Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

As the cryptocurrency Bitcoin becomes increasingly popular the mystery surrounding its founding becomes more curious. In 2008 an article outlining the concept of Bitcoin was posted online under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi mined the first 50 bitcoins and defended the concept in online forums. Then, when the idea had enough traction he ‘disappeared’. Who is this person who created this currency tool which is so brilliant that even if it fails it will have revolutionized currency?

A few months ago Ted Nelson posted a video on YouTube with the title ‘I Think I Know Who Satoshi Is’. The nearly 13 minute long video is bizarre in its entirety. It includes what seems to be a lot of filler, such as a few minutes’ long reenactment of a discussion between Sherlock Holmes and Watson. It is only 8 minutes in when he finally announces Shinichi Mochizuki as Satoshi, and goes on to describe his very tenuous proof.

His claim is as follows: Shinichi Mochizuki is a genius who recently published some mathematics papers discreetly on the web, instead of submitting it to journals and getting it peer reviewed. These papers may revolutionize the field, the only problem is that no one has been able to comprehend them, and he has rejected offers to try to explain them. Nelson claims that this is the signature style of the ‘dance away genius’, and he is thus able to determine that Shinichi is in fact Satoshi.

Many bloggers and journalists have discredited this theory by bringing various explanations and facts about Shinichi. However, the theory is able to be disproven on a more fundamental level, because there is no logic to it. An analogy to the proof is as follows: I saw someone dressed in a disguise drop a suspicious package on my doorstep, which contained all sorts of goodies and instructions for how to use them. I tried to catch the guy, but he disappeared. Sometime later a man in a brown uniform yelled ‘UPS’ and dropped a box on my doorstep. This time the instructions were cryptic, and I tried to get him to explain them to me, but he refused. Despite the differences between these two scenarios, there are very strong similarities, so the mysterious man must have been this UPS employee.

Nelson admits that his argument is not solid, but calls it an Existence Proof. That name fits perfectly; it proves the existence of correlations between these two men, and that’s about it. Maybe that is enough in the fictitious stories of Sherlock Holmes, but it is not enough in this case. Nelson must have realized these flaws, so what is he up to? It takes some background knowledge to solve this puzzle, and to realize that in getting caught up in a detailed analysis of his claim, everyone has fallen into his trap and missed the entire point of the video.

Ted Nelson’s father was a director and his mother was an actress. He studied Philosophy, Sociology, and Media Theory, and was planning on becoming a director. At some point he learnt about computers and became obsessed with what he considered the modern Gutenberg printing press. These machines enable the construction of documents which are not constrained by physical properties, as is the case with real paper. As such one can explain an idea through a non-linear manner, which is important because complex ideas often lose value when forced into a box (the page). He envisioned electronic documents far more advanced than what we use today, which essentially imitate paper.

This would have been enough of a contribution for one man, but he went one step further. He realized that when computers are linked together and create a network, documents can lose another pesky property of paper, and that is location constraints. While my document will be stored on my computer, anyone with a connection to my computer can then access my ideas. In 1960 he founded Project Xanadu and has been working on this project for most of his life. You may wonder what the difference is between his vision and the internet we have today, based on HTML. According to Nelson “HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT— ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can’t follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management.”

Why is HTML so popular, despite all these issues, and why aren’t Nelson’s ideas implemented? The simplest answer is that engineers are lazy, and HTML is a simple quick fix. Another explanation is that Nelson isn’t a normal ‘techie’ (a term he often uses), and points this out quite often, ostracizing himself from the tech world.

If one knows all this, then one understands that the video is not about Satoshi at all, but rather it is about Ted Nelson. There are two points in the video when this is made abundantly obvious, but as opposed to the rest of the video when he talks very slow and articulates clearly, he says these passages fast and mumbled, so that if you’re not paying attention you won’t even hear, let alone understand them.

at 3:10 :

I feel a special kinship to him. I don’t have his brains or his capabilities, no, I am not Satoshi Nakamoto. But I too work alone on issues others do not recognize, beyond the boundaries of other’s accepted reality. I know what it’s like to be the only person in the world who understands something.

and at 11:05:

Given that I respect him so, why would I out a man who wants his privacy? First he always knew he would be ousted, the only question was when and by whom. And I might as well get the credit. If you’re aware of my work you’re aware that I've often been the first to know something but I've had a lot of trouble getting credit for it.

Unlike Shinichi who embodies the Japanese virtues of humility, Nelson has an ego which needs to be fed. This is not meant to deride him; Nelson may not be a dance away genius, but he is a genius nonetheless. He deserves more attention, and ego is an integral part of American culture (taken to an extreme in the film industry, which Nelson had contact with as a result of his parents occupation).

The video is not only a plea for attention, but is also a subtle attack on the techies who have largely rejected him. Techies have a fact fetish and are not able to cope with mystery or chaos. Therefore, the information of who Satoshi is becomes more of a priority than examining the philosophy behind Bitcoin, which Nelson starts his video doing. Also his theatrical Sherlock Holmes act is not only amusing but also admonishes techies for not being more cultured, and not reading more.

So who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Anonymous. Not the hacktivist group, although that’s a possibility. Satoshi is someone, or a group of people, who have chosen to remain private, for whatever reason, and we should respect them for that, even if it means dealing with a bit of uncertainty.

But, if you must know, Satoshi Nakamoto is Elon Musk.