Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin, still remains a myth to everyone. Will we ever know his true identity?

More than often, people who are newly introduced to Bitcoin have no idea that the currency is already several years old. The idea of Bitcoin was first introduced in 2008, when a man named Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper on The Cryptography Mailing list at metzdowd.com. This paper was called Bitcoin: a peer to peer electronic cash system and is still a classic among the old school Bitcoin fans. Not that much later, in 2009, he released the first Bitcoin software that enabled the world to start using Bitcoin.

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So who is Satoshi Nakamoto? This is a question that still raises eyebrows all over the cryptocurrency world. There are plenty of suggested identities, which we will tackle later in this guide. Lets take a look first at what we know about Nakamoto. The first certainty we have is that he did not work alone. He held close contact with other developers through forums and e-mails. He kept improving the source-code whilst taking advice from several other people. This continued until contacts between him and his team gradually began to fade. In the year 2010, he handed over control of the source code repository and alert key functions of the software to Gavin Andresen, another prominent figure in the Bitcoin universe. With the source code, he also gave away the Bitcoin.org domain and several other domains. After doing this, Nakamoto began to communicate less until he completely disappeared.

Nakamoto himself claims to be a 37-year old male who lives in Japan. A false statement according to many people. His use of the English language is near perfect, and the Bitcoin software was never documented in Japanese. A strange behavior for someone who claims to have lived in Japan for his entire life.

By now, you must have come to the conclusion that there is a lot of mystery surrounding Bitcoins inventor. If there is one thing the Internet likes, its mystery (or rather solving it). This led Stefan Thomas, a Swiss coder and active community member, to a great idea. He decided to look into the timestamps of Nakamotos forum posts. With over 500 posts, it had to be possible to find a pattern in it. His investigation resulted in a chart that showed a steep decline to almost no posts between the hours of 5 am, and 11 am GMT. It is very probable that Nakamoto was asleep at this time. When looking at the different time zones in the world, Nakamoto probably lives in the parts of North America that fall within the Eastern Time Zone and Central Time Zone. Parts of Central America, the Caribbean and South America are possibilities as well.

Its great to know where Nakamoto probably lives, but it still brings us nowhere closer to his real identity. Are we even talking about a single person? Some people consider him to be a team of people. A lot of prominent coders think the Bitcoin code was too well designed for one person. Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who read the code, said that Nakamoto could either be a team of people or a pure genius.

That said, many identities have been pinned on the Bitcoin developer over the years.

Also read: Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Has Email Account Hacked

Satoshi Nakamotos broke a three year long silence, telling the world he is not Dorian Nakamoto (photo). Every post he made can be found in the database of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute.

But the most well-known speculation to date came in March 2014. An article in the magazine Newsweek, written by journalist Leah McGrath Goodman, identified Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. As a Japanese American living in California, he fits the bill for Newsweek. Unfortunately, Dorian Nakamoto immediately responded by denying everything. I did not create, invent or otherwise work on Bitcoin. I unconditionally deny the Newsweek report. He even filed a lawsuit against Newsweek as he had journalists camping out in front of his house and chasing him by car whenever he left. The Bitcoin community, led by Andreas Antonopoulos started a fundraising campaign to support Dorian Nakamoto.

The Newsweek report led to a worldwide interest in Satoshi Nakamotos identity. Maybe the greatest thing about this was that it made the real Nakamoto break his long silence. At the p2pfoundation website, Satoshi Nakamoto replied to his latest thread with the following words: I am not Dorian Nakamoto.

So if there is one thing we can be sure of, its the fact that we have no clue whatsoever as to who Satoshi Nakamoto really is. Is he a genius who is singlehandedly responsible for developing a revolutionary protocol? Or is Satoshi Nakamoto a pseudonym for a team of people? Nakamoto is believed to be in possession of roughly one million bitcoins. His identity remains one of the webs most questioned mysteries.

Also read: You Can Not Kill Bitcoins Founding Myth: Satoshi Nakamoto

Images from Shutterstock.

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