City of London
The anonymous identity of the creator of Bitcoin remains the most notable mystery within the cryptocurrency field, with numerous speculations on who (or how many) is Satoshi Nakamoto. The latest research on the matter asserted that Nakamoto lived and worked on BTC from London.
Although the cryptocurrency community has seen a few claims (read mostly Craig Wright) insisting that they are Satoshi Nakamoto, the true identity of this mystery man (or men) is still a speculation, at best.
A new study from The Chain Bulletin dived into some of Nakamoto’s earlier public posts. Those included 539 Bitcointalk publications, 169 SourceForge commits, 34 emails, and “other available data.”
This analyzed activity transpired from October 31st, 2008, when he first announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, and end on December 13th, 2010. At that point, Nakamoto sent his last email that “is known to be UTC timestamped.”
By using the available data, the researchers compiled scatter charts in different suspect time zones to see when Nakamoto was active. The most probable locations and timezones were UK (GMT), US Eastern (EST), US Pacific (PST), Japan (JST), and Australia (AEST). While the last two were easily debunked, the first three locations required further examination.
The most significant clue suggesting that Satoshi was indeed residing in London, and not in the other two possible locations, during Bitcoin’s inception days comes from the genesis block’s message.
That message contained the now-famous headline of an article from The Times that ran on January 3rd, 2009 – the day the BTC network came into existence. The headline reads, “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
According to the researchers, only the print edition of The Times distributed in England carried that title. The online version had the chancellor’s name in the headline as well. In contrast, the US edition of the paper didn’t even publish the story.
Further data from the National Readership Survey from 2008 shows that about 43% of The Times’ readers are located in London. This, “coupled with London being the largest financial hub in the world, makes it highly probable that Satoshi lived in London in the period between 2008 and 2010.”
Nevertheless, the paper admitted that it’s “impossible to say with absolute certainty where Satoshi lived when he was working on Bitcoin.” However, all of the available data suggest with “reasonable confidence” that he was in England’s capital city – London.
