Satoshi Nakamoto, the Father of Bitcoin: A Legend Lost in the Depths of the Internet

Satoshi Nakamoto, the Father of Bitcoin: A Legend Lost in the Depths of the Internet The internet has no secrets, but the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is an exception. Despite the efforts of almost every expert, hacker, casual observer, and schemer in the world to track him down, this invisible tycoon who holds 5% of Bitcoin, worth $60 billion, has never been unmasked

Satoshi Nakamoto, the Father of Bitcoin: A Legend Lost in the Depths of the Internet

The internet has no secrets, but the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is an exception. Despite the efforts of almost every expert, hacker, casual observer, and schemer in the world to track him down, this invisible tycoon who holds 5% of Bitcoin, worth $60 billion, has never been unmasked. In fact, he has been absent for a full 13 years.

In December 2010, Nakamoto posted on a forum as usual, discussing a technical issue regarding DoS. This seemed to be his last public appearance. For the past 13 years, people have never given up searching for him.

Satoshi Nakamoto is the founder of cryptocurrency, known as the "father of Bitcoin." On January 3, 2009, he released the Bitcoin code he had spent over a year writing. Nakamoto planned to issue 21 million Bitcoins over 20 years, controlled by software code automatically. Every 10 minutes, new coins would be minted through a lottery-like mechanism where miners (those attempting to acquire Bitcoin) would guess through an exhaustive search. The winner would receive Bitcoin.

Unlike sovereign currencies, Bitcoin has no physical currency or national backing, only tens of thousands of lines of code and a less than 10-page Bitcoin white paper.

The two years Nakamoto was active online, Bitcoin was still niche and didn't receive widespread attention. But in 2013, after his disappearance, Bitcoin's price skyrocketed, leading to a blockchain boom that lasted for years. Although there were constant criticisms, with some even considering it "worthless," Bitcoin's price has fluctuated, reaching $60,000 per coin in 2024, unquestionably becoming one of the assets with the highest return on investment.

Nakamoto holds 1.1 million Bitcoins, roughly 5% of the total supply, worth over $60 billion at current market prices. This enormous fortune has floated alone on the internet since 2011, untouched.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Why would he ignore such a colossal fortune? This is one of the biggest mysteries of the internet era.

Nakamoto claims to be a 36-year-old Japanese man, who, dissatisfied with the financial policies of sovereign nations after the 2008 financial crisis, wanted to create a currency free from the control of traditional monetary policies and bankers hence, Bitcoin.

Nouriel Roubini, an economist who accurately predicted the 2008 financial crisis, is a well-known opponent of cryptocurrency. He believes that if the network collapses, all assets will be wiped out. But he doesn't hold back praise for Nakamoto: "Satoshi Nakamoto might be an idealist, genuinely concerned about rescuing people who have been bullied too much."

However, this idealist, in hundreds of posts spanning two years, never revealed any personal details, leaving no valuable clues for those searching for him. He used an untraceable email address and website, and there are no records of any coder using the name "Satoshi Nakamoto" before Bitcoin.

From 1997 to 2008, Adam Back, the inventor of Hashcash (technology used in cryptocurrencies) and a cryptographer, exchanged emails with Nakamoto, making him one of the first people to interact with him. But he claims he's not even sure if "Satoshi Nakamoto" is truly Japanese or simply a unique pen name. "It's like a biblical story, no one knows exactly what happened, because it's so long ago."

• Through near-perfect anonymous methods, Nakamoto intended a clean getaway. "He thought of everything," said Cullen Hoback, director of Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery.

While Nakamoto did everything to protect his privacy, it doesn't mean the internet is helpless. Just like Locard's principle in modern forensics every contact leaves a trace.

Computer experts have studied the code left behind by Nakamoto like linguistic scholars. The programming language he chose was C++, and they started with his coding skills, suspecting that C++ wasn't the first language he mastered or that he wasn't a programmer from the start.

Some have tried to find clues from the natural language he used English. His posts display the language skills of a native English speaker, and he exclusively used British English. The content covered topics ranging from the Austrian School of Economics to the history of business markets.

• The most prominent detail is a sentence Nakamoto inserted into the code when mining the first 50 Bitcoins (also known as the genesis block): On January 3, 2009, the Chancellor was on the brink of a second bailout for banks (The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks). Many speculate that Nakamoto is European based on this, as the circulation area of The Times only covers a few European countries.

Others have analyzed the timing and frequency of Nakamoto's posts, concluding that he has summer and winter breaks and a deep understanding of cryptography, economics, and computer science a PhD student, perhaps?

• The seemingly conclusive deductions significantly narrowed the search at least, that's what Joshua Davis, a writer for The New Yorker, thought. He subsequently pointed to Michael Clear, a 23-year-old cryptography graduate student at Trinity College Dublin, and Vili Lehdonvirta, a Finnish virtual currency researcher, as Satoshi Nakamoto. But he only received awkward laughter and silence in return. His speculations were not widely accepted.

• After The New Yorker, the baton of the Satoshi Nakamoto search was passed to more media outlets and members of the cryptocurrency community. They followed the few clues, guessing Nakamoto's true identity one after another, akin to undertaking a pilgrimage.

• In 2015, The New York Times identified Nick Szabo, a cryptographer, as Satoshi Nakamoto, given that his concept of "bit gold" aligned strongly with Bitcoin, and the two had a similar style and both cited economist Carl Menger.

• In 2016, Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist, revealed himself to be Satoshi Nakamoto, receiving recognition from media outlets like The Economist and the BBC. But a British court ultimately ruled that he was not Satoshi Nakamoto and found him guilty of making false statements and forgery.

Evan Hatch, an American writer, believes that all discussions about Nakamoto's identity are misleading, even "completely stupid and unethical." In a 2021 article, he claimed that Len Sassaman, a deceased cryptographer, was Satoshi Nakamoto. Sassaman was known for developing privacy tools like PGP and Mixmaster and was part of the same group as Nakamoto, called Cypherpunk.

• There are more and more seemingly plausible guesses, most of which cannot be confirmed or denied. Before the release of Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, Polymarket, a decentralized prediction platform based on Ethereum, launched a poll: "Who will the HBO documentary claim is Satoshi Nakamoto?" The day before the documentary aired, Nick Szabo was in the lead, with the index reflecting betting trends exceeding 32%, and Musk was also on the list. As of October 8, the amount wagered exceeded $44 million.

Cullen Hoback, the documentary's director, noticed that in 2010, under one of Nakamoto's posts on the Bitcoin forum, Todd replied. He believed this was Nakamoto forgetting to switch accounts and accidentally responding using his real identity. Another reason is that Todd, in interviews for the documentary two years ago, still remembers this detail from over a decade ago.

However, this speculation was vehemently denied by Todd himself.

The kitsch tendency of the post-truth era is becoming more evident who Satoshi Nakamoto is doesn't matter, it's who people believe he is.

"We are all Satoshi Nakamoto"

As a challenger to national sovereign currencies and financial order, Satoshi Nakamoto's disappearance might be a wise choice. One characteristic of Bitcoin is that, compared to sovereign currencies, it leans towards protecting privacy. While Nakamoto knows that Bitcoin cannot be completely untraceable or unmonitored, it is already considered a utopia for economic libertarians compared to sovereign currencies.

However, those who try to challenge the existing sovereign currency order often face lawsuits. In 1998, an American citizen privately produced silver and gold coins and called his currency LibertDollar. In 2011, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and fined $500,000.

Internet-issued currencies are not lawless. e-Gold was a digital gold currency issued by a private American company with over 5 million accounts at its peak. In 2007, the US government accused e-Gold of money laundering and other crimes because users did not have to provide full identity verification when using it. After the founder was arrested,