Investigation: Who is Satoshi?

The identity of the Bitcoin creator remains undisclosed, even 12 years after the first cryptocurrency launch. The Crypto Kombat project, whose task is to preserve the history of crypto and key points in the development of the industry with NFT cards, is conducting an independent investigation.

In honor of the community’s numerous attempts to unravel Satoshi’s identity, a limited NFT card “Where is Satoshi?” has been issued. Its purpose and value are to shed light on the most plausible versions of the answer to one of the most important questions in the history of cryptocurrency.

So who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

For one reason or another, the creator of the first private cryptocurrency with a capitalization of over a trillion dollars wished to remain anonymous, and he succeeds to this day. In the first seven months of Bitcoin’s existence, its creator mined 1.1 million BTC, the value of which now reaches tens of billions of dollars. However, he has never moved his assets from the wallet, which shrouds him in an even greater aura of secrecy. So who is this mysterious cypherpunk that changed the world?

List of prime suspects

If you think that no one has previously tried to find out who is hiding behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto — you are wrong. The crypto community has been struggling with this issue for many years, conducting its own collective investigations, creating hypotheses, and looking for connections between key events in the history of Bitcoin and the individuals who may be behind it. Today, there are several candidates for the role of the creator of Bitcoin.

Let’s give a few facts about each of the suspects.

Hal Finney — one of the first cypherpunks

As a cypherpunk, Finney held libertarian and anarchist beliefs about personal freedom. From numerous posts on the forum, we can determine that Satoshi Nakamoto had similar opinions. Finney also received the first-ever Bitcoin transaction directly from Satoshi in the amount of 50 BTC. Finney is known to have lived a few blocks away from a man who is actually called Satoshi Nakamoto.

Back in 1993, Hal Finney on the forums described the technology of crypto trading cards, which is similar to the principle of NFTs.

Hell Finney was at the origin of Bitcoin, on January 11, 2009, he launched his own Bitcoin node. At the same time, he predicted that 1 BTC would be worth $10 million. Many factors indicated that he is the creator of Bitcoin.

Forbes reporters conducted their own investigation, during which they sent samples of Finney’s letter for analysis to Juola & Associates. The results obtained showed that the specificity of speech has common features with the style of Bitcoin White Paper. But, later, the representatives of the agency compared Finney’s correspondence and samples of Satoshi’s letters and came to the conclusion that these are two different people.

In August 2009, Hal Finney was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Unfortunately, this disease led to paralysis, and five years later, in 2014, to death.

Nick Szabo — the creator of the BitGold e-currency

Nick Szabo is a legend in the world of cryptography and cryptocurrencies. The results of the stylometric analysis of Satoshi Nakamoto’s messages have been published on the network, according to which some experts conclude that the creator of Bitcoin is the scientist and cryptographer Nick Szabo. In 1996, Nick, was combining his academic knowledge in the field of computer science and law and created the concept of “smart contract”. As we all know, it was this technology that became the basis of the second most popular cryptocurrency Ethereum.

In 1998, Szabo participated in the development of BitGold, the first private digital currency, the principles of which are very similar to Bitcoin.

Dorian Nakamoto — has done classified work for major corporations and the U.S. military

Back in 2014, journalist Leah McGrath Goodman wrote that computer engineer Dorian Nakamoto was hiding behind the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. It is noteworthy that he previously worked for the US Department of Defense. The journalist tried to cite a large number of facts that would prove her theory, but Dorian completely denied all of them.

Craig Wright — the creator of Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision)

Craig is a self-proclaimed Satoshi. Wright claims that it was he who created bitcoin and in 2008, under the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto, wrote the “Bitcoin White Paper”.

As a result of the trial, in which he proved that he was the true Satoshi, he never proved to the court that he owned the keys from the first BTC wallet. His personality in the cryptocurrency community is not taken seriously but rather claims to be Satoshi’s meme.

Elon Musk — the creator of PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink

One of the former SpaceX trainees, Sahil Gupta, suggested in his blog back in 2015 that the creator of Bitcoin is Elon Musk.

This theory is also supported by the fact that BTC was created by someone with deep knowledge of economics and cryptography. In addition, Musk’s attention to cryptocurrencies has already become a meme on the Internet.

Bitcoin’s source code was written in the C ++ programming language, which the head of Space X is fluent in.

Neal King, Vladimir Oksman, Charles Bry

While searching for the real Satoshi, the researchers discovered an interesting clue — a patent application for a cryptographic system. This system was very similar to Bitcoin. It is important to note that the application was filed on August 15, 2008, and the Bitcoin.org domain was registered just three days after that.

The authors of the patent were scientists Neal King, Vladimir Oksman, and Charles Bry.

Cobra Bitcoin — the Bitcoin.org and Bitcointalk owner

Cobra was first mentioned as co-owner of Bitcoin.org on Github back in 2015. A person whom no one knows, but who has a great impact on the BTC community. Once Cobra suggested to the members of the community and the team of Bitcoin.org to change some of the rules of Satoshi Nakamoto, reflected in the white paper.

In addition, over the years, he has been distinguished by many questionable statements within the community.

What’s the bottom line?

The creator of the first cryptocurrency may be a group of people, even from our list. Or maybe this is a government project? Or an attempt by a group of people to gain control by destroying a traditional financial tower?

Unfortunately, only those who are directly behind the creation of Bitcoin can give answers to these questions. And there it remains only to look for new evidence, drawing connections on the map with the investigation of the greatest event in digital technologies space.