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Satoshi Nakamoto Candidate Paul Le Roux to Start Bitcoin Mining Business After Prison Time

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A possible Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison. Criminal mastermind Paul Le Roux told the judge that upon his release he plans to “start a business selling and hosting bitcoin miners,” claiming that his ASIC chip design will “have an order of magnitude faster at bitcoin mining than any current design.”

Satoshi Nakamoto Candidate Paul Le Roux to Start Bitcoin Mining Business After Prison Time
image source: bitcoinexchangeguide.com

Satoshi Candidate to Start Bitcoin Business

Paul Le Roux, a criminal mastermind whose biography made him a possible candidate for Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of the Bitcoin creator, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison by Manhattan Federal Judge Ronnie Abrams. Having been in U.S. custody for almost eight years, he pleaded “guilty to crimes ranging from methamphetamine trafficking to selling weapons technology to Iran,” Wired described, adding that he “will be credited with his seven-plus years in custody.”

“The scope and severity of Mr. Le Roux’s criminal conduct is nothing short of breathtaking. I have before me a man who has engaged in conduct in keeping with the villain in a James Bond movie,” Judge Abrahms said.

In a letter sent to the judge prior to his sentencing, Le Roux revealed his future plans. “If I am released by this court, and by the court in the Philippines,” he informed the judge:

I plan to start a business selling and hosting bitcoin miners.

Satoshi Nakamoto Candidate Paul Le Roux to Start Bitcoin Mining Business After Prison Time
Paul Le Roux and his first known passport. Image courtesy of The Australian.

He added: “I have a custom design for an ASIC chip that utilizes special opitimizations in the underlying computer code or algorithm known as (‘SHA’). I obtained this knowledge about the mathematical properties of SHA, while working as a contract programmer at GCHQ in London in the early 2000’s.” Le Roux continued:

These optimizations have allowed me to create an ASIC chip design, and therefore ASIC miners, that have an order of magnitude faster at bitcoin mining than any current design, to this end I plan to pub my knowledge and skills to a better and legal use.

Paul Le Roux

The criminal mastermind was born on Dec. 24, 1972, in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, but was raised in South Africa. With minimal formal education, he dedicated himself to studying computer programming and electronic integrated circuit design (chip design), his letter to the judge explains. He added that as a contract programmer for GCHQ, the U.K. equivalent of the NSA, he assisted law enforcement in creating tools and disk encryption products to help the police and field agents secure their files and computers. He designed disk encryption software called Encryption for the Masses (E4M); its code formed the foundation for Truecrypt, one of the most secure and widely used encryption programs until it was abandoned by it anonymous creators it in 2014. The book entitled “The Mastermind” details that “Le Roux’s career was marked by technical brilliance and almost surreal levels of criminality,” author Evan Ratliff commented.

“In approximately 2004, I started a criminal U.S. online pharmacy business Rx Limited, and that is what brought me to the attention of federal agents,” Le Roux wrote. He was arrested in a sting operation orchestrated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2012. His online pharmacy was “a global criminal empire, trafficking in drugs, arms, and violence,” Wired described.

“As part of his cooperation agreement, Le Roux admitted to ordering at least seven murders in the Philippines, including the kidnap and execution of a real estate agent named Catherine Lee,” the publication noted. Upon his release, he is expected to be deported to the Philippines, where he faces charges related to an arms shipment intercepted by the government in 2009.

10 Clues That Point to Le Roux Building Bitcoin

For those intent on comparing Satoshi and Le Roux’s personas for similarities, there are several attributes and actions that align – plus a few that don’t. Given that both entities were adept at assuming false personas and concealing their natural language and idiosyncrasies, identification is no easy task. Here’s what’s known about the pair that points to them being the same person:

  1. The curious Satoshi/Solotshi monikers.
  2. Both were programmers familiar with C++.
  3. Both had a strong interest in cryptography and privacy.
  4. Both were wary of authority.
  5. Both had an interest in online gambling – Bitcoin’s initial code had a poker client included.
  6. Both were well aware of the difficulty with traditional payment systems, Le Roux on account of the illegal prescription drug racket he was running.
  7. Satoshi’s spelling and language – “analyse, colour, defence, bloody, hard” is consistent with Rhodesian Le Roux’s.
  8. Satoshi disappeared in early 2011 to “move on to other things” around the time that Le Roux was transitioning from software genius to cartel boss.
  9. With tens of millions of dollars in cash, Le Roux would have had no need to cash out his BTC once the price began rising.
  10. If anyone could have hidden wallets containing 1 million BTC, it would have been the creator of disk encryption software TrueCrypt.

And then there’s this post from 2002, seven years before Bitcoin was released:

Satoshi Nakamoto Could Be Criminal Mastermind Paul Le Roux

It doesn’t read like Satoshi’s voice, but it does read an awfully lot like someone’s early idea of Bitcoin. The IP address of the author has supposedly been traced to the Netherlands – a country where Le Roux once lived.

For all of the surface evidence that suggests Le Roux could have been Satoshi, not all of the points align. In 2009, for example, when Satoshi was diligently refining Bitcoin, Le Roux was already dabbling in drug smuggling and gun running. Would it have been possible to maintain such a double life, one chaotic and the other scholarly?

Would you buy bitcoin mining rigs from this ‘Satoshi’?

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All content in this article is for informational purposes only and in no way serves as investment advice. Investing in cryptocurrencies, commodities and stocks is very risky and can lead to capital losses.
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