Who is Satoshi?
Satoshi Nakamoto, the father of Bitcoin, is a somewhat mysterious character. Nobody knows that the mythical unicorn known as Satoshi is a person or a group. That’s because Satoshi Nakamoto hasn’t been identified yet.
And despite the cloud of mystery surrounding his name, we do know a few things about him. Here are some interesting facts about the creator of Bitcoin.
Nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is. This name was used to submit a white paper on Bitcoin to a crypto mailing list. While the name is Japanese, the whitepaper is written in flawless English. Also, Satoshi addresses himself as “we” as well as “I,” which makes us believe that it’s a team behind this name. However, for simplicity. We’ll address him as an individual here.
It is estimated that Satoshi owns more than a million Bitcoins. This means his present net worth is about 6.5 billion dollars. He faded away from the scene in 2010, and it cannot be correctly estimated how much he owns. But with the help of correlation, it is estimated that a single entity started mining the Bitcoin blockchain from block one and had the same performance until the Genesis block in 2009, showing that it might be Satoshi.
1 million Bitcoins is a lot of money. Even if we assume that Satoshi Nakamoto is a 10-person team, it still means each individual in the group is worth a lot.
Some people speculate that a group of companies is behind the name. They believe that the name Satoshi Nakamoto is actually an acronym for SAmsung, TOshiba, NAKAmichi, and MOTOrola. Some other people think that Nick Szabo, a cryptographer is the real person behind Satoshi.
Nick came up with the concept of Bit Gold before Bitcoin came into being. His writing style also matches that of the whitepaper. While there are rumors about him being the real Satoshi, Nick has never accepted this.
Some other people assume it’s Hal Finney, a cryptographer. He was on the mailing list to receive Satoshi’s whitepaper. However, Hal hasn’t confirmed this hypothesis either.
Some crypto experts believe that Satoshi simply lost interest in Bitcoin and left the project. The coding was getting too difficult, and there were some flaws in the protocol that needed to be settled. Others believe that he’s still actively involved but with another pseudonym this time. And then some others think Satoshi left because he thought Bitcoin wouldn’t progress if he stuck around.
Before Satoshi left, he made a post on Wikileaks accepting Bitcoin. This makes some people believe that Satoshi got nervous about getting attention from Wikileaks and this is why he left.
While the real Satoshi Nakamoto is nowhere to be found, you can get a T-shirt that says “I am Satoshi Nakamoto.” Since nobody knows who he really is, why miss on the chance to claim his fame? This is probably why Craig Steven Wright, a computer scientist, claimed that he was the real Satoshi. However, he failed to provide a proof for the same.
There’s a lot of speculation about the real identity of Satoshi. And whoever he is, we must agree that Bitcoin, is a world-changing product.
