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Bitcoin And An Incredible Story: Why We Don't Know Who Created The World's Most Important Digital Currency

He is the most wanted man in the financial universe. No one has ever seen his face, nor does anyone know his voice. But his legacy is slowly revolutionizing the global economy and everything indicates that the world will not be the same after his invention.

By HowToFind .comPublished 3 years ago 7 min read
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Bitcoin And An Incredible Story: Why We Don't Know Who Created The World's Most Important Digital Currency
Photo by Ghaith Harstany on Unsplash

He is Satoshi Nakamoto, who published a white paper in 2009 in which he described the characteristics that a "purely digital version of electronic money" should have, which he called Bitcoin. "It is one of the most important works of computer science in the last 20 or 30 years," does not hesitate to define Jack Dorsey, CEO and founder of Twitter, who describes that document as "poetry".

The invention was in itself revolutionary. Its model proposes the use of technology to:

  • Transact funds without intermediaries or central banks.
  • Create the blockchain: an updatable ledger containing all transaction data
  • Use cryptography to create an ultra-secure ecosystem. Moreover, the blockchain is not in one place, but in all nodes, so it is inviolable
  • Make consensus and incentives available: miners process transactions, make the system more robust, and receive coins in return
  • Transparency and anonymity: while all transactions are visible to anyone, accounts are not assigned an identity.

But Bitcoin hides a mystery: who is Satoshi Nakamoto, the mind behind the invention that laid the foundations for the "money 4.0" of the digital age?

Who is Satoshi ?

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The famous white paper was first sent in 2008 to a mailing list under the subject "Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper".

That email contained the summary and link to the whitepaper on the Bitcoin.org forum, a domain registered on August 18 of that year.

However, the actual sender behind that message was never known. It is even believed that behind that name lurks not one person but a group of people, as the concept brings together concepts from various disciplines such as cryptography, economics, mathematics, finance and computer science.

"Many believe it may be Hal Finney, an expert in cryptography, but it is not known who Nakamoto is," Matías Bari, of Satoshi Tango, an Argentine digital currency services firm, tells iProUP.

Indeed, Finney was the second person to use the Bitcoin software, after Satoshi, in addition to reporting bugs and making improvements. Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg analyzed the messages that Finney and Nakamoto sent to each other and found certain similarities in their style.

The "main suspect" of having created Bitcoin will never confess: he died in 2014. However, it is not the only mystery around Finney. Close behind him is another question mark.

According to Newsweek magazine, the pioneer of digital currencies had a Japanese neighbor named Dorian Nakamoto, although his real first name (he changed it when he became a naturalized American citizen) was Satoshi. So Finney could have used that name as a pseudonym.

Dorian has arguments to be the creator of Bitcoin: he is an engineer, he worked in technology and finance companies (such as Citibank), and in the '90s he joined the libertarian party whose principles are very similar to the Bitcoin model.

"It has been delegated to other people, who are in charge now. I no longer have any connection," Dorian claimed, but later denied his statements indicating they were taken out of context.

Those people who "are in charge" were also pointed to as the possible real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. Gavin Andresen, Pieter Wuille and Wladimir van der Laan have been the ones who received that first email from Satoshi Nakamoto attaching the Bitcoin white paper and moved forward with development.

It could have been all three of them or just one of them. In the latter case, there is one who has "all the chips." "Since Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym, Andresen is one of the main faces of the project. He is a software developer and in 2012 created the Bitcoin Foundation to protect and promote its use around the world," says Bari.

Nahuel Burbach, Argentine representative of the virtual currency wallet Zerion, agrees and tells iProUP that "Andresen played an important role in the conception of the Bitcoin protocol."

The big scam

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But there are also those who tried to impersonate Satoshi, without success. The most resounding case was that of the Australian businessman and computer expert Craig Steven Wright, who was fingered as the creator of Bitcoin by the U.S. media Wired and Gizmodo.

Wright, who worked at the Oceanic country's securities commission, claimed to have been the mastermind of Bitcoin and to have evidence to prove it. Some of the evidence he presented was qualified as falsified and it is even believed that he simulated a cyber-attack, whose "hacked" information was provided to several media that launched the fake news.

Another of those accused as the creator of the digital currency is Ross Ulbritch, founder of Silk Road, an ecommerce that operated on the Deep Web and had Bitcoin as its exchange currency. The site offered users the possibility of registering for free, but to sell they had to acquire a special account through an auction, which was also paid for with digital coins.

It was a large online black market where mainly drugs and contraband products were traded. However, Ulbricht is unlikely to be Satoshi Nakamoto, as he proved to be not very good at hiding his identity: he used Dread Pirate Roberts as a pseudonym on Silk Road and his real name became known when he was arrested by the FBI.

The main link to Ulbrich, also a self-confessed libertarian, is that Silk Road was launched in February 2011, two months after Satoshi's last email stating that he was "going to pursue other things." Five years ago he was sentenced to life imprisonment for money laundering, hacking, drug trafficking and hiring hitmen to kill an employee and users who extorted him.

The list of other possible founders goes on: from Nick Szabo, experienced cryptographer and creator of BitGold, precursor of Bitcoin, to Elon Musk, founder of the PayPal payment system, Tesla and SpaceX.

There are even conspiracy theories that say that, like the Internet, Bitcoin was developed by a U.S. government agency, but was "appropriated" by the community. This is denied by all involved.

Why it remains anonymous?

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The great unknown of the crypto world remains unanswered. Many find it strange that Ethereum, the second most used virtual currency in the world, has Russian Vitalik Buterin as its founder and Bitcoin does not.

"Many texts from Satoshi and real people were analyzed for similarities in syntax and semantics, but it is not known who he is. The person or people who created it disappeared from the face of the earth, swore never to reveal their identities and complied," says Bari.

According to the digital currency expert, "he is most likely an American who remains anonymous to avoid prosecution by the government." "I think knowing the potential and how disruptive the idea was, he preferred not to expose himself," agrees Burbach.

"The bitcoin protocol was a correct agglomeration of several previously known concepts, but with strong political and philosophical stance. Satoshi chose to remain anonymous for several reasons, including the attack he could receive from governments, mainly," he adds.

For those who enter the Bitcoin world, the digital currency is an unprecedented work of technological-economic-social engineering. A groundbreaking idea created by the mind of one or more geniuses, who not only covered their tracks under a pseudonym.

In fact, it is believed that the fictitious name of its creator was also millimetrically thought out to mislead. Japanese would have been chosen because it is the "home of the rising sun". That is, where each day begins. The beginning of a new era.

But not only that, the name chosen is also the conjunction of several words in order to denote the creator of an ingenious new means of payment:

Satoshi: meaning clear thinking, ingenious, wise.

Naka: means means, relationship

Moto: origin or creation

However, Satoshi Nakamoto remains an enigma. He was the first to mine bitcoins and it is estimated that he has about one million coins, which at the current exchange rate is almost u$s11 billion.

That is, 0.5% of the more than 18 million coins circulating in the world today. The curious thing is that he has not made any transaction with those funds.

Probably, he is an American and a libertarian, and does not want the State to tax his "cryptofortune". Maybe he lost his passwords and can't access his own bitcoins. Or maybe he already is a millionaire and don't need them.

In his honor, the minimum unit of virtual currency is named after him: one bitcoin is equivalent to 100 million satoshis. The same amount of doubts exist about the creator of the invention that forever changed the transfer of value in the digital era.

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