Popular Science: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin?

The most mysterious person in the blockchain world is none other than Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin . There have always been many legends about him, just like the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang, we only know that it existed but we don’t know what it was like.

The only thing that is certain now is that Satoshi Nakamoto was the first miner of Bitcoin, and it is estimated that Satoshi Nakamoto owns nearly 1 million Bitcoins.

With the Internet so advanced today, how did Satoshi Nakamoto manage to remain "invisible"?

Satoshi Nakamoto’s traceable trajectory

Let's review the trajectory of Satoshi Nakamoto from his appearance to his disappearance:

On November 1, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", announcing to the world for the first time that he had invented Bitcoin.

On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first Bitcoin block, also known as the Genesis block, and received a system reward of 50 bitcoins.

On February 11, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto registered the P2P Foundation. According to the information, Satoshi Nakamoto is a 43-year-old Japanese male. It is unknown whether the information is true or a trick of Satoshi Nakamoto. On the same day, Satoshi Nakamoto claimed that he had developed an electronic cash system called Bitcoin and provided open source code.

On December 5, 2010, during the WikiLeaks leak of US diplomatic cables, the Bitcoin community called on WikiLeaks to accept Bitcoin donations to break the blockade. In order to protect the nascent Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto stood up without hesitation and firmly opposed the donation. His reason was that Bitcoin was still very weak and could not withstand shocks and controversies.

On December 12, 2010, Nakamoto published his last article in the Bitcoin forum, mentioning some minor issues in the latest version of the software. Since then, he has only kept in touch with a few people in the Bitcoin core development team through email and no longer made any public statements.

On April 26, 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote in an email: "I have moved on to other things." From then on, Satoshi Nakamoto's email was closed.

In 2014, Newsweek published a news report stating that it had found Satoshi Nakamoto himself - Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto; on September 13, Satoshi Nakamoto suddenly posted a message denying the matter, and subsequently, Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto also stated that he was not Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin.

Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto

On November 29, 2018, the "Satoshi Nakamoto" account posted a status with only one word "Nour" after many years, which caused heated discussions in the Bitcoin community, but it is not known whether it was a hacker attack or the real Satoshi Nakamoto was behind it.

How did Satoshi Nakamoto become "invisible"?

What is puzzling is that now that the Internet is so developed, the government, media, Bitcoin enthusiasts, hackers and other people are trying their best to "human flesh search" Satoshi Nakamoto, but so far nothing has been found.

"Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?" has become the biggest mystery in the cryptocurrency world. So, how did Satoshi Nakamoto manage to remain invisible?

The answer is, because he is meticulous and careful in his actions, and has excellent hiding abilities.

He registered the domain name "http://bitcoin.org" on August 18, 2008, and registered "http://bitcoin.net" for protection.

The domain name registrar chosen by Satoshi Nakamoto can provide anonymity for users' domain name registrations, ensuring that they will not be searched by humans or retrieved by the government. As it turned out, they did it, and Satoshi Nakamoto was not wrong.

In order to hide himself, Nakamoto used Tor Browser (an encrypted browser) to send emails, and used PGP encryption and Tor network to communicate with anyone, even with his closest partners, and never disclosed personal information. He also used disguised British spelling, Japanese names, imitating other people's writing styles and other tricks, which worked well.

Now, although numerous researchers and intelligence personnel have investigated his true identity, it has not been verified to date.

Various “versions” of Satoshi Nakamoto

There are five main versions of "Satoshi Nakamoto" circulating in the market:

1. Aliens

Some people boldly speculated that it might be like the common plot in science fiction movies, that on a dark night with high stars, the alien Satoshi Nakamoto quietly came to the earth in a flying saucer and uploaded the open source code of Bitcoin to the Internet. When his glorious mission was completed, he chose to leave quietly without taking a cloud with him.

2. Future Traveler

Some people have the wildest imagination and believe that Satoshi Nakamoto might be a person from the future who traveled to this era and created Bitcoin in order to balance the capital of the current economic society.

3. Passed away

Some people speculate that Satoshi Nakamoto may have suffered a serious illness or encountered an accident and died in 2011. Therefore, the Bitcoin private key held by Satoshi Nakamoto also disappeared, and more than 1 million Bitcoins will remain dormant forever.

4. A team

Some people have studied the Bitcoin code and think it is too sophisticated to be written by a single person, but more like a team. This team may be composed of top talents, and the creation of Bitcoin was a long-term plan that took several years to develop and finally took shape.

5. British

The reason is that he speaks fluent British English, his time difference shows that he mainly lives in the United States, and he has a Japanese name, so he is a British person living in the United States in Japanese clothes. But these characteristics may also be a trick used by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Finally, you may be curious and ask, with such great achievements and huge wealth, why does Satoshi Nakamoto still hide himself?

One of the speculations is that Satoshi Nakamoto may be very persistent in the concept of decentralization. He feels that only if he disappears can the Bitcoin system be securely decentralized.

Just imagine, if Satoshi Nakamoto were still alive, the Bitcoin Foundation would still be led by him. If the government approved the arrest of Satoshi Nakamoto, it would be a devastating blow to the Bitcoin community.

Regardless of whether Satoshi Nakamoto is "he", "they", or "it", Satoshi Nakamoto has changed the world. Everyone who has contributed or is contributing to Bitcoin is actually Satoshi Nakamoto!