Who and where is Satoshi Nakamoto?

2009 saw the birth of a revolutionary innovation that took the world by surprise, a new cryptocurrency was released, the first of its kind, and one that welded so much power, the birth of the Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency was created to be a communal project and was based on an open-source system, using the blockchain technology. Over time, the cryptocurrency has grown, and its value continues to enjoy exponential growth which has led to its popularity and global acceptance. However, there is a mystery about the cryptocurrency, and the mystery has to do with who the real creator of this visionary project is.

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Satoshi Nakamoto

There is no exact clue as to the identity of “Satoshi Nakamoto”, there are speculations that it could be a pseudonym for an individual or a group of people. However, over the years, different events have unfolded while trying to unravel the true identity of the Bitcoin creator. In 2009, Satoshi created a forum called Bitcointalk where the Satoshi posted the first message using the pseudonym “Satoshi” the first time.

The identity being one mystery, the country of residence is another mystery. On Satoshi’s peer-to-peer foundation profile, Satoshi said he was 37 years old, a male, and that he lived in Japan. However people have speculated that Satoshi cannot be Japanese, and this is based on the fact that his written English is perfect, and there was no trace of a Japanese element in his Bitcoin software. Furthermore, observers have concluded that Satoshi was of Commonwealth descent, and this was attributed to the frequent use of British English terminology and spelling in forum postings and comments on the source code, again it was observed that according to the time stamps of Satoshi’s posts on the Bitcoin forum, the posting times were not possible for someone living in Japan, but rather it suited someone resident in Britain.

While the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto still remains shrouded in mystery, there have been a lot of possible identities, but only about four of the identities really had some sort of connection to the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, these four include:

• Craig Steven Wright: In 2016, Craig Wright publicly claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto via his blog, and on air when he was interviewed by a media company, this sparked some controversy, as there was no concrete proof to his claim, and he announced he was going to publish proof, which he never did.

• Hal Finney: The first person after Satoshi to use the Bitcoin software, implement improvements, and file reports. Coincidentally, he lived few blocks away from Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto. Comparisons between correspondences with Satoshi and Hal, showed similarities in the way they wrote and suggested he was using Dorian’s name as a cover-up or he was Satoshi’s ghostwriter.

• Nick Szabo: Being a pseudonym lover since the ‘90s, and a bitcoin lover, there was more to him and his connection with Satoshi, and these were a combination of his published paper about “bit gold” which was supposed to be a decentralized currency prior to the creation of Bitcoin and a stylometric analysis of the bitcoin whitepaper. He denied being Satoshi.

• Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto: He lived few blocks from Hal Finney. Dorian had worked as a computer engineer in fintech companies, and also a systems-engineer on classified projects. Some of his responses to interviews indicated he was the true Satoshi Nakamoto, he, however, denied it.

Perhaps someday, the true identity of the real creator of Bitcoin will be revealed, till then, it's more speculations.