Who the heck is mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto?
One of the most discussed questions about Bitcoin is about the inventor of Bitcoin: Satoshi Nakamoto. Everybody, including even FBI and other countries’ intelligence services, want to know who this girl, guy or group is. What’s more, Satoshi disappeared from forums, cypherpunk mailings and any online and offline mediums in 2010. He, she or they were active after launching Bitcoin in 2009 but in 2010 Satoshi Nakamoto decided to be not to be present online platforms. We even don’t know whether he is alive or not.
Well, this topic has been analyzed by many as a consequence and there are a few potential candidates I reckon. Without a doubt, there are some clues that we can take advantage while trying to figure out Satoshi’s identity. Frankly, Satoshi Nakamoto was a member of Cypherpunk, a privacy-concerned e-mailing group that consists of more than 700 members. With a basic possibility logic, if we knew who these 700 people are, then we could say that our chances are 1/700. I enumerate some of the potential candidates below according to the most likely to the least. Please note that for the sake of TLDR concerns (Too Long Didn’t Read), I’ll not provide every single detail that makes them a potential candidate for being Satoshi Nakamoto.
Potential Candidates for Satoshi Nakamoto’s Seat
1. Wei Dai (1976 -≈, Asian-American computer engineer, cryptographer, cypherpunk member)
Wei Dai is referred by Satoshi in Bitcoin Whitepaper. He was one of the talented cryptographers who tried to create a decentralised money. For this purpose, he has published his b-money in 1998. Wei Dai is one of the few cryptographers who contacted with Satoshi Nakamato during Bitcoin’s early days.
Wei Dai stated that “…my understanding is that the creator of Bitcoin, who goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, didn’t even read my article before reinventing the idea himself. He learned about it afterward and credited me in his paper. So my connection with the project is quite limited”.
In other words, obviously he denies to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
But when we think about Satoshi’s profile on P2P Foundation web blog, as of 2022, Satoshi was seemingly a 47 year old, East Asian guy. If this information is correct, Satoshi Nakamoto was born in 1975, give or take 1 year. With all other factors, this makes Wei Dai a robust candidate for being Satoshi Nakamoto. But without a doubt, considering his concerns about privacy, we can’t say that Satoshi’s profile information in P2P Foundation blog was correct.
2. Nick Szabo (1964 -≈, an early cypherpunk member, cryptographer)
He tried his own decentralised money or gold with his Bit Gold initiative, one of the precursors of Bitcoin, back in 1998. Obviously, he is a decentralised currency enthusiast. In the 1990s, he is known to have been interested in using pseudonyms in order to provide privacy in transactions.
In an article published in May 2011, he stated “Myself, Wei Dai, and Hal Finney were the only people I know of who liked the idea (or in Dai’s case his related idea) enough to pursue it to any significant extent until Nakamoto (assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai).”
Szabo has denied being Nakamoto. In a July 2014 email to Frisby, he said: “Thanks for letting me know. I’m afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I’m used to it.”.
But since he is the inventor of the Smart Contracts and Bit Gold, one of the precursors of Bitcoin, he should be considered a robust candidate I presume. Also, linguistics researchers named Nick Szabo as the author of Bitcoin.
3. Hal Finney (1956–2014, an American software developer, cryptographer)
Hal Finney is the first person (other than Nakamoto himself) to use Bitcoin software and make improvements. He also lived a few blocks away from a man named ‘Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto’, one of the alternative candidate also mentioned in this article. This fact makes some people to think that he simply used his neighbor Dorian’s identity as a nickname.
Also, Hal Finney is the first person to receive Bitcoin in history. Satoshi send him 50 BTC on Jan. 12, 2009. Furthermore, Hal Finney is the inventor of RPOW (Reusable Proofs of Work) which gives him a little bit more possibility to be the real Satoshi.
He was one of the pioneers who praised PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and was the main author of PGP 2.0. It’s really unfortunate to say that we have lost Hal Finney to ALS disease. No doubt, he has contributed myriad of inventions for cryptoverse. May his soul be in peace.
4. Adam Back (1970 - ≈ ,an British cryptographer, cypherpunk member)
He is one of the few people who is personally mentioned or referred in Bitcoin Whitepaper. He is a cryptographer, a cypherpunk member and the inventor of Hascash (1997), another trial of decentralised money. Adam Back was one of the first two people to receive an email from Satoshi.
5. Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto (1949-≈, Japanese-American physicist)
First and foremost, his birth name is Satoshi Nakamoto :) It’s been known that Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto worked as a systems engineer on classified defense projects and computer engineer for technology and financial information services companies.
He himself stated that “I am 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”
But later on he claimed to be misunderstood and refused to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
6.Gavin Andresen (1966 -≈, American software developer)
Satoshi gave control of the source code repository and network alert key to Gavin Andresen. Later on, Andresen stepped down from this role in 2014. He has been known for his involvement in Bitcoin since the very early days of its invention. He was a big fan of “Cash for the Internet”. His attitude toward Bitcoin becomes pretty clear when you read this statements he made in April 2011 for Forbes “Bitcoin is designed to bring us back to a decentralized currency of the people” and “this is like better than gold”. He conceived of the Bitcoin Foundation which launched in 2012. Andresen asserted that the Australian programmer and entrepreneur Craig Wright was Nakamoto, but later expressed regret for being involved in the “‘who was Satoshi’ game. Nevertheless, his intention may be to divert the focus to a wrong direction to assure Satoshi Nakamoto’s anonymity. In addition, Gavin Andresen expressed support for Bitcoin’s first hard fork in November 2017, Bitcoin Cash, asserting that “Bitcoin Cash is what I started working on in 2010”. I think this fact also make Gavin Andresen a least possibility for being Satoshi. Also, please bear in mind that he is mostly specialised on software development rather than cryptography.
7. Ralph Merkle (1952 -≈, American computer scientist, mathematician, cryptographer)
Ralph Merkle is also one of the guys who is mentioned in Bitcoin Whitepaper. His contributions to cryptography have been widely used by Satoshi Nakamato while creating the Bitcoin. To be more specific, he is one of the inventors of public-key cryptography and the inventor of cryptographic hashing. Merkle Tree has been widely used by many other cryptocurrencies since the creation of Bitcoin.
8. David Chaum (1955-≈, an American computer scientist, cryptographer, inventor of e-cash)
Thanks to his e-cash (1983) initiative, one of the earliest trials of making money decentralised, David Chaum is known as Bitcoin’s Godfather in the Bitcoin and other distributed and decentralised cryptocurrencies.
9. Stuart Haber (Birth year isn’t available on internet) and/or W. Scott Stornetta (1959-≈) (American cryptographers, computer scientists)
Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta are known for their article “How to time-stamp a digital document” which is published in 1991. They’re the co-inventors of Blockchain concept in 1990. Remember, the word “blockchain” has never been used by Satoshi Nakamoto in Bitcoin Whitepaper but still Bitcoin can’t be thought of without blockchain technology. It’s the underlying logic.
In Bitcoin Whitepaper, these academicians’ articles has been referred by Satoshi Nakamoto which makes them slightly possible candidates for being Satoshi.
10. David Allen Bayer (1955 -≈ an American mathematician, cryptographer)
He is also one of the talented cryptographers referred in Bitcoin Whitepaper. He has been known for his contribution to the article “Improving the Efficiency and Reliability of Digital Time-Stamping”.
11. Cynthia Dwork (1958 -≈) and Moni Naor (1961 -≈) (American computer scientists, cryptographers)
Likewise, these academicians’ article also has been referred by Satoshi Nakamoto in Bitcoin Whitepaper which makes them slightly possible candidates for being Satoshi.
Since they invented computational puzzles, base roots of Proof of Work, in 1992, these guys are also alternative candidates.
12. Elon Musk (1971 -≈, African American business investor and entrepreneur)
Elon Musk is known for his sympathy towards Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, especially the notorious meme token Dogecoin. Considering his fintech initiatives such as Zip2, x.com and Paypal, we can say he has a tendency to develop an innovative product like Bitcoin. But he doesn’t have expertise on cryptography which makes him a least likely candidate. Also, thanks to his other initiatives such as SpaceX, Starlink and Tesla, I don’t think that he would have enough time to make such an breakthrough invention. Musk denies to be Satoshi Nakamoto of course. I personally don’t think that he is the one. He himself also denies it presumably.
13. David Kleiman (1967–2013, computer forensics analyst)
His name is put forward by Craig Wright as though he has also contributed to creation of Bitcoin. This removes it among possible candidates but still he is one of the guys who have a lowest chances of being Satoshi Nakamoto. Like Hal Finney, he also died relatively at an early age (46) in 2013 from MRSA super bug.
14. Craig Wright (1970 -≈, an Australian computer scientist)
Craig Wright is one of the people who claim that he is the Satoshi Nakamoto. What’s more he claimed David Kleiman, a computer forensics analyst who mysteriously died from MRSA super bug infection in 2013, helped him while creating Bitcoin. But this claim is quite a weak one. He seems to create an image of himself by creating a setup like making his own computer hacked by someone and he gets unintentionally exposed to public. There are many developers who openly assert that Craig Wright is a phoney and his claims doesn’t add up. For instance, Bitcoin developer Peter Todd claimed that Wright’s blog post, in which cryptographic proofs are allegedly represented by Wright, actually contained nothing of the sort. Consensus about Craig Wright is that he is just fake Satoshi Nakamoto and that he is trying to make a name for himself among the public. Even Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, stated many times that there are great discrepancies in Craig Wright’s arguments.
In conclusion, I think there is a reason why Satoshi wanted to be anonymous and kept his, her or their silence since 2010. Satoshi didn’t even transfer any of his first mined Bitcoins (Approximately 1.1 million Bitcoin). Please bear in mind that these total amount that belong to Satoshi is distributed among a few different Bitcoin wallets but you can track Satoshi’s first transactions via following the transactions in genesis block. If Satoshi’s identity was known by public, decentralisation aspect of Bitcoin would have been questioned by many people. Additionally, he would have been attacked and, at best case scenario, annoyed by intelligence agencies, centralised powerful companies and/or businessman/woman. For these reasons, he wanted to remain anonymous and I really do respect and appreciate that decision. An average guy who would have invented Bitcoin would love to brag about his invention but Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t care about these kinds of egocentric behaviors. I guess we can say Satoshi Nakamoto even decentralized his own ego as well, lol :) Last but not least, it’s better to note that it’s also quite possible that Satoshi Nakamoto is not one of the guys aforementioned in this article. He may pretty well be a completely different person. Above all, it’s better not to know who the heck is Satoshi Nakamoto for the sake of the Bitcoin philosophy and its future.
