Cryptocurrency has taken the world by storm. In today's digital economy, it is often the topic of great discussion. Whether it's because of Elon Musk tweeting about it or Indian government planning to ban the digital asset, the scenarios abound. Everyone is at least familiar with this digital asset and some are even engaged in trading it as well.
With the explosion of the World Wide Web and the birth of the internet, there were talks of making a currency native to the digital world. PayPal was also a result of a similar endeavour. It was developed as a native digital currency for PalmPilots. The major problem with digital currency was that it could easily be copied. It was fairly simple to create an identical replica of something that is available on the internet. If the currency can be copied with ease, then it loses all value. As a result, the concept of centralisation was imbibed in the 1990s. Through centralisation, every transaction would be routed through a trusted central source to confirm that the currency hasn’t already been spent in some copied form. This system has a major flaw i.e., the trusted source under consideration. Any form of flaw, attack, corruption or government regulation could take control of the trusted source and the entire system would be in jeopardy.
This is where bitcoin enters the picture. In 2008, a person by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto published a nine-page white paper, containing the very first mention of bitcoin. It was called a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. In 2009, Nakamoto released bitcoin for the first time. In those initial years, Nakamoto worked proactively to make bitcoin a success. He wrote in forums, sent emails and worked to improve the programme. After 2 years of actively promoting and improving the code, in 2011, Nakamoto disappeared. Here is the catch, to date no one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is in reality.
His identity has become a subject of great mystery. Throughout the years, several pieces of information have been available. Some have claimed to have worked with him, others have claimed to be Nakamoto themselves and some subject to such claims have openly refuted any relations. The reason for Satoshi’s disappearance is also a mystery. Several theories have propagated, some more likely than others. But no clear answer has been found yet.
Why is the information and search for Bitcoin’s founder so important? The reason is that bitcoin’s supply is finite. The upper limit of bitcoin mining is 21 million. And Nakamoto is estimated to have 5% of the total bitcoins, that is an estimated 1 million bitcoins which are worth nearly 5 billion dollars. When one person holds a large proportion of a valuable commodity, it becomes easy to manipulate its market.
In respect to the reason for Satoshi’s disappearance, Matt Green, a cryptocurrency professor at John Hopkins University says, “There are two competing theories. There is the “Good Satoshi” hypothesis which holds that Satoshi wanted bitcoin to grow and become its own thing. The other hypothesis is that Satoshi saw bitcoin taking off and wanted to keep his privacy. And the latter hypothesis is more likely.”
The claims of knowing or being Nakamoto are also really interesting. Dan Kaminsky, an internet security researcher, was one of the first people to try to discover the identity of bitcoin’s inventor. In 2011, he told the New Yorker, “ Satoshi Nakamoto is a world-class programmer, with a deep understanding of C++ programming language. He also understands economics, cryptography and peer-to-peer networking.” Satoshi has been often called a genius for his work in bitcoin, even if Satoshi wasn’t one person but a group of people. They were all highly intelligent and specialized in what they were doing.
Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist, said on camera that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of bitcoin. There were several investigations into the claim. It is also believed that Wright wrote messages using cryptographic keys that were linked to the blockchain network of Bitcoins. Wright went on to register for a US copyright for Bitcoin 0.1 in April 2019. The US Copyright Office said that there wasn’t “a provable connection between the claimant and the pseudonymous author”. In one of the investigations, Wired wrote that “Wright either invented bitcoin or is a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.”
To supplement his claims, in 2019, Wright said that he wasn’t alone in making bitcoin. He led a team of people who achieved this feat. The other people were identified as Dave Kleiman and Hal Finney.
Dave Kleiman was known to be skilled in the art of building encryption-focused software. But, he passed away in 2013. There is a lot of suspicion about the death of Kliemann as well. Kliemann died in utter poverty. When his body was found, it was decomposing in his house. There was a loaded gun and mattress with a bullet hole on the scene. Kleinman is alleged to have had a massive stack of Bitcoin, which is still undiscovered.
Hal Finney is said to be a pre-bitcoin cryptographic pioneer. Writing analysts have said that Finney and Nakamoto had similar handwriting. A similar claim has also been made for Gavin Anderson, the person who took over Bitcoin after Nakamoto disappeared. It is suggested that Finney was a ghostwriter for Nakamoto. On being questioned, Finney denied being Nakamoto. Another interesting fact is that Finney has been known to have received emails from Nakamoto and he was also the first person to receive a bitcoin transaction from the creator himself. After contacting Lou Gehrig’s disease, Finney died in 2014. Dan Kaminsky, the internet security researcher, who was investigating the matter, has said that Wright’s claim is “international scammery”.
The story takes another turn. There was a man living down the street from Hal Finney, named Dorian Nakamoto. Dorian was a Japanese American retired physicist. On being investigated by a Newsweek journalist in 2014, he said, “I am no longer involved in it and I cannot discuss it.” The basic assumption that he was talking about bitcoin was implied. Dorian later said that he misunderstood the question and thought that he was being questioned about his work with a classified military project. Another point to be noted was that Dorian’s birth name was found out to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
Then something happened, Nakamoto’s P2P Foundation account had a post for the first time in five years, the post said, “I am not Dorian Nakamoto”. There are claims of the account being hacked, but nothing concrete has been said.
Another person that was believed to be Nakamoto was Nick Szabo. Firstly, Nick is said to have the intellectual abilities needed to create bitcoin and secondly, he published a paper on ‘bit gold’. The paper was on a theoretical digital currency and is believed to be a precursor to Bitcoin. Szabo denied the claims.
The list of suspects is never-ending. And so is the list of theories associated with it. But, one thing that can be said undoubtedly is that Satoshi can not only be accredited with being the creator of bitcoin but also as a person who has managed to keep his identity under wraps for a very long time.
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