Key highlights
- Bitcoin was invented by a mysterious figure called Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008
- Nakamoto abruptly stopped working on the Bitcoin project in 2010 without providing a reason
- The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto is not resolved yet and crypto fans are still searching for viable candidates
Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonymous individual or group that created Bitcoin, the world’s first decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. The enigmatic Satoshi released the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008 and launched the Bitcoin network in early 2009. Satoshi’s true identity is still unknown despite an army of cryptocurrency fans who are looking for clues to this day. There are many plausible Satoshi Nakamoto candidates, including various cryptography and software development experts. However, there are also many rumors and baseless statement surrounding this enigmatic personality, whose invention is now worth over $210 billion after starting from practically nothing.
In this article, we’ll briefly touch on some of the individuals that are commonly discussed as Satoshi Nakamoto candidates in the cryptocurrency community.
Hal Finney
Hal Finney one of the most famous Satoshi Nakamoto candidates, and for good reason. Finney was a very skilled developer one of the first people to run the early Bitcoin codebase. He is a person with the required expertise to invent Bitcoin and he had libertarian political positions as well. However, Finney died in 2014 and no one can say for sure if he was Satoshi or not.
Nick Szabo
Computer scientist Nick Szabo created a project called bit-gold that was released before Bitcoin. He also invented the term “smart contracts” and commonly discusses cryptography. However, Szabo maintains he is not Satoshi Nakamoto, and has denied these claims on numerous occasions.
Dorian Nakamoto
Dorian Nakamoto is an American engineer of Japanese origin and he was identified as a Satoshi Nakamoto candidate in March 2014. The case for Dorian Nakamoto being Satoshi Nakamoto was made by Leah McGrath Goodman in a story published by Newsweek. Dorian Nakamoto immediately denied being the inventor of Bitcoin in a report by Associated Press.
Bram Cohen
Bram Cohen is the creator of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing protocol. There is no strong evidence connecting him to Satoshi Nakamoto and he has never claimed to be Nakamoto. However, there is some indirect evidence that makes him a somewhat plausible candidate. For instance, he shares the same year of birth with the mysterious Satoshi and he talked with Adam Back in 2000. Back is the creator of HashCash, and we can consider HashCash as an inspiration for Bitcoin’s proof-of-work design.
Adam Back
Adam is the CEO of Bitcoin software company Blockstream and was cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper. On May 11, 2020, a video uploaded on YouTube claimed that Back was the inventor of bitcoin. The name of this video was “Unmasking Satoshi Nakamoto”, and it amassed plenty of views.
One clue that’s often used to connect Back with Satoshi Nakamoto is that they both share a similar writing style. For example, both of them use double space and spell words in British English. Adam Back has denied these allegations strongly and also debated the issue on Twitter.
Final thoughts
There are many other candidates that we can put on this list, but at the end of the day, it’s not important who created Bitcoin. The important thing is the existence of Bitcoin in today`s world and we can already see its profound impact in the financial space and beyond.
