Curiosities of the crypto world: The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto

Behind the creation of bitcoin, there is a mystery which is that it is not exactly tasted who is its creator. This mysterious person has always acted under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto who in the last decade disappeared completely from the Internet and has not spent his bitcoins during all this time.

Although we do not know who Satoshi Nakamoto is or was, we do know his great work: he invented the bitcoin protocol and published it in a scientific article through the Cryptography Mailing List in October 2008.

On January 9, 2009, Nakamoto released version 0.1 of the Bitcoin client, and on the same day, at 00:54, the first bitcoin block was mined, creating the first units. Three days later, on January 12, 2009, Hal Finney, one of the most prominent members of the “Cryptography” mailing list, received the first ever bitcoin transaction. And on April 26, 2011, Nakamoto disappeared and was never heard from again.

Several theories try to explain why the group or person behind Satoshi Nakamoto is in hiding.

Here are a few of them:

– To avoid conflicts of interest since knowing the name of bitcoin’s creator could also allow that person to manipulate prices as he wishes, which goes against the original plan.

– To avoid legal problems. In the USA some people have suffered legal actions for creating a digital currency as an alternative to the dollar, besides, bitcoin can be used by anyone and for many things, including illegal activities.

– Avoid becoming a victim of a cult of personality.

Some suspects who were thought to be Satoshi Nakamoto

– Hal Finney: For being a pioneer of cryptography and apart from that because near his house lived a person with the surname Nakamoto, from whom he could have based himself to create the pseudonym.

– Nick Szabo: Published about a decentralized currency before bitcoin existed. His writing style is also similar to that used by Nakamoto.

– Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto: Because of his similar surname and his libertarian character, he could correspond to the profile of the creator of BTC.

– Craig Wright: an Australian entrepreneur who has publicly and repeatedly claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto. However, he has not been able to prove it.

– A Chinese or Russian agent: the US administration asked whether this was not a Chinese or Russian coup d’état.

What we can conclude is that even though this is an active mystery, not tasting who was the person or group of people responsible for basically creating digital currencies is not something that affects the currency directly. We hope someday to hear something about it but in the meantime, you can enjoy what bitcoin has brought to the world.