Three People Who Were Supposedly Bitcoin Founder
The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin, is one of the most enduring mysteries of the currency. There's not much information available on him. The last time he communicated with the network was in April 2011, two years after it was established.
Exactly who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
Nakamoto's contribution to the bitcoin ecosystem goes beyond his role as a founder. Philosophical figures such as him are frequently referred to in debates about the future of bitcoin. There was a contentious split between two sides in the forking of Bitcoin Cash, both of which claimed to uphold the original vision of Nakamoto for the currency. As of March 2020, 980,000 bitcoin are stored in Nakamoto-affiliated wallets, which is about $6.2 billion. To put it another way, if and when Nakamoto's Bitcoins are ever traded, they could significantly impact the Bitcoin's market value.
Nakamoto's identity has eluded investigators for years despite their best efforts. The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains a mystery, despite numerous claims to the contrary.
This trio of contenders has been selected:
Dorian Nakamoto
This may have been the most high-profile attempt to identify the creator of bitcoin. Dorian Nakamoto was identified by Newsweek in March 2014 as the creator of the currency. Bitcoin's creator's identity has never been revealed by a mainstream publication before, so the article's publication caused a sensation in both the crypto and wider tech communities.
According to Newsweek, Dorian Nakamoto and Satoshi Nakamoto share a number of characteristics. Both were said to have libertarian leanings and ties to Japan. (Dorian, a physicist from California Polytechnic who worked on classified defense projects, is Japanese-American). It was also claimed that Nakamoto said he was "no longer" involved with bitcoin and that he had "turned it over" to other people by the author of the article mentioned above.
It was later revealed that Dorian Nakamoto had misunderstood the question and, as a result, had withdrawn the quote. "I got nothing to do with it," he told the AP. 6
The biggest blunder made by the magazine was the publication of a photo of Nakamoto's house. If you do a quick image search, you'll be able to find it. The crypto community was outraged that Dorian Nakamoto's privacy had been violated, even though many people doubted that he was the creator of bitcoin.
Even so, Dorian Nakamoto benefited financially from the media frenzy. He was able to raise more than 100 bitcoins through an online campaign. The fund was an expression of gratitude from the bitcoin community. Dorian Nakamoto and Andreas Antonopoulos appeared in a YouTube video thanking the bitcoin community for their support in April 2014.
Craig Wright's
In most cases, people who are thought to be Satoshi Nakamoto have either denied the claim or remained silent about the situation. An exception to this rule is Australian scientist Craig Wright.
At the time, Wired Magazine claimed to have profiled Wright in December 2015 "The strongest proof yet of Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity has been obtained" The article detailed Wright's Skype appearance at the Bitcoin Investor's Conference in Las Vegas that year, which was covered by the publication. If you ask Wright about his experience, his response is, "a bit of everything." He had a master's degree in statistics and two doctorates, which he listed. He also stated: "My involvement in all of this goes back a long way... At least that's the strategy I'm using."
There were references to a "cryptocurrency paper" on Wright's blog months before the Bitcoin whitepaper began to circulate, according to Wired. There was also a "P2P distributed ledger" mentioned in leaked emails and correspondence between Wright's lawyer and his legal team." As he admitted to tax and legal authorities in recorded conversations, "I tried to hide the fact that I've been running bitcoin since 2009," he said. Half of the world will bloody know by the end of this.
Soon after, those assertions were found to be false. When Wired looked into the matter further, they discovered several discrepancies in Wright's original story. Several blog posts, for example, appeared to be from the past. Public encryption keys associated with Satoshi Nakamoto appear to have been backdated, as well, according to the evidence. Even Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, came out against Wright and publicly branded him a fraud, which is unusual for Buterin.
As a result of the media attention that he has received, Wright has established himself as an influential figure in the crypto community. Bitcoin SV was formed as a result of a contentious fork of Bitcoin Cash. He is also the chief science officer of nChain, a blockchain solutions company that caters to large corporations. A series of legal entanglements that could prove or disprove Wright's claims are currently taking place as of 2021.
Nicholas Szabo
As a computer engineer, Nick Szabo also holds a PhD in law. In a 1996 paper, he is credited with introducing the concept of "smart contracts." He first proposed the idea of a decentralized currency, Bit Gold, in 2008. To describe it in more detail, he called it "a protocol whereby unforgeable expensive bits could be created online with minimal dependence on trusted third parties." There are many similarities between this system and the Bitcoin system, in which transactions are verified and validated by a network of computers without a leader.
Dominic Frisby, author of Bitcoin: The Future of Money?, argues that Nick Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto in his book. Szabo's writing style resembled that of Satoshi Nakamoto, according to Frisby's consultation with a stylometrics expert. Both Szabo and Satoshi refer to Carl Menger, an economist. He also discovered that Szabo had worked for DigiCash, an early effort to bring cryptography into digital payments. Nick Szabo, according to the author, is Satoshi Nakamoto.
