The first cryptocurrency Bitcoin appeared in 2009, but the whole world still doesn’t know who is behind this creation.
We will try to slightly open the curtains of this secret.
The creation of Bitcoin
The history of Bitcoin began its path in the summer of 2008 when a domain called bitcoin.org was registered. Don’t confuse it with bitcoin.com that is managed by Roger Ver, the CEO of a competitive cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash.
In the Fall of the same year, a few hundred well-known specialists in the field of programming and cryptography received a letter with full description of a decentralized financial system — Bitcoin. The author of the letter signed himself as Satoshi Nakamoto.
On January 3, 2008, Bitcoin arrived to our world. The first cryptocurrency network went online, Satoshi Nakamoto generated the first block and mined the first 50 Bitcoins. Afterwards, Satoshi formed a development team for Bitcoin, but he never spoke with anyone in person, only through email. In 2011, he passed on all responsibilities to the team, claiming that Bitcoin was in safe hands while he had more important business to attend to. Since then, no-one has heard about Satoshi, well, almost no-one...
Who are you, Satoshi Nakamoto?
If you google the name, you will find an image of an old Asian man. This is Dorian Nakamoto. He lives in the USA, and, as he claimed several hundred times, he has no affiliation with the creation of Bitcoin.
Today, the photo of Dorian is considered to be an unofficial image of Satoshi Nakamoto. It is worth noting that of all possible Bitcoin creator identities, Dorian is the only one who has suffered from such exposure. He is a specialist in computer security, and his clients value the confidentiality above all. After Dorian got besieged by journalists and got revealed to the whole world, he was denied any further orders from his clients.
Maybe that’s why after some time, on the important crypto forum, a message was posted signed by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto - “I am not Dorian Nakamoto”. Technically, this short post can be considered the last public message from the real Satoshi. But what was that: an act of compassion or an attempt to hide the footprints?
Many other theories exist surrounding the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. It can be a well-known cryptocurrency expert Nick Szabo, the Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, or even Elon Musk. Even a businessman from Australia - Craig Wright claimed that he is Satoshi but his deception was quickly revealed.
How can Nakamoto prove his identity?
What is it that impostor Craig Wright couldn’t do? And how can the true Satoshi Nakamoto prove his identity? It is thought that the Bitcoin creator was the first miner. In his possessions, there’s presumably around 1M Bitcoins that haven’t been spent for all this time.
Some claim that Satoshi doesn’t need all that money, while others think he doesn’t want to be tracked. But if the real Satoshi wanted to reveal himself to the whole world, he could prove his identity by transferring some of his originally mined bitcoins from his wallet.
NSA has found Satoshi
Cryptocommunity has repeatedly tried to find the mysterious creator but all their attempts were futile. However, recently US intelligence agencies tried their hand on it. Certain sources state that the National Security Agency has searched for Satoshi Nakamoto using stylometry.
NSA analyzed all messages from Bitcoin creator to determine its unique author’s handwriting. Then, they compared this data with trillions of data bases. It is unknown what the search resulted in, but it is suggested that NSA did manage to find the real Satoshi, but for some reason they decided not to reveal his identity.
Who knows, maybe he turned out to be one of their colleagues? Or maybe it’s a rogue AI? Or maybe, just maybe Satoshi promised them his 1M Bitcoins?
Conclusion
Still, why did Satoshi remain anonymous? Is it because of the decentralization idea, so that Bitcoin would be independent from its creator? Or is it a form of protest against total Internet surveillance by intelligence agencies, against the government’s will to take away the privacy rights?
By the way, the information about total Internet surveillance on its users and the owners of cryptocurrencies was confirmed by an NSA runaway agent - Edward Snowden.