The Satoshi Mystery Solved: Who Actually is the Father of Bitcoin?

Satoshi Nakamoto - everybody who is into crypto knows this name. But who is behind the name?

Wikipedia explains it in an easy way: Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, authored the Bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed Bitcoin's original reference implementation.

However, for some reason, nobody has seen this mysterious Satoshi. All we know about him is that in 2007, he started to work on the Bitcoin code. In 2008, the domain Bitcoin.org was registered. And finally, on 31 October 2009, the Bitcoin white paper was published. On January 9, 2009, Satoshi launched the Bitcoin network by defining the genesis block of Bitcoin with the reward of 50 BTC. With it, the father of cryptocurrency was born, and the era of crypto started.

The most funny thing is that nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is and whether it is a single person or a group of people. But, as usual, in such cases, there are versions. The most popular personalities that are believed to be Satoshi Nakamoto are the following.

Hal Finney

Hal Finney (4 May 1956 – 28 August 2014) was a pioneer in cryptography and the person who was fixing bugs and making improvements in the Bitcoin code.

He was also a neighbor of Dorian Nakamoto, another candidate for being the famous Bitcoin founder. The writing manner of Hal Finney was the closest to the manner used by the Bitcoin founder.

Why is he not Satoshi?

There are several facts that confirm this.

1. Satoshi was actively communicating with one of the Bitcoin developers, Mike Hearn, and transacting Bitcoin just at the same time when Hal was participating in a race in Santa Barbara, California.

Photographic proofs that it was him running are also available.

Then, Hal was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in August 2009, and since then, his health has been deteriorating. In 2010, he could hardly type. Satoshi was pretty active at that time by posting in the forum and writing emails.

Another piece of evidence is the fact that when debugging Bitcoin, Hal writes to Satoshi about the issues encountered.

Additionally, Hal denied being Satoshi Nakamoto until his death in 2014 due to ALS complications. At the moment, there are no reasons not to believe him.

Dorian Nakamoto

Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, a Japanese living in the USA, California, is another candidate for being the Bitcoin founder.

In 2014, Newsweek published that the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto was revealed. Journalist Leah McGrath Goodman went to Dorian’s home to take an interview and claimed later that during the interview, Dorian mentioned, "I was no longer involved in that, and I cannot discuss it. It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."

Later, Dorian denied being the famous Bitcoin creator and claimed he misunderstood the journalist’s question. In an interview with The Associated Press, he insisted that he had nothing to do with Bitcoin. Moreover, he used to make such mistakes as calling the main crypto Bitcoin instead of Bitcoin and referring to Bitcoin as a company, which is not correct. Also, he said he had never heard of Gavin Andresen, one of the main Bitcoin developers.

Nick Szabo

Nick Szabo is the most viable candidate for being Satoshi Nakamoto. Why? He is a decentralized currency enthusiast, and he created “bit gold,” which was the Bitcoin precursor and the main characteristics of which later became the ones of Bitcoin.

A group of forensic scientists from Aston University analyzed the writing styles of Nick Szabo and the Bitcoin founder and came to the conclusion that it is highly likely that Nick is Satoshi Nakamoto.

Additionally, the following similarities also make us believe that Nick may be Satoshi.

The Bitcoin whitepaper was written using Latex, and Nick also uses Latex for his publications.

Elon Musk also believes that, even though Nick may not be the actual Bitcoin founder, he is the one responsible for the development of the majority of Bitcoin ideas.

Even though it is clear that Bit Gold was the Bitcoin precursor, Satoshi has never mentioned the project, which looks logical only if Nick was trying to obscure the fact that Bitcoin was a logical development of Bit Gold and he was the Bitcoin founder.

Nick Szabo used to backdate his posts about Bit Gold to make it appear that he published them after the Bitcoin launch.

All these facts indicate indirectly that Nick may be behind the Bitcoin whitepaper creation, and he was one of the Bitcoin founders. However, it doesn’t mean that he was the only one who did it.

Craig Wright

Craig Wright is the brightest and the most scandalous candidate for being Satoshi Nakamoto. Here are just some details about his claims.

Wright insisted that some details mentioned in the Bitcoin whitepaper were previously mentioned in his blog. It seems, however, that entries in his blog are backdated to make them look as if they were published before the Bitcoin whitepaper went public. Other his claims are also being doubted.

However, whether he is going to prove that he is the Bitcoin founder or not, he has already carved his place in the crypto community. Additionally, he is a founder of Bitcoin SV and a chief science officer at nChain.

He is involved in several legal cases, including the one about the Bitcoin whitepaper copyright; other cases are about suing those who call him a scammer. In a trial slated to begin in January 2024, he is going to be finally determined as a scammer or as a rightful Bitcoin founder.

However, there is one small detail to note. In his emails, Craig misspelled the main cryptocurrency name.

Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the name of this cryptocurrency thousands of times on different occasions and never ever used the version by Craig. Just leaving here the link to Satoshi’s archive to compare.

And just to have some fun, I'm leaving here a link to a nice song. I’ve enjoyed listening to it.