Satoshi Nakamoto is the anonymous name used by the creators of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Although the name Satoshi Nakamoto is often synonymous with Bitcoin, the actual person the name represents has never been found, leading many people to believe that it is a pseudonym for someone with a different identity or group of people .
Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto?
About Satoshi Nakamoto
- Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym who authored the original Bitcoin white paper and is the identity credited with inventing Bitcoin itself.
- While several people have claimed to be Satoshi, the true identity has never been verified or revealed.
- Considering the price of BTC today, Satoshi would be a billionaire.
More About Satoshi Nakamoto
For most people, Satoshi Nakamoto is the most enigmatic figure in cryptocurrency. To date, it is unclear whether the name refers to a single person or a group of people. What is known is that Satoshi Nakamoto published an article in 2008 that spurred the development of cryptocurrency.
The article Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System describes the use of a peer-to-peer network as a solution to the double-spending problem.1 The problem – whether a digital currency or token can be duplicated in multiple transactions – cannot be found in physical currencies because, by their very nature, a physical note or coin can only exist in one place at one time. Since a digital currency does not exist in physical space, its use in a transaction does not necessarily remove it from a person’s possession.
Facts About Satoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi Nakamoto may not be a real person. The name could be a pseudonym for the creator(s) of Bitcoin who wish to remain anonymous.
However, this trust-based model still carries the risk of fraud if the trusted third party is not truly trustworthy. Third-party removal can only be achieved by embedding cryptography in transactions.
Nakamoto proposed a decentralized approach to transactions, which ultimately resulted in the creation of blockchains. In a blockchain, timestamps of a transaction are appended to previous timestamps based on proof of work, creating a historical record that cannot be changed.
With transaction records spread across many nodes in the system, it is difficult, if not impossible, for a bad actor to gain enough control over the system to rewrite the ledger for their own benefit. Blockchain records are kept secure because the amount of processing power needed to reverse them discourages small-scale attacks.
The convention is that Bitcoin should be used with a capital “B” to denote the system, network, protocol, etc. from Bitcoin; Bitcoin with a lowercase “b” should be used to refer to bitcoin tokens or units on exchange.
Solutions to combat the double-spending problem have always included the use of trusted third-party intermediaries to verify that a digital currency has already been spent by its holder. In most cases, third parties such as banks, for example, can process transactions efficiently without adding significant risk.
History of Satoshi Nakamoto
Persona Satoshi Nakamoto was involved in the early days of Bitcoin, working on the first version of the software in 2009. Communications to and from Nakamoto were conducted electronically, and the lack of personal and background information meant he was impossible to determine the real identity behind the name.
However, Nakamoto’s involvement in Bitcoin ended in 2010. The last correspondence anyone had with Nakamoto was an email to another crypto developer, stating that they had “moved on”. The inability to put a face to the name has led to much speculation about Nakamoto’s identity, especially as cryptocurrencies have grown in number, popularity, and notoriety.
Although Nakamoto’s identity has not been attributed to any verifiable person, it is estimated that the value of bitcoins under Nakamoto’s control – estimated to be around 1 million – could exceed $50 billion. With the maximum possible number of bitcoins generated being 21 million, Nakamoto’s 5% share of the total bitcoin supply has significant market power. Several people have been suggested as the “real” Satoshi Nakamoto, although none have been positively proven to be Nakamoto.
Dorian Nakamoto
Dorian Nakamoto is a California scholar and engineer who was credited as the creator of Bitcoin by Leah McGrath Goodman in a March 2014 Newsweek article. According to McGrath’s article, “Newsweek’s lead led to an American of 64 years old whose real name is Satoshi Nakamoto”, but a subsequent investigation concluded that Nakamoto had been abandoned.
Hal Finney
Bitcoin is the product of the cypherpunk movement, and one of the pillars of this movement was Hal Finney. Finney died in 2014. Finney was active in the bitcoin community before and after bitcoin was introduced, and Finney is the first person to receive bitcoin in a transaction. was thought to be him, may have been the inspiration for a pseudonym invented by Finney.
Nick Szabo
Like Finney, Szabo was an early cypherpunk and was friends with many people in that circle. In 2005, he wrote a blog post hypothesizing a digital currency called “Bitgold” that does not rely on third-party trust.4
Craig Wright
Craig Wright, an Australian academic and businessman, is one of the most colorful characters to be named as the person behind Satoshi Nakamoto. Two articles in Wired and Gizmodo suggested that Wright might be the person behind Bitcoin, but subsequent investigations revealed he had committed an elaborate hoax.
In December 2021, a jury dismissed a civil action against Wright, which was filed from the estate of a former colleague, the late David Kleiman. Kleiman’s estate argued that Wright and Kleiman co-created Bitcoin and therefore owed him half of Wright’s alleged 1.1 million BTC stash.5 If Wright had lost the case, the court likely would have ruled that he owned 50% of these displaced pieces, which means that Wright would have to use the Satoshi handbags. However, by winning the lawsuit, Wright did not have to submit to such a lawsuit. However, he still claims to be the man behind the coin.
Bitcoin Blockchain Notes
Analysis of the bitcoin blockchain has made it possible to deduce with a relatively high degree of certainty which addresses are likely to be those of Satoshi Nakamoto. According to on-chain analysis by RSK Labs Chief Scientist Sergio Demián Lerner, Satoshi owns around 1 million Bitcoin, or $100 million. These addresses date back to the beginnings of Bitcoin in 2009.
Over the years, bitcoins have been mined from some very old addresses, leading many to wonder whether or not it was Satoshi each time (although other miners were active). This analysis so far has shown that each of these transactions likely did not come from Satoshi addresses and that his bitcoin stash is still dormant.6
A Twitter account called @whale_alert, which monitors various blockchains and flags large transactions, tweeted this:
40 #BTC (391,055 USD) transferred from a possible wallet belonging to #Satoshi (dormant since 2009) to an unknown wallet. Coins in this transaction were mined during Bitcoin’s first month of existence.7
This immediately caused a ripple on Twitter. The @Bitcoin Twitter account tweeted out a poll asking if Twitter users were bullish, neutral, or bearish at the news that it might be Satoshi. At first, Bearish had the lead. A day later, 34% of respondents said it was bullish, 35.6% said it was neutral, and 30% said it was bearish.
Although indicators on the blockchain suggested it was someone other than Satoshi, many Twitter users seemed to assume that Satoshi was abandoning his Bitcoin holdings and were starting to get scared. Fear and uncertainty seemed to fill the comments section, with some asking if they should sell and others saying they would sell immediately.
While others tried to jump in and explain that it was unlikely that these addresses were Satoshi and even if they were they could have moved to another address rather than an exchange to sell them (suggesting that Satoshi didn’t actually lose his bitcoins). Many have also questioned why it even matters if Satoshi wants to move or sell bitcoin, since bitcoin is decentralized and a person’s actions shouldn’t matter whether it’s Satoshi or not.
Either way, the price fell 4% immediately after this news broke, once again highlighting the volatility of these markets and how easily news, even if unproven or false, can rock a market. It also showed that even though Bitcoin is decentralized, without a single leader or point of control, the community is still so obsessed with its creators that a person, or a person’s movements, can have some level of control over the system.