Most Likely This Person Is Satoshi Nakamoto

William Brucee
Blockchain Biz
Published in
6 min readSep 9, 2022
illustration by Cryptotactic.io

The biggest mystery in the technology universe nowadays is not how bitcoin works, but who is the founder of bitcoin

A whitepaper was posted on a cryptography email list on October 31, 2008, by a person known as Satoshi Nakamoto. We’re all still confused by the mastermind, who changed the monetary system’s history.

Numerous journalists and bloggers have attempted ineffectively over the years to dispel the mystery surrounding bitcoin’s creator. There have been many candidates, some of them even nominated themselves. We are still looking for the individual who is behind the mystery since none of them have provided real evidence to support their allegations.

But there is one person. If I had to speculate, I’d think he invented bitcoin with a high degree of confidence. Let’s evaluate what we know about Satoshi Nakamoto before I reveal who I’ve picked. Or, even better, what he wants us to understand.

In his P2P Foundation biography, Satoshi states that he is a Japanese male who was born on April 5, 1975. The issue is that he doesn’t look or sound like a Japanese person. First of all, he used flawless English to write both the whitepaper and his following articles. Second, for a person living in Japan, his sleeping patterns are quite unusual.

Stefan Thomas, a member of the Bitcoin Forum, displayed the time stamps from more than 500 postings by Satoshi. He discovered that Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t publish anything between 2 and 8 o’clock in the evening, Japanese time. Therefore, it’s possible — even likely — that Satoshi’s whole identity is not real.

However, why would he pose as someone else?

There is a legitimate explanation for this

Similar to Pretty Good Privacy, a project that made it possible for users to send each other encrypted communications, PGP was established by activist Phil Zimmermann, who wanted to provide dissidents with an open channel of communication. But after realizing this technology’s potential, the US government seized it. PGP and Zimmermann subsequently become the subjects of a police investigation.

This technology only allowed two people to talk in private without being heard. Think about how the government would punish the creator of the technology that made it possible to send money for free without the need of a bank or other intermediary, bitcoin technology removes money from the government’s control.

How much do we know about the person who invented bitcoin?

So now I’ve covered my doubts about his personality and purposes for hiding it, here’s what we know about Satoshi Nakamoto.

On the cryptography email group metzdowd.com, Satoshi Nakamoto first appeared with a whitepaper, as I’ve already mentioned. On Halloween 2008, he presented in a nine-page paper “a new electronic monetary system that is totally peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.”

He then established the bitcointalk forum and used the nickname satoshi to make the initial message. He continued to develop the bitcoin program and created a website with the domain name bitcoin.org. The “genesis block,” the first Bitcoin block, was mined by Satoshi on January 3, 2009.

In order to change the bitcoin protocol, Satoshi Nakamoto worked with other programmers during 2010. He was active in the bitcoin community and regularly spoke with them. Then, all of a sudden, he gave Gavin Andresen the keys and codes and transferred domains to community members. He had given up on the project by the end of 2010.

Then, on Saturday, April 23, 2011, the bitcoin creator returned to post his parting shot. When questioned by programmer Mike Hearn whether he intended to re-join the group, Satoshi responded:

“I’ve moved on to other things. It’s in good hands with Gavin and everyone.”

Satoshi Nakamoto

The man who had permanently compromised the banking system for good just vanished. Then why, though?

illustration by Cryptotactic.io

Satoshi’s bitcoin addresses contained around 1,000,000 BTC. He had more than US$19 billion in December 2017, when the price reached its high. Nakamoto temporarily had the 44th-highest net worth in the world at that time. And he hasn’t cashed a single bitcoin until now.

All this data shows something might have happened to the originator of bitcoin. I think Hal Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto .

Hal Finney unfortunately got an ALS diagnosis in 2009 and battled the disease until his passing in 2014. I suppose he generated the future of money, Then he passed away, leaving us with nothing except rumors regarding the real identity of the person who invented bitcoin.

Hal Finney, who was he?

Computer scientist Hal Finney received his degree from Caltech in 1979. He won the “most brains” award from his peers as a student. He enrolled in a gravitational field theory course intended for doctoral students during his first year of college. It seems that Finney had a high level of intelligence, which meets the first requirement for becoming Satoshi Nakamoto.

Students reportedly recall seeing Finney holding an edition of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. He may have easily developed libertarian ideas on life if he had been reading this type of literature.

His beliefs led him to a little-known community of free thinkers and programmers. He joined Cypherpunks at the beginning of the 1990s. This action was devoted to the “widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change.” They were self-proclaimed defenders of privacy and Finney put his understanding at their disposal to achieve the crypto-anarchist perspective.

Zimmermann and Finney were quite familiar with one another.

Hal replied to a message on the mailing list of Cypherpunk regarding the aforementioned Phil Zimmermann and his concept for PGP. He made contact with Phil and joined PGP Corporation as its first member, serving there until his retirement in 2011. Satoshi Nakamoto stopped working on bitcoin in the same year.

Finney significantly improved the new PGP protocol, but he had to keep his work under the shadows of the authorities. He was thus well aware of Phil’s PGP-related issues. I can understand his desire to hide his identity while establishing bitcoin.

He chose to be a guy from distant Japan, but why did he do that?

His imagined persona was really far more accurate than could be expected. He lived less than two kilometers from Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, a scientist. Finney could have assumed Nakamoto’s persona in order to hide his own. In fact, Temple City has just 36,000 residents, so what are the possibilities that both of them resided there? Too much of a coincidence that one cryptography mastermind has the same name as Bitcoin’s inventor?

I believe things happened a bit differently

I believe Hal Finney sent messages to himself from Satoshi’s account. I understand that it does sound strange. However, if you’re consciously attempting to conceal your involvement in the project, this is how to go about it. To test the transaction mechanism, he faked those messages and transferred the first bitcoins to himself that’s why He never returned their money

Hal Finney, according to Wikipedia, developed the first reusable proof-of-work system. This is, as you are well aware, the protocol that powers bitcoin. Additionally, Finney was fascinated by the concept of digital money in the 1990s. In 1993, he even invented his own money, the CRypto cASH.

Legacy

Even though Hal Finney has passed away, his contributions to humanity should not be forgotten. We should never forget the contribution he has made to bitcoin, even if I am mistaken and he isn’t the real Satoshi Nakamoto. He helped considerably in our battle for a brighter future.

For helping us to make better content please give us 10 seconds of your time by clicking on our website.

--

--

William Brucee
Blockchain Biz

Teacher | Frankfurt School Blockchain Center | Investor | Blockchain | Bitcoin | Crypto Assets | DeFi | Digital Euro