidate, Nick Szabo. A researcher called Skye Grey dug deep to find unusual turns of phrase in the Bitcoin white paper, and performed an analysis against the published works of established cryptographers, citing some similarities he says he found with Szabo. Although Szabo did create the concept of BitGold in 1998, he insists he isn’t the Bitcoin creator.
Other sensational theories have claimed Tesla CEO Elon Muskcould be the founder of Bitcoin, with a Hacker Noon writer pointing to his background at PayPal, mastery of the C++ programming language and ambitious ideas. Again, this was met with a staunch denial, with Musk stressing that he doesn’t own more than .25 Bitcoin.
…and the person who claims he IS the founder of Bitcoin
Whereas many of these suspects have denied their involvement in tweets and articles, there’s one man who claims he is the person to thank for blockchain technology as we know it: the Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright.
He has long maintained he is the real Satoshi Nakamoto and the “sole creator of Bitcoin” — even filing a claim of authorship for the Bitcoin white paper to the U.S. Copyright Office. Gizmodo did end up running a piece in 2015 with documents that suggested Satoshi Nakamoto was a pseudonym used by Craig Wright and the late computer scientist David Kleiman. Wired magazine described him as an “unknown Australian genius.”
Wright met Kleiman on internet cryptography forums in the early 2000s. Kleiman, who died in 2013, was a military vet turned computer forensics expert and cryptographer, who worked with U.S Homeland Security forensic projects throughout his career. Wright and Kleiman became friends, developed a partnership, and according to statements made by Wright, helped co-author the Bitcoin white paper.
Conspiracies Abound
Kleiman’s untimely death adds layers of mystery to the tale; some redditors believe that Craig killed Kleiman; or that Craig is in fact Dave Kleiman(???); other redditors believe Kleiman’s death was simply a convenient cover for Wright to claim ownership of the BTC project. However, going down that Reddit rabbit hole may not give us any more clarity on Satoshi’s real identity.
Wright’s claim to Satoshi Nakomoto’s identity directs us back to the first BTC transactions from January 2009 between Satoshi and Hal Finney. Through a series of emails with Kleiman from 2007/2008, Wright pushes forward the idea that the timestamps on his emails act as evidence that he was involved in the formation of the BTC project, that he participated in Bitcoin’s first transactions.
In 2016, Bitcoin Core developer Gavin Andresen supported Wright’s assertion in an interview with the BBC, stating that Wright provided cryptographic proof that he was indeed Satoshi. Moreover, Andresen is confident that Wright matches the profile of the person he communicated with back in 2010, in his early Bitcoin correspondances. Nonetheless, the Bitcoin community is divided over the Australian academic’s claims, with some suggesting it’s all a stunt.
And the Mystery Deepens
The nature of the partnership between Kleiman and Wright became further complicated when Dave’s brother Ira Kleiman sued Wright in February 2018. Ira Kleiman contends that Wright defrauded his brother of his intellectual property rights as well as of 1.1M Bitcoin that they allegedly mined together between the years of 2008 and 2011.
The legal challenge has further brought to light the “Tulip Trust” — a trust fund that Wright states houses all of his millions of Bitcoin. Wright alleges that he is not currently in possession of the key to decrypt them, and is awaiting the key from a mysterious courier. Ira Kleiman’s side purports that those Bitcoin actually belong to his brother.
A Final Reveal?
The Wright v. Kleiman lawsuit will be decided later this year in Florida, which may add some more fuel to the fire in unearthing the mysterious identity of Satoshi. And, as BTC surges and gains wider adoption, more and more people may join the internet sleuths in their investigative attempts to get to the bottom of this.
However, despite BTC’s growing interest, we may never know the true identity of Satoshi, the driving force behind decentralized currency. Some in the crypto world are nervous about efforts to name Satoshi, and believe in letting sleeping dogs lie. But for now, expect endless debate on Reddit to continue about who penned, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
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who you think the real satoshi nakamoto is !!
Elon Musk
Dorian Nakamoto
Hal Finney
Nick Szabo
Craig Wright
