There are many puzzles in the crypto world that baffle even the most dedicated online sleuths: What is the real story behind the collapse of QuadrigaCX? Where are Tether’s billions? Where is Bitfinex’s actual office? These questions have driven crypto enthusiasts worldwide to don their detective hats and dive into research for answers. Yet, the biggest and most enduring mystery of the cryptocurrency era remains unsolved: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
Join us as we explore some of the best guesses the crypto community and journalists around the world have made about the enigmatic Satoshi Nakamoto and discover just how much Bitcoin they might actually possess!
The Enigmatic Bitcoin Developer
The identity of the pseudonymous Bitcoin developer still eludes the public more than a decade after the launch of Bitcoin, the digital currency that started a new era in digital finance.
Over the years, several journalists, experts, and crypto enthusiasts have tried to unravel the mysteries surrounding Satoshi Nakamoto, with limited success. Some questions about the inventor(s) have relatively clear answers backed by research, such as how much Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto holds, which we’ll address later in this article.
However, most other pressing questions, like the true identity of the inventor and their plans for their BTC, remain unanswered. But a lack of certainty has never stopped crypto enthusiasts from speculating about the identity of the mysterious inventor. There are numerous theories about who might be behind the world’s biggest cryptocurrency.
Some theories are wild guesses, while others are based on more concrete data. All these stories are built on varying mixes of circumstantial evidence, hunches, and a fair amount of theorizing. The variety is intriguing because the quest for Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity is like a Rorschach test: everyone comes up with a different image of the inventor(s) based on their assumptions about Bitcoin.
Before we explore some of the public’s favorite (and least favorite) Satoshi Nakamoto candidates, we will review the history of Bitcoin and the limited information available about Satoshi Nakamoto.
How Did Satoshi Develop Bitcoin?
Researchers have been trying to piece together a timeline of early Bitcoin history to find more clues about the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. Thanks to their efforts, we know that the domain name bitcoin.org was registered in August 2008, a few months before Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”
Nakamoto first wrote about Bitcoin on the famous Cypherpunks mailing list in November 2008. Other members of the Cypherpunks cryptography mailing list responded to Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin proposal with their own suggestions and criticisms. These early emails reveal how the pseudonymous inventor collaborated with other correspondents.
For instance, Nakamoto corresponded with Wei Dai, the inventor of B-Money, and Adam Back, the founder of Hashcash, and their innovative solutions were included in the Bitcoin whitepaper. He also exchanged ideas about Bitcoin’s early code with fellow cryptography enthusiasts Hal Finney, Ray Dillinger, and James A. Donald.
Nakamoto launched Bitcoin in January 2009 on the open-source SoulForge repository and alerted Finney and other cypherpunks. The first block, known as the Genesis block, was signed by Satoshi Nakamoto with a special message: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” The message referred to the headline of the UK newspaper The Times.
Hal Finney and Satoshi Nakamoto continued to work on Bitcoin, and on January 11, Satoshi Nakamoto executed the first-ever Bitcoin transfer by sending 10 BTC to Hal Finney.
The Bitcoin community continued to grow after that, with more people joining the project. Bitcointalk Forum became the first crypto hub where early adopters and enthusiasts discussed various aspects of the Bitcoin project (its code, politics, economy, etc.).
Satoshi Nakamoto’s Disappearance
In 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto withdrew from the Bitcoin project after delegating Bitcoin-related domains and its source code repository to other interested parties. Gavin Andresen, who had created the first-ever Bitcoin faucet, became the lead developer for Bitcoin.
Unsurprisingly, the disappearance of the inventor from the project is as mysterious as their real identity. In December 2010, Nakamoto posted on the Bitcointalk Forum for the last time, announcing the latest Bitcoin software update. Since that was their last public message on the forum, all we know about their disappearance comes from people who communicated with Satoshi Nakamoto through emails.
Satoshi Nakamoto seems to have continued their correspondence with other developers at least until April 2011. Mike Hearn released his correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto, in which the pseudonymous Bitcoin founder claimed to have moved on from Bitcoin: “I’ve moved on to other things. It’s in good hands with Gavin and everyone.”
Gavin Andresen, a former lead Bitcoin developer, also published the last emails between himself and the mysterious Bitcoin founder, exchanged on April 26, 2011. According to Andresen’s emails, Satoshi Nakamoto asked him to stop talking about them (Satoshi Nakamoto) as a “shadowy figure” and instead discuss Bitcoin as an open-source project to avoid it being labeled a “pirate currency” by the press. The Bitcoin inventor also sent Andresen the cryptographic key to the Bitcoin network’s alert system, which had only been used by Satoshi Nakamoto until that point.
According to Andresen, he replied to Satoshi Nakamoto’s last email by outlining his plans to attend a conference for the CIA to talk about Bitcoin. When interviewed, Andresen said he didn’t hear anything else from Satoshi Nakamoto since and that his decision to talk to the CIA might have spooked the founder into the shadows.
How Many BTC Does Satoshi Nakamoto Own?
While the identity behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto remains unknown, the Bitcoin community managed to answer one of the linked mysteries: how much Bitcoin does the elusive inventor hold?
According to cryptocurrency researcher Sergio Lerner’s analysis, Satoshi Nakamoto owns between 750,000 and 1,100,000 BTC. Lerner analyzed the open-source blockchain data to track the Bitcoin blocks mined by Satoshi Nakamoto between January 1, 2009, and January 25, 2010. While other nodes were mining alongside Satoshi from the very start, Nakamoto was undoubtedly the main miner. According to Lerner’s analysis, a single mining rig was responsible for most of the blocks on the blockchain during that first year. The wallets connected to the mining rig collected around 1 million BTC during that time frame.
Lerner dubbed Satoshi Nakamoto’s mining activity in the network as the “Patoshi Pattern.” He adjusted his earlier estimates in a follow-up piece published in 2019 and claimed Satoshi Nakamoto mined around 22,000 blocks and collected around 1.1 million BTC in total. Other research by fellow Bitcoin sleuths seems to confirm Lerner’s conclusions, and the general consensus in the community is that Satoshi has at least 1 million bitcoins.
That said, other researchers have pointed out that Satoshi Nakamoto curbed their own hashing power at some point to let other nodes validate more blocks.
What Happened to Satoshi Nakamoto’s BTC?
It appears that Satoshi Nakamoto collected at least 1 million BTC in the early years of Bitcoin. This brings us to the next part of the mystery: What happened to all the BTC Satoshi Nakamoto mined after they mysteriously vanished?
Well, not much. In fact, not a single Bitcoin seems to have left the original wallet ever since Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared from the Bitcoin community and the public eye. There have been rumors over the years about Satoshi Nakamoto moving bitcoins, but they were debunked each time. Usually, the Bitcoin in question had been in some other wallet that wasn’t part of the Patoshi pattern, belonging to wallets of other early adopters.
For some people, this constitutes an even bigger mystery than the pseudonymous creator’s identity: How could anyone resist cashing out at least some of those bitcoins when the asset’s price skyrocketed in recent years? Considering the price of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto could be a billionaire if they were to sell their assets. And, of course, another question emerges: What will happen if Satoshi Nakamoto tries to cash out their 1 million BTC?
Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto?
As we’ve explained, there is very little proof about who hides behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Even the name itself is believed to be a red herring designed to lead onlookers astray.
In the early days of the Satoshi mystery, it was assumed that Satoshi Nakamoto was a man of Japanese ancestry, likely British due to his use of continental language and the fact that the Genesis block quoted the UK’s The Times.
Other clues were painstakingly pieced together from many sources: Some analyzed all the published (and unpublished) Satoshi emails, others examined the timing of their network activity and timestamps of their Bitcointalk forum posts to find where they lived, and some used linguistic expertise to identify the most likely candidate. However, indisputable proof never came, leaving the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto a mystery.
In the following part of the article, we’ll look at some of the people who have been considered as possible candidates for Satoshi Nakamoto.
Dorian Nakamoto
Our “who is Satoshi Nakamoto” journey starts with an unlikely candidate whose picture nonetheless appears every time someone searches for Satoshi Nakamoto. Dorian Nakamoto received a disproportionate amount of attention from the Bitcoin community and the public at large after a Newsweek cover story claimed he was the real Bitcoin creator.
In 2014, a Newsweek journalist wrote an exposé on Dorian Nakamoto, a 64-year-old engineer and programmer living in a small Los Angeles suburb, claiming he was the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto. The story quickly spread across the internet, and Nakamoto’s family house, which had been foreclosed by the bank, attracted reporters trying to get a statement from him about Bitcoin. But Dorian Nakamoto vehemently denied being Satoshi and stated that he misunderstood the journalists’ questions, thinking they were related to his classified engineering work.
After Dorian Nakamoto asked to be left alone by the Bitcoin crowd in an interview with Associated Press, Satoshi Nakamoto’s account left a comment on the Satoshi Nakamoto foundation website that read: “I am not Dorian Nakamoto.” This is generally accepted as the last true message from Satoshi Nakamoto, as the account was later hacked, igniting another round of the “who is Satoshi Nakamoto” mystery.
Hal Finney
Hal Finney, a computer scientist interested in cryptocurrencies for years, was an early Bitcoin adopter who helped Satoshi Nakamoto debug Bitcoin code in the early days of Bitcoin. He was, in fact, the recipient of the world’s first Bitcoin transaction: Satoshi Nakamoto sent him 10 BTC. Because of his close involvement with Bitcoin, Hal Finney remains a viable candidate for Satoshi Nakamoto.
Journalist Andy Greenberg thought so as well, until his research led him to Hal Finney and he got to meet the man himself.
Greenberg was alerted to the possibility that Hal Finney might be the man behind Bitcoin when an anonymous tip pointed out that Hal Finney lived only a few blocks from Dorian Nakamoto, who had been named Satoshi Nakamoto by the Newsweek article. Only 36,000 people lived in the small Los Angeles suburb where Dorian Nakamoto resided, and it seemed too much of a coincidence that one of the earliest Bitcoin adopters was the neighbor of the man supposedly behind Bitcoin.
Hal Finney had developed his own Reusable Proof of Work system based on Adam Back’s Hashcash, much like Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work. He retired from his official job in 2011 due to the onset of ALS disease that left him paralyzed until his death in 2014. Satoshi Nakamoto also left Bitcoin around 2010, suggesting a parallel between their timelines.
Wei Dai
Back when Bitcoin enthusiasts took up linguistic analysis to identify Satoshi Nakamoto, Wei Dai, an elusive computer engineer who developed the Crypto++ cryptographic library, seemed like a likely candidate.
Wei Dai is known for B-Money, a proposal for an electronic cash system he outlined in 1998 in a paper sent to the Cypherpunks mailing list. The B-Money proposal included descriptions of Proof of Work and Proof of Stake consensus mechanisms, as well as how the community would be rewarded for verifying transactions, much like Bitcoin now does.
Satoshi Nakamoto emailed Wei Dai before the publication of the Bitcoin whitepaper and once the Bitcoin network was up and running to ask him for citation information and to notify Wei Dai about Bitcoin. According to those emails, Satoshi Nakamoto was directed to Wei Dai’s work through Adam Back of HashCash.
In 2017, Michael Chon and fellow researchers compiled a stylometric analysis of possible Satoshi Nakamoto candidates, including Wei Dai, along with Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, Ian Grigg, and Timothy May. According to the analysis, Wei Dai’s writings resembled the Bitcoin paper more than any others.
His expertise in C++, the programming language Bitcoin is written in, also makes him a viable candidate. Wei Dai, who has very little online presence and remains an elusive figure, rejected the claims that he was the inventor of Bitcoin.
Nick Szabo
Nick Szabo is another popular Satoshi Nakamoto suspect. He was named the creator of Bitcoin in a New York Times article published in 2015 by Nathaniel Popper.
The New York Times article pointed out that Nick Szabo had designs for a cryptocurrency named Bitgold since the late ’90s, and he even wrote about starting to write its code in 2008, a few months before the Bitcoin whitepaper was published. More suspiciously, Szabo later changed the date of the post to make it seem as if it was written after the Bitcoin whitepaper came out.
Szabo’s Bitgold idea closely resembled Bitcoin in both content and form. Szabo’s conceptualization of Bitgold involved peer-to-peer blockchain transactions and a PoW validation system similar to the one used in Bitcoin. Szabo had worked for David Chaum’s DigiCash, the first-ever electronic money company that went out of business in 1998.
According to text analysis by Dominic Frisby, author of Bitcoin: The Future of Money, Szabo’s writing style also has similarities with Satoshi Nakamoto.
Szabo was an active member of the Cypherpunk email list and discussed smart contracts before Ethereum and the virtual currency Ether emerged in cyberspace. He is also a strong proponent of libertarianism. Szabo denies the claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
Craig Wright
While all other candidates vehemently denied being Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright does everything he can to convince the public he is actually the creator of Bitcoin – except provide solid proof.
In cyberspace, some people’s favorite Satoshi Nakamoto candidates are others’ least favorite. Craig Wright, an Australian businessman who claims he is Satoshi Nakamoto, has evoked strong feelings within the Bitcoin community. Some think he is running a long hoax, while others are convinced he is really the creator of Bitcoin.
The Craig Wright saga is a bit sordid and still ongoing, as Wright insists he is the Bitcoin creator. It all started when Wired published a story about Wright claiming, “either Wright invented Bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.”
When Gavin Andresen, former lead Bitcoin developer, wrote on his blog that Craig Wright proved to him privately that he was the elusive Bitcoin inventor, it seemed true. But Wright couldn’t provide the same proof publicly, leading many to theorize he had tricked Andresen. Andresen later described what happened in a closed-door meeting with Craig Wright in an interview with Wired.
Instead of providing cryptographic proof, Wright obtained a copyright license for Bitcoin’s whitepaper under US copyright laws, claiming government agencies recognized him as the inventor of Bitcoin. However, The Copyright Office released a statement that it doesn’t investigate and confirm such claims. Craig Wright also made headlines in 2021 when news of a trial between him and his old partner was misconstrued by his representatives as a trial over Bitcoin’s actual founder.
Final Thoughts
The mystery of the Bitcoin creator’s true identity will continue until we have solid evidence. That evidence lies with Satoshi Nakamoto’s private keys to the Bitcoin blockchain. Unless the Bitcoin inventor(s) come forward voluntarily, it’s unlikely we will have a definite answer.
Perhaps the more pressing question is why Satoshi Nakamoto chooses to remain pseudonymous. Are they maintaining anonymity so the crypto asset can grow properly as a decentralized open-source project? Is it because there is more than one person behind the name and they couldn’t agree on coming forward? Or is it simply because they lost their private keys? In any case, Satoshi Nakamoto’s mysterious identity has become a staple of Bitcoin lore, and whether the inventor will one day claim their 1 million BTC remains to be seen.