Dorian Nakamoto: I’m Not Satoshi, I Don’t Know Cryptography

Dorian S. Nakamoto listens during an interview with the Associated Press on March 6, in Los Angeles.

Image: Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press

By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2014-03-17 13:13:25 UTC

Dorian Nakamoto, the man Newsweek claims is the creator of the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin, denied being the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto once again.

In a statement issued on Monday by his newly hired lawyer, Ethan Kirschner, Nakamoto said he "did not create, invent or otherwise work on Bitcoin." The 64-year-old went one step further than his previous denial, adding that he doesn't know anything about cryptography, something experts believe he would have needed to create Bitcoin.

"I have no knowledge of nor have I ever worked on cryptography, peer to peer systems, or alternative currencies," Nakamoto wrote in the statement, first reported by The Los Angeles Times.

Cryptography experts like Ed Felten, a professor of computer science at Princeton University, have doubted the Newsweek report on the grounds that the article doesn't prove, or even allege, that Dorian Nakamoto has any background in cryptography.

"The real Satoshi was obviously conversant with crypto the Bitcoin design shows it, and the fluency of the crypto discussion in the paper tells us that Satoshi was well acquainted with the jargon and literature of the field," Felten wrote in a blog post on March 11. "Newsweek doesnt offer any evidence that Dorian knew crypto."

In the statement, Nakamoto again claimed he first heard of the word Bitcoin when his son called him in mid-February, after talking to a reporter. Nakamoto clarified that he "never consented to speak with the reporter" when Newsweek's Leah McGrath Goodman confronted him in front of his house. That's when Nakamoto uttered the key quote in Newsweek's story: "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it."

Nakamoto even added that he can't even afford to pay for his Internet connection, which he discontinued in 2013 "due to severe financial distress."

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Dorian Nakamoto: I'm Not Satoshi, I Don't Know Cryptography