Satoshi Nakamoto

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The inventor of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin is known under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto , who published the Bitcoin white paper in October 2008 and the first version of the reference implementation Bitcoin Core in January 2009 . Which person or group of people is hidden behind this pseudonym is still unknown today. Since the emergence in 2008, various people have been mistaken for Nakamoto or have claimed identity for themselves.

Possible identities

Dorian Nakamoto

In March 2014, the US news magazine Newsweek claimed in a cover story that it had identified Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto from California as the true identity of Nakamoto. The then 65-year-old man published a denial and took legal action against the magazine.

Craig Steven Wright

In early May 2016, the Australian entrepreneur Craig Steven Wright (* 1970) claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin. He took the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto from the historical Japanese philosopher Tominaga Nakamoto . As early as December 2015, the computer magazine Wired and the blog Gizmodo came to the conclusion that Wright was behind the pseudonym Nakamoto. In the signature of an email address that Nakamoto used to communicate with Bitcoin developers, a cell phone number was specified that was approved in Wright's name.

Wright released a digital signature that can only be generated using Nakamoto's private key. As it turned out, however, this was not freshly made, but a copied signature from 2009. After a few days, Wright withdrew an announcement to provide verifiable evidence, but maintained the claim to be Nakamoto.

Wright was sued in early 2018. The lawsuit was filed by Ira Kleiman in the US District Court for the Southern Florida District. Ira is the brother of the late Dave Kleiman, a computer scientist and cyber security expert. Many people suspect that he was one of the developers behind Bitcoin and the blockchain process. According to the plaintiff, Wright stole 1.1 million Bitcoin (BTC) from Dave Kleiman's estate, worth over 7.6 billion euros at the rate at the time.

In early 2019, WikiLeaks released evidence that Craig Wright had forged documents to impersonate Satoshi.

In May 2019, a signed message with the text "This Address Does Not Belong to Satoshi or Craig Wright" was published by the owner of a Bitcoin address with 160,000 BTC. Craig Wright claimed in 2018 that this was his.

In August 2019, Wright was ordered by a U.S. district court in Florida to hand over half of the bitcoins he mined to Dave Kleiman's family. It is estimated that Wright mined around 1 million bitcoins between 2009 and Kleiman's death in 2013.

Dave Kleiman

Dave Kleiman (1967-2013) was an IT forensic scientist , author of several books, and speaker at information security events . He died in April 2013 at home from an infection by MRSA bacteria. There are suspicions that Kleiman was Satoshi Nakamoto or that he was involved in a group. Another indication of this is that Nakamoto's GMX e-mail address was probably available to another person by September 2014 at the latest. Kleiman died in April 2013, and GMX deletes inactive e-mail addresses after one year, so that anyone could have re-registered Nakamoto's e-mail address.

Kleiman's family was awarded half of the bitcoin Wright mined between 2009 and 2013 by a court in 2019.

Hal Finney

Hal Finney (1956-2014) was an American software developer. He at least helped develop Bitcoin and is known as the first recipient of a Bitcoin transaction. There were speculations that he himself was behind the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto”, which he vigorously denied.

Trivia

Bhagwan Chowdhry, professor of finance at the University of California, Los Angeles , proposed in November 2015 that Nakamoto be nominated as a candidate for the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in recognition of his invention of Bitcoin . However, the guidelines do not allow candidacy for individuals with unknown identities.

According to several media reports, the US journalist Daniel Oberhaus filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) application with the US secret service CIA and the FBI to disclose Nakamoto's identity. In response, he received a Glomar Response , that is, an answer that it can neither be confirmed nor denied that the secret services have any information about Nakamoto's identity.

Individual evidence

  1. Satoshi Nakamoto: Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper . 2008 ( mail-archive.com [accessed May 8, 2016]).
  2. Satoshi Nakamoto: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. (PDF; 180 kB) Bitcoin Foundation, November 2008, accessed on May 8, 2016 (English).
  3. Christian Stöcker: "Newsweek" cover story: Alleged Bitcoin founder denies comprehensively. In: spiegel.de. March 17, 2014, accessed May 8, 2016 .
  4. Markus Böhm: Dorian Nakamoto: Alleged Bitcoin inventor sued "Newsweek". In: spiegel.de. October 14, 2014, accessed May 8, 2016 .
  5. Australian entrepreneur comes out as Bitcoin inventor. FAZ, May 2, 2016, accessed on May 3, 2016 .
  6. Michael Safi: Australian Craig Wright claims he is bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto. (HTTPS) In: theguardian.com. May 2, 2016, accessed May 8, 2016 .
  7. a b Elle Hunt, Nick Evershed and Paul Farrell: Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto probably Australian entrepreneur, reports claim. In: theguardian.com. December 8, 2015, accessed May 8, 2016 .
  8. Jordan Pearson and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai: No, we still have no evidence of who is behind the founding of Bitcoin. In: Motherboard. VICE . May 3, 2016, accessed May 24, 2016 .
  9. Alex hern: Craig Wright U-turns on pledge to provide evidence he invented bitcoin. In: theguardian.com. May 5, 2016, accessed May 6, 2016 .
  10. Craig “Satoshi” Wright harbors heavy allegations of fraud and announces that he will move early bitcoins. In: bitcoinblog.de. May 4, 2016, Retrieved May 7, 2016 .
  11. Axel Kannenberg: Billions lawsuit against alleged Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright. In: heise online. February 28, 2018, accessed March 3, 2018 .
  12. WikiLeaks: Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. Coin Hero, February 13, 2019, accessed April 15, 2019 .
  13. Craig Wright and Bitcoin Satoshi Vision in the Eye of the Shitstorm - The Opinion ECHO. BTC-ECHO, April 15, 2019, accessed April 15, 2019 .
  14. 'Craig Is a Liar' - Early Adopter Proves Ownership of Bitcoin Address Claimed by Wright. news.bitcoin.com, May 18, 2019, accessed May 18, 2019 .
  15. ^ A b Anthony Cuthbertson: "Bitcoin: Self-proclaimed cryptocurrency creator Craig Wright ordered to pay billions" The Independent of August 30, 2019
  16. Obituary: Former PBSO deputy dies in his home . Palm Beach Post . Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  17. Dave Kleiman . O'Reilly.
  18. ^ The Strange Life and Death of Dave Kleiman, A Computer Genius Linked to Bitcoin's Origins . Gizmodo, December 9, 2015, accessed August 10, 2017 .
  19. This Australian Says He and His Dead Friend Invented Bitcoin . In: Gizmodo.com. May 2, 2016, accessed August 10, 2017 .
  20. Is Dave Kleiman the Missing Link in Craig Wright's Satoshi Story? Gizmodo, May 4, 2016, accessed August 10, 2017 .
  21. ^ Everything makes sense if David Kleiman was Satoshi Nakamoto. Here's why . In: SeeBitcoin.com. May 3, 2016, accessed August 10, 2017 .
  22. Bitcoin Pioneer and First Bitcoin Recipient Hal Finney Passes Away . Retrieved February 13, 2015.
  23. Bitcoin pioneer has died and was cryogenically frozen . Archived from the original on February 24, 2015. Retrieved on February 24, 2015.
  24. ^ Hal Finney received the first Bitcoin transaction. Here's how he describes it. . Retrieved February 13, 2015.
  25. Obituary Hal Finney . In: The Economist , September 6, 2014. Retrieved February 24, 2015. 
  26. ^ Obituary Hal Finney, computer scientist, 1956-2014 . In: Financial Times , September 6, 2014. Retrieved February 24, 2015. 
  27. Identity of Satoshi Nakamoto: CIA does not confirm, but does not deny either . In: Cointelegraph . June 16, 2018 ( cointelegraph.com [accessed June 22, 2018]).