Since the creation of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, nobody has been able to identify its creator. The legend states that it was created by someone called Satoshi Nakamoto. Now Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym and nobody knows the real person.
Satoshi Nakamoto first released bitcoin’s code on January 9th, 2009 and its ingenious digital currency has grown from a nerd novelty to a kind of economic miracle.
Now it seems that Wired and Gizmodo have uncovered evidence to show that Craig Steven Wright, an Australian businessman based in Sydney, and Dave Kleiman, an American computer forensics expert who died in 2013, were involved in the development of the digital currency. These two men might actually be the infamous Satoshi Nakamoto.
According to Wired,
In the last weeks, WIRED has obtained the strongest evidence yet of Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity. The signs point to Craig Steven Wright, a man who never even made it onto any Nakamoto hunters’ public list of candidates, yet fits the cryptocurrency creator’s profile in nearly every detail. And despite a massive trove of evidence, we still can’t say with absolute certainty that the mystery is solved. But two possibilities outweigh all others: Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.
The first evidence pointing to Wright appeared in mid-November, when an anonymous source close to Wright began leaking documents to Gwern Branwen, a pseudonymous, independent security researcher and dark web analyst. Branwen provided those documents to WIRED, and they immediately led to several direct, publicly visible connections between Nakamoto and Wright.
In early November 2015, Gizmodo received a series of anonymous tip emails from someone who claimed to not only know the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, but who also claimed to have worked for him. “I Satoshi Naklamoto [sic],” the first message read. “These files are all from his business account. The person is Dr Craig Wright.”
One beneficial side effect of unmasking Satoshi Nakamoto is that Bitcoin has been hard for regulators to control. With no single person or organization having the authority to unilaterally modify how the Bitcoin network worked, there was no one government officials could approach to demand changes. And because the technology spanned national borders, it wasn’t easy to shut down. As a result, governments were forced to accept the network as it was.
Bitcoin is a new kind of global payment network which allows money to be transmitted electronically. But it is different in two important ways:
- The Bitcoin network is fully de-centralized. Unlike other payment networks like The MasterCard network which is owned and operated by MasterCard Inc, there is no Bitcoin Inc. Instead, thousands of computers around the world process Bitcoin transactions in a peer-to-peer fashion.
- MasterCard and PayPal payments are based on conventional currencies such as the US dollar. In contrast, the Bitcoin network has its own unit of value, which is called the bitcoin. The value of one bitcoin fluctuates against other currencies in the same way the euro’s value fluctuates against the dollar.
Numerous publications including the New York Times, Fast Company, and the New Yorker have taken unsuccessful stabs at Satoshi’s identity previously and they have been discredited.
It seems this time, it is for real.
Photograph: soldierx.com
