Now
the beginning of the Bitcoin- The story starts with the name, and that name is
Satoshi Nakamoto. Behind this name is a shadow, a ghost; it’s a name that
conjures up conspiracy theories, that peaks(piques) and stirs our imagination.
He is real and not real, a kind of Keyser Soze of the digital era. We say this
because he is the guy, the specter, that put his name to the domain
“bitcoin.org” on the 18th of August,2008. He’s also the person that
following that wrote a paper called, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash
System.” He hung around a couple more years, and then like that, he was gone. So,
who was he really, where is he now and what are we really talking about?
Because the experts out there are fairly certain there is no person called
Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin. In 2012 this extremely wise guy claiming
to be Mr. Nakamoto said he was a 37-year-old dude from Japan. Back then before
he went missing no one really believed that and these days no one believes it.
In the early days, people knew something was amiss when they saw he wrote in
impeccable English. But so, what, lots of Japanese people do. But then he used
British phrases and British spelling when he wrote. Lots of things didn’t seem
right. The famous and sometimes infamous tech entrepreneur John McAfee says he
actually knows who the Bitcoin wizard is, but he’s not telling. Still, McAfee
has been known to say some outlandish things at times. Let’s now look at some
possibilities regarding who Nakamoto is. Back when not many people really cared
about Bitcoin some people did do a bit of investigating about this so-called
Japanese creator. One of the first people to try and unmask Nakamoto was an internet-security researcher called Dan Kaminsky. He told the New Yorker in
2011 he knew one thing for sure, and that was, “He’s a world-class programmer,
with a deep understanding of the C++ programming language. He understands
economics, cryptography, and peer-to-peer networking.” He also said that “if
this guy isn’t actually a team of guys, then he’s an absolute genius.” Many
others have said no way could a man alone have done this, unless he was
out-of-this-world intelligent. So, we are looking for a genius. There can’t be
too many of those hiding out underground surely. They tend to float to the top
of society or at least cause ripples in the rivers of the underground. That
investigator went looking for other cryptography experts, because, it’s very
likely that the best knew the best. But he came up with nothing in the end. Was
it the Finnish tech researcher and programmer Vili Lehdonvirta? That’s highly
unlikely. His name was put forth, but he didn’t even know cryptography that
well and surely, he would have given up his day job at the university where he
worked. What about Gavin Andersen? He
was the guy who took over Bitcoin after Nakamoto did his disappearing act. But
no, no really believes that. What’s interesting, though, is that Andresen once
said that he knows who Nakamoto was, and he gave the name Craig Wright. But
that’s only because Wright, an Australian computer scientist, said he was. He
was investigated, and a lot about his life and work and activity suggested that
either he was the creator or he was really good at lying. It’s also said that
he wrote some messages using cryptographic keys that were inextricably
linked to blocks of Bitcoin created by the great Nakamoto. Wright even
registered a US copyright Bitcoin 0.1 in April 2019, but the US copyright
office said,” it doesn’t look into what it said was “a provable connection
between the claimant and the pseudonymous author.” In other words, that
copyright doesn’t mean much. Wright’s claim, though, was supported by others.
There were further investigations, with Wired once writing that Wright “either
invented bitcoin or is a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he
did.” He has even threatened to sue people for libel who says it wasn’t him, so
he takes the matter very seriously. Then in 2019, he came out with a bombshell,
but something not totally unexpected. He said Nakamoto wasn’t just him, but he
led a team of people. He said he was kind of principal actor. The other people
involved he said were Dave Kleiman and Hal Finney. Kleinman called an avid
cryptographer, isn’t alive any longer. He passed away in 2013. He was on the
mailing list of this Nakamoto character, and he was skilled in the arts of
building encryption-focused software. The problem is, according to the experts,
the only evidence he was part of this team Wright talks about Wright’s word.
Wright has been accused of making things up by some investigators. And listen
to what he was written about Kleinman after he died in apparent poverty, “his
body was found decomposing and surrounded by empty alcohol bottles and a loaded
handgun. A bullet hole was found in his mattress, though no spent shell casing
was found on the scene.” The story now turns to a darker shade of grey. It’s getting weirder, though, because allegedly Kleinman died with a massive stack of
Bitcoin. People had even said it was Kleinman, and Kleinman alone, that was
Nakamoto. From what we can see, though, is that his brother hasn’t released his
hard drives, and they can hold some valuable information. Should we trust what
this man Wright says, that’s the question? This is what bitcoin.com says about
Wright, “There is some evidence that Wright, was lurking in the shadows not
long after Bitcoin got off the ground, but all that proves is that Faketoshi is
a chancer who’s built a career out of riding in the slipstream of brighter
stars.” That said, he was working on bitcoin from the beginning, or something
like it. In an interview his wife said he was working on something he called
“digital money”, and that way back. He worked on that with his friend, and his
friend was Dave Kleiman. There are many things pointing to Wright telling the
truth, such as hacked PDF of a legal contract between Wright and Kleiman. That
contract is for trust in Seychelles, and that trust would hold a fortune
of Bitcoin similar to that which Nakamoto had. Still, investigators have said that
this is bogus, and neither Wright nor Nakamoto had the amount of Bitcoin in the
contract. That researcher we mentioned called Dan Kaminsky has looked into the
claim and he concluded that it is an “international scammer.” If confusing to you,
don’t worry because the story of who Nakamoto is or was has been causing
migraines and sometimes vicious debates for a long time. Now let’s have a look
at this man called Hal Finney. Of all the people thought to be Nakamoto, he is
certainly a big suspect. This guy Finney was said to be a pre-bitcoin
cryptographic pioneer. He was a genius, and if he wasn’t the Nakamoto then the
two could be said to be endowed with similar intellectual properties. As
bitcoin.com writes. “Hal Finney epitomizes Bitcoin more than any other known
person.” Writing analysis experts have also said that he and Nakamoto have very
similar handwriting, but they said that about Andresen, too. Some people have
suggested that he was a ghostwriter for Nakamoto, not that he was the man
himself. But Finney denied being Nakamoto and allowed investigators into his
house. Those investigators concluded that he was indeed telling the truth, but
there is no doubt Finney and Nakamoto were in contact via email a lot. Others
have said if Nakamoto was trying to hide, why would Finney have been openly
emailing himself. That’s if he was Nakamoto in disguise. It makes no sense because obviously, the trail leads back to Finney. Or was it some crazy double
bluff? By the way, Finney was the first guy ever to receive a bitcoin
transaction from Nakamoto. Unfortunately, Finney got ALS, known as Lou Gehrig’s
disease, and became paralyzed and then died in 2014. So, if these 3 guys
weren’t all together Nakamoto, then they were all there at the beginning of
Bitcoin. But the story doesn’t stop there. It gets even stranger. That’s because
a man living down the street from Finney was called Dorian Nakamoto. That’s
some coincidence eh. He was also a computer whizz, and like most of those that
embrace cryptocurrencies, a libertarian. He was actually investigated by a
Newsweek journalist in 2014, and get this, he told the journalist, “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.” So, is
that confirmation? It gets weird again, because Dorian then backtracked, saying
he misunderstood the question and thought that the journalist was talking about
his military work, which was classified. Then something strange happened. The
real Nakamoto’s P2P Foundation account came alive for the first time in five
years, and a message read, “I am not Dorian Nakamoto.” Some people though, think
it was hacked. Others have said that while he might have been a systems
engineer on classified government defense projects, and also a computer
engineer for technology and financial information services companies, he
certainly didn’t have the brains to be the real Nakamoto, not unless he hides
his superior intelligence very well. Another name that pops up a lot is Nick
Szabo. That’s because he certainly did have the brainpower to create something
like Bitcoin. And the reason we say that is because he published a paper on
something called “bit gold”, which was a theoretical decentralized digital
currency. It didn’t ever really get off the ground, but it was certainly a
precursor to Bitcoin. He envisioned and laid out a plan like Bitcoin before
Bitcoin came out. He was a certified genius no doubt, and people investigating
the riddle have said it was him, only because he’s the only one who would know
how to create something like Bitcoin. One investigator wrote, “I’ve concluded
there is only one person in the whole world that has the sheer breadth but also
the specificity of knowledge and it is this chap.” There is also evidence on
one of the blogs that he wrote about intending to invent a real-life version of
his Bit Gold. But Szabo vehemently denies he is Nakamoto, even though he has
admitted that if anyone in the world that he knew of could have created Bitcoin
and want to create Bitcoin it would have been him, or Finney, or a guy called
Wei Dai. The latter isn’t on the list of usual suspects. As for Szabo, he
certainly dreamed of something like Bitcoin and has said so in interviews. So,
he only has the greatest respect for Nakamoto. Still, there is not enough
evidence pointing to him actually being Nakamoto. In one interview he said of
his Bit Gold, “Satoshi came along and improved a number of aspects of it, made
it even more trust-minimized, and actually wrote software, so that brings the
story to where we are today.” He claims he has no idea who Satoshi is, though.
Others have been accused of being the ghost of Bitcoin, including Elon Musk, or
a Japanese mathematician called Shinichi Mochizuki, or even the creator of the
dark web’s Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, but the latter is highly unlikely and the
other two have denied it. A denial doesn’t mean they didn’t do it, but there’s
no convincing evidence it was them. You’ll also find conspiracy theories
pointing to the US government creating Bitcoin as a black ops’ thing, perhaps
to send untraceable funds for its various operations, but there is no proof of
that, either. Right now, the man known as Satoshi Nakamoto is still a missing
person, the Keyser Soze of cryptocurrency. Our story has all the suspects lined
up against the wall, but perhaps there really is another Satoshi Nakamoto, that
he’s is not a myth, but one man, a genius of a man, who has managed to keep his
identity completely hidden. Because you know what they say, “The greatest trick
Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Regardless of who
is behind Bitcoin, it’s unfortunately been used for some nefarious purposes
like being used as payment for ransomware after hacks. And it’s not just a big
business and government that are targeted, but regular people too.
0 Comments