In 2007, the global economy entered a period of depression and the world-wide collapse of Lehman Brothers Bank in 2008 triggered the first economic crisis in the 21st century.
It was followed by a loss of control of the stock market and a series of banks and large corporations went bankrupt. At this time, the name Bitcoin - Satoshi Nakamoto first appeared.
Precisely in October 2007, Bitcoin was first mentioned in an article on peer-to-peer payment protocol by a character named Satoshi Nakamoto.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
Surely when you first hear it, you will think of this as a Japanese. Yes, this is definitely a Japanese name; But ironically, no one dares to claim Bitcoin's "father" is Japanese even though we have Satoshi's profile on the P2P Foundation.
Why? In the P2P Foundation file, this person claimed to be a man from Japan, born on April 5, 1975. However, some people have made some unusual points that this person is not the same as from Japan.
First of all, the whitepaper and some subsequent posts are perfectly written in English, as a person from the country using English as the mother language. Secondly, his rest time is very different from that of a person living in Japan.
A member on the Bitcointalk.org forum has a name Stefan Thomas pointed out timelines from more than 500 Satoshi posts. These timelines show that the author of Bitcoin didn't post anything between 2 pm and 8 pm Japan time.
So why didn't Satoshi Nakamoto announce his true identity? This is an interesting question; and after more than 11 years since Bitcoin was born, there have been many theories coming out to answer this question.
Why does Satoshi Nakamoto want to remain anonymous?
Hypothesis 1: Avoid being "touched" by the government
In the past, a case like this happened. In 1991, Phil Zimmermann - an activist who wanted to give dissidents a communication channel not subject to government probation - launched the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software. This software allows people to send encrypted messages to each other.
However, the US government realized the potential of this technology and confiscated it. PGP and Zimmermann later became the subject of criminal investigations.
The only thing this technology does is allow two individuals to communicate without eavesdropping. So imagine how the government will treat the creator of Bitcoin; when this technology allows free money transfer without a bank or a third party. A technology that keeps money out of government control.
Hypothesis 2: Due to being too rich
Currently, Satoshi is said to own more than 1 million Bitcoin; or more than 7 billion USD (calculated at current value).
This is a huge sum of money; is the bait in the eyes of governments (for tax purposes) and thieves.
Hypothesis 3: Because he is the father of an anonymous system
Bitcoin is a trading system that allows people to trade anonymously. And the fact that Bitcoin's anonymous father might be a plan to promote this special feature.
Satoshi Nakamoto's activities before disappearing
- August 2008: The domain name bitcoin.org is registered by Satoshi or his colleagues
- October 2008: Satoshi publishes a whitepaper of Bitcoin called "Dorian Nakamoto".
- Next, he created the bitcointalk forum and posted the first message under the pseudonym Satoshi
- January 3, 2019: Satoshi exploits the first Bitcoin block. This block is called Genesis or block number 0 with a block reward of 50 BTC.
- Satoshi worked with many other developers to revise the source code until mid-2010.
- He then handed over control of the source code repository and network warning key to Gavin Andresen. In addition, he transferred some related domain names to several prominent members of the community and then disappeared.
- During that time, he said that he started writing Bitcoin code in 2007.
The characters are said to be Satoshi Nakamoto
First character: Four big guys in technology
You may find this quite "mythical" and most unlikely. But when you combine the names of these corporations, you will read the name Satoshi Nakamoto
Second character: Dorian Nakamoto
Dorian Nakamoto is said to be Satoshi Nakamoto thanks to an article in March 2014 by Newsweek.
The article caused a stir in the cryptocurrency community because it was the first time that a mainstream publication was trying to find out the identity of the creator of Bitcoin.
Specifically, journalist Leah McGrath Goodman identified Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto as the creator of Bitcoin. This Japanese man lives in California
Leah gave a bunch of evidence to prove it. Among them, the most valuable evidence is that she asked Bitcoin-related questions in a live interview and Dorian answered:
I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss them. They have been transferred to others. Now they are responsible for them. I have no more connections.
However, Dorian later denied the connection with Bitcoin. He said he had misunderstood the reporter's question and said he had never heard of the currency before.
But surprisingly, Nakamoto's account posted the first message after five years, stating:
I am not Dorian Nakamoto.
An action that later, when many people voiced themselves as Satoshi Nakamoto, the owner of this account did not appear to deny.
Third character: deceased computer scientist - Hal Finney
It is known that Finney is the neighbor of Dorian Nakamoto. He is also one of the first members of the PGP project that Blogtienao mentioned in the section"The first theory: Avoid being" touched "by the government.. This led many to suspect that Finney had borrowed the name of her neighbor to hide her true identity.
Besides, he was one of the first people to have a positive view of the Bitcoin monetary system; a liberal and a very intelligent head ...
According to Forbes analyst Andy Greenberg's analysis, Finney is the most likely character of Satoshi Nakamoto of all the candidates.
However, after being shown by Finney a number of emails between him and Nakamoto together with Bitcoin wallet history (including the first Bitcoin transaction Nakamoto sent to Finney); Greenberg concluded that he was not the father of Bitcoin.
Hal Finney died on August 28, 2014 due to unilateral amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
But this very death reinforces the notion that he is the father of Bitcoin. Because since then, about 1 million BTC has not been moved to this day.
Fourth character: Craig Wright
It can be said that this character is the most noisy of all the candidates. According to a Wikipedia profile, Craig Wright is an Australian computer expert, scientist and businessman.
It all started in November 2015. At that time, the Gizmodo site received an anonymous email from an individual; said that Craig Wright was the creator of Bitcoin.
Wired and Gizmodo later opened two investigations and concluded that Wright could be Satoshi.
However, the above report has raised doubts about Wright is actually just a fraud.
Specifically, two hours after Wried published the report, Australian Federal police broke into Wright's house in Gordon, New South Wales - part of an Australian tax investigation.
As of May 2, 2016, the BBC and The Economist published articles saying Wright signed digital messages using the cryptographic keys generated during the early days of Bitcoin development.
These keys are closely linked to Bitcoin blocks that have been "mined" by Satoshi Nakamoto. On the same day, an article on the drcraigwright page posted a message with the encrypted signature attached.
However, security researcher Dan Kaminsky later wrote on his blog that Wright was just a crook; and Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik also agrees that the evidence provided publicly by Wright does not prove anything.
Wright simply reused the old signature from a Bitcoin transaction made in 2009 by Satoshi.
Earlier, in an interview with the BBC, Wright promised to present "extraordinary evidence for a special request". But so far, he has yet to provide any reliable evidence of his copyright over Bitcoin's whitepaper.
Another post on Cointelegraph also demonstrated that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. Accordingly, in his articles, Craig has revealed weaknesses in grammar and vocabulary. This is not the same as what Satoshi showed in Bitcoin Whitepaper.
More seriously, basic system security errors also frequently appear in his statements.
By May 2019, Wright began threatening to sue those who said he was not the father of Bitcoin and those who called him a fraud. Among them is Vitalik Buterin - the founder of Ethereum; Roger Ver - an early backer of Bitcoin; and Peter McCormack, a podcaster.
In addition to the above characters, there are still some other names suspected to be Satoshi Nakamoto: Nick Szabo, David Lee Chaum, Vincent van Volkmer or even artificial intelligence (AI).
The 44th richest person voted by Forbes
Although anonymous, but Satoshi really is one of the billionaires of the world. In 2017, when the price of BTC peaked near $ 20,000, Forbes put Satoshi Nakamoto on the list of the 50 richest characters in the world that year.
And with a 1 million BTC holdings, Satoshi Nakamoto will surely be the character "media" to seek out the true identity of one of the most mysterious characters of the 21st century.
0 Comments