Bitcoin was created by a stranger. At least the information known about him is meager. It might seem surprising, but the payment system that is behind the many cryptocurrencies we know today was created by a person, or a group we still do not know! Yet, many have been attempts to identify this mysterious character. Investigations, studies, deductions or rumors, back on a decade of twists!
What do we know about Satoshi Nakamoto?
Satoshi Nakamoto is, according to his statements, born on April 5, 1975 (43 years) and of Japanese nationality. He would be on the initiative of Bitcoin's White Paper, and creator of the first version of the Bitcoin-QT software. He is also the founder of bitcoin.org and bitcointalk.
Having the habit of communicating by mail, Satoshi Nakamoto sees its origin questioned, especially because of a perfect expression in English and the absence of writing in Japanese. The myth would also be that he owns 1 million bitcoins ($ 19.5 billion in December 2017), making him the world's 44th fortune. So far none of these claims has been formally refuted or confirmed.
Bitcoin has been gaining exponential value in recent months, and the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has been much in the news. From the simple investor, to the States, through Roger Ver, nobody knows who he is, but many would give expensive to be able to put an identity on this pseudonym. Is Satoshi Nakamoto a Japanese computer scientist? Or a conglomerate of visionary companies?
The Stylometry intox
Stylometry combines linguistics and statistics to try to identify the style of a text, inherent to its author, time or style. It can also be used to identify the author of a text by comparing many writings.
Having used the best technologies of his time to remain anonymous, Satoshi Nakamoto would not be identifiable by the computer data that he would have left. Nevertheless, it seems that through stylometry the NSA would have discovered, in August 2017, the true identity of the inventor of bitcoin by mixing Nakamoto's mails with the To of computer data accessible by the NSA (generated by the tools Prism and Muscular mass surveillance).
In fact, this unproven theory of Alexander Muse (claiming to hold his information from a source working in the US Department of Homeland Security), strangely reminds us of the study conducted on April 16, 2014 by a team of forty students led by Professor Dr. Jack Grieve. They would have compared Nakamoto's famous whitepaper to the publications of thirteen "suspects": Dorian Nakamoto, Vili Lehdonvirta, Michael Clea, Shinichi Mochizuki, Gavin Andresen, Nick Szabo, Jed McCaleb, Dustin D Trammel, Hal Finney, Wei Dai, Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry. The conclusion of this study pointed out at the time Nick Szabo who hastened to deny this conclusion.
Satoshi Nakamoto is not ...
In nearly 10 years, the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto has been attributed to many personalities, through deductions, investigations, studies, rumors and other eccentric overlaps ... The many accused are composed among others of:
- Malmi Tuesday, Finnish computer virtuoso who would have made the very first bitcoin transaction. His name disappeared from the Bitcoin site the day Satoshi Nakamoto stopped responding to users.
- Michael Clear, Irish computer code specialist accused by "New Yorker" magazine of being the creator of Bitcoin.
- Nick Szabo, computer scientist, lawyer and cryptographer known for his research work on digital contracts, also inventor of Bitgold. He denies this "accusation".
- Harold Thomas Finney II, PGP developer who received the first bitcoin transaction, one of the first to discover Nakamoto's ideas, pointed out by Nick Szabo.
- Wei Dai, computer engineer, creator of the Crypto ++ library and B-money, one of the first to discover the ideas of Nakamoto, also pointed by Nick Szabo.
- Gavin Andersen, chief scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation.
- Ross William Ulbricht, aka dread Pirate Roberts administrator of the first big darknet "silkroad", since sentenced to life by US justice, accused by Israeli researchers Dorit Ron and Abi Shamir. Nevertheless this assumption was denied by a member of Reddit incriminé who listed the factual errors of the researchers.
- Elon Musk, entrepreneur, engineer of South African origin, including creator of Tesla Industries, has officially denied on Twitter.
- Craig S Wright, Australian entrepreneur. Accused of being Nakamoto by Gizmodo of Wired after a survey in 2016. Craig S Wright takes this opportunity and does not deny this allegation. Nevertheless, it only took a few days to prove that he was really just an opportunistic entrepreneur.
Nakamoto a consensus of companies?
Other no less zany theories would assume that Satoshi Nakamoto would actually be a consensus of big multinationals: SAmsung, TOSHIba, NAKAmishi and MOTOrola.
SAmsung TOSHIba NAKAmishi MOTOrola, would this be the creative consensus of Bitcoin?
This theory - hardly trifling - would explain how it was possible to think, conceptualize and create this first blockchain. Because it was not only a matter of creating a simple algorithm, but a whole protocol, which, despite its few flaws, has been on the road for almost 10 years now. The question raised by this theory is not so meaningless, after all, could only one man have been able to create this technological gem?
great post!! He sure is