Elon Musk tweets to debunk speculation that he’s behind bitcoin

Not only does Elon Musk deny being the mysterious cryptocurrency founder Satoshi Nakamoto, but he’s also forgotten where he keeps his bitcoin.

Musk’s assertions came in response to a blog post coursing through digital-currency sites that suggested the PayPal co-founder and Tesla chief executive officer himself is probably the bitcoin originator who used the alias Nakamoto.

“Not true. A friend sent me part of a BTC a few years, but I don’t know where it is,” Musk said on Tuesday in a tweet.

The post on the “Medium” blog site last week based its argument on Musk’s technical expertise, comparing him with US inventor and founding father Benjamin Franklin, who also published under a pseudonym. Bitcoin needs Musk’s help, the blog’s author Sahil Gupta said.

“If Elon is Satoshi, it seems like this knowledge would become public at some point anyway,” Gupta wrote. “But if it were public now, Elon could offer guidance as the currency’s ‘founding father.’”

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous author of the research paper that conceived bitcoin in 2008, remains a mystery. The name appeared atop the original document that proposed a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.