As time went by – a brief history of the “hunt” for Satoshi Nakamoto

In this article we will briefly look at the timeline of the hunt for the identity of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. This is a chronological overview of the main media moves of the rods in an effort to “catch this fish.”

 

Search history of Satoshi Nakamoto

 

Although I tend to think that we should rather keep Satoshi’s identity under the guise of mystery, we will now wander through time and look at the greatest media discoveries.

 

As time went by, the list of suspects was supplemented by more and more names. Bitcoin celebrated 11 years and the hunt for Satoshi’s identity continues. So what do we know about Satoshi Nakamoto’s elusive?

 

The way back takes us until 2008. Satoshi Nakamoto published a document entitled “Bitcoin: Peer-to-Peer Electronic Monetary System.” A few months later, bitcoin software was launched. The founder’s activity ceased in 2010, when control was handed over to US software developer Gavin Andresen.

 

In 2011, Satoshi gave the community a final farewell and disappeared.

 

2011 – New Yorker looks for Satoshi

 

One of the first media hunt took place in New Yorker magazine. Journalist Joshua Davis attended a cryptography conference and expected to find Satoshi Nakamoto among the elite group. He addressed in the hope of Michael Clear, a cryptography student at Trinity College, Dublin. But he referred him to the Finnish researcher Vili Lehdonvirtu, who was interested in cryptocurrencies. In both cases it was a wound next door.

 

2011 – Fast Company

 

A Fast Company journalist discovered a line of text in Satohi’s whitepaper that corresponds to the line in a patent application filed just before the bitcoin.org domain registration. However, its creators Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry denied authorship. One of them said he had never heard of Bitcoin.

 

2013 – Nick Szabo

 

Nick Szabo was probably the first serious candidate. He is a computer scientist who brought a similar idea – Bit Gold – a decade before Bitcoin. Although Nick denied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, he referred to his work as a Bitcoin creator in his publication, and Bitcoin himself appears to be partly based on it.

 

2014 – Newsweek and Dorian S. Nakamoto

 

Dorian S. Nakamoto became the target of the hunt after being named by Satoshi Nakamoto, who was created Bitcoin, for his striking name by Newsweek. An unemployed Californian engineer vigorously denied his authorship and even threatened to sue the press that dragged him after the article was published. Dorian fought serious health problems and looked after a 93-year-old mother. The community organized a collection for him.

 

2014 – Forbes and Hal Finney

 

Another candidate for the catch of the year is one of the first programmers involved in Bitcoin. Finney became the first person to ever receive a bitcoin transaction. The sender was Satoshi Nakamoto. In addition, Hal lived very close to Dorian, much to speculate whether his name had inspired him. There is no evidence for this.

 

2016 – Craig Wright and David Kleiman

 

Kleiman,which died in 2013 is believed to be the most serious candidate in 2013, Craig Wright is the only one of our suspects ever to claim to be Satoshi. However, Wright made several false claims, which was also confirmed by the court in his dispute with the surviving Kleiman. This suggests that he might be a fraud.

 

Interestingly, according to the judgment, he should pay half a million bitcoins to his colleague’s family. The court ruled on Wright’s own assertion that they had worked together on Bitcoin before Kleiman’s death. Fortunately, so much BTC has not moved yet, and hopefully this will not happen.

 

2017 – Hackernoon and Elon Musk

 

One of the candidates was also entrepreneur Elon Musk. However, he denied the conclusions of the article on his possible dual identity, which appeared on the Hackernoon media account.

 

Summary

 

Satoshi wrote of himself that he is a Japanese national born in 1975. However, this is probably just camouflage. As time went by, candidate names were piled up on the list, and some even labeled themselves as creators of the BTC, although it has always turned out to be just the “Faketoshi.”

 

The media hunt never ends, and even if we want it, on the other hand, it is good that this book remains open and its author is unknown. We enjoy finding Satoshi, but it’s certainly good for Bitcoin that nobody is in the lead, and it should stay that way.