Satoshi Nakamoto is the biggest mystery in the cryptocurrency world. Satoshi Nakamoto was used as a pseudonym in the bitcoin whitepaper.
The person/persons still remains a mystery, however many people have claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto but there has been no hard proof.
Satoshi was very active in the development of bitcoin and solved a few bugs until December 2010.
First few years of the development of Bitcoin
In 2007, Satoshi Nakamoto began writing the code for bitcoin and in August 2008 the domain name bitcoin.org was registered.
In October of 2008, Nakamoto mailed the Bitcoin whitepaper to a mailing list on metzdowd.com and called it “Bitcoin – A peer-to-peer cash system”.
The mailing list consisted of cryptocurrency enthusiasts like Nick Szabo and Hal Finney.
On 3rd January 2009, The first block or the genesis block or block number zero was mined for a block reward of 50 bitcoins.
Hal Finney was one the first person to mine Bitcoin and Nakamoto first sent him 10 bitcoins and then the remaining 40 bitcoins.
Satoshi was very active in the development of Bitcoin for the first few years until the end of 2010.
Gavin Anderson, a Bitcoin core developer and an early adopter of bitcoin was given the source code key.
“There is more work to do” was the last message by Satoshi Nakamoto and ended all connections.
Nakamoto transferred several domain to prominent names in the cryptocurrency space before ending communication with the world.
Understanding identity and the alleged people behind Satoshi Nakamoto
Since its release in 2008, the creator/creators of Bitcoin have been a mystery.
Journalists and investigating agencies from around the world have been trying to find the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
Some consider Satoshi Nakamoto to be a group of people or more than one individual as the code was written very well to be written by a single person.
Gavin Anderson says Satoshi Nakamoto was a brilliant coder and is a genius. However, he wasn’t sure if Satoshi Nakamoto was an individual or a group of people.
Craig Wright: Self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto?
Craig Wright is an Australian born computer scientist living in the United Kingdom.
He has worked with OzMail, Australian Securities Exchange, and Lasseter’s Online, the world’s first online casino founded in 1999.
Wright also served as the CEO of Hotwire PE, a technology company.
Wright publicly claimed he was part of the team behind Satoshi Nakamoto and created Bitcoin in 2007-08.
Prominent news publications and investigation authorities have denied the fact that Craig Wright is the person behind Satoshi Nakamoto.
Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin developer, and Dan Kaminsky, a Security researcher stated that the evidence provided by Craig did not prove he is the creator behind Bitcoin.
Craig Wright has also been called Hoax and also a self-proclaimed creator of Bitcoin.
Craig Wright and Dave Kleiman
Craig Wright claimed that Dave Kleiman was involved in the creation of Bitcoin. Kleiman is a computer science expert and has written multiple books.
Dave Kleiman passed away in 2013 and his estate claimed 550,000 bitcoin half of the total mined by Satoshi Nakamoto.
However, a Florida Jury in December 2021 stated that Wright does not own Kleiman’s estate of the 550,000 bitcoins and the jury awarded Kleiman’s estate $100 million in IP rights
Ira Ira Kleiman, Dave Kleiman’s brother had filed the case against Craig Wright. Dave and Craig had been close friends from 2003 until he passed away in 2013.
Hal Finney: The first bitcoin miner
Hal Finney was a developer and was behind the team which developed many console games. Finney was an early bitcoin adopted and the first person to mine bitcoin.
Satoshi transferred the 50 BTC reward of the first block to Hal Finney. Finney has been suspected to be part of the team that created bitcoin. However, there is no proof that Hal Finney is Satoshi Nakamoto.
Finney has been an advocate for bitcoin since the very beginning and programmed even after being diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Finney has been credited to create the first Proof of Work system in 1999. His Proof of Work mechanism has been used in the creation of bitcoin and blockchain.
Finney had been a very active programmer until his death on August 28th, 2014 due to ALS.
Gavin Andresen: Bitcoin core developer
Gavin Andresen was Satoshi Nakamoto’s lead developer and was involved in the development since 2010. In 2010, Satoshi gave the keys for the development of bitcoin to Gavin.
Andresen has been an advocate for Bitcoin since the very beginning and also found many bugs in the code.
Andresen also founded the Bitcoin foundation in 2012. Media outlets have also called Gavin as Satoshi Nakamoto. However, he believes Craig Wright is the real person behind Satoshi Nakamoto.
In 2014, Gavin stepped back as the lead maintainer of Bitcoin.
According to Entrepreur.com Gavin Anderson has a net worth of $100 million as of November 2021.
Dorian Nakamoto
Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto is a Japanese man who has been living in California his birth name was Satoshi Nakamoto.
Many media outlets believed he is the real person behind Satoshi Nakamoto.
Reporters also camped and chased Dorian Nakamoto by car. After which Dorian Nakamoto stated he has not been involved in the creation of bitcoin and does not own any Bitcoin.
Dorian Nakamoto stays a few blocks away from Hal Finney which made many of them believe he is the real person behind Satoshi Nakamoto.
Who is the true Satoshi Nakamoto?
Now after all of the guessing and predictions, the real Satoshi Nakamoto is not known. Craig Wright claims to be the person behind Satoshi Nakamoto, however, the is no hard proof he is the person behind it.
The real Satoshi Nakamoto could be a group of people or a couple of people who do not want to reveal their identity.
According to Craig Wright, Dave Kleiman and he are the people who created bitcoin. But the true identity would be revealed if he is able to move the 1.1 million bitcoins Satoshi Nakamoto minded in 2008.
Hal Finney, Gavin Andresen, Dorian Nakamoto, & Nick Szabo are speculated to be Satoshi Nakamoto but all of them have denied it. Craig Wright has been the only person who claimed he is the person behind Satoshi Nakamoto.
Is Satoshi Japanese?
The use of the English Language was more British and Satoshi Nakamoto used words like Colour, Bloody Hard, Maths, and Flat on the source code comments.
A native Japanese individual would not use words like these and Satoshi sounded more British than Japanese.
Satoshi Nakamoto is considered to be of Common Wealth origin and not Japanese. However, there is no proof that Nakamoto is not Japanese.
The Tulip Trust and where is Satoshi Nakamoto’s BTC stored?
Tulip Trust is the trust created by Craig Wright and Dave Kleiman.
The trust stores around 1.1 million in bitcoins owned and mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, according to Craig Wright.
Dave Kleiman and Wright have been friends since 2003 and according to Wright, they both started working on Bitcoin in 2007.
The Tulip Trust is an arrangement between Wright and Kleiman. The Tulip Trust also states that if Wright dies before 2020 his bitcoins would be transferred to Ramona Watts, his wife. However, if Kleiman dies his bitcoins would be transferred to Wright after 15 months.
Kleiman died in April 2013 and Kleiman’s family is after his share.
The legal ongoing battle between Kleiman’s estate and Wright would decide the ownership of the Bitcoins.
There is very little known about the Tulip Trust and whether or not it even exists or contains bitcoins.
Wright stated that the Tulip Trust does not contain the bitcoins but controls them via an encrypted file.
The keys are divided amount the participants of the trust and he does not have the entire decrypted file.
Shamir’s Secret Sharing (SSS) stores the encrypted keys for the Satoshi bitcoins and are divided among the participants of the trust.
How much is Satoshi Nakamoto net worth?
First to understand how much is Satoshi Nakamoto worth you would need to know how many bitcoins does Satoshi Nakamoto owns.
The price of bitcoin is very volatile hence Nakamoto’s net worth keeps changing every year.
Satoshi Nakamoto owns a little over 1.1 million Bitcoins and the price of Bitcoin at the time of writing this article is $50.9 billion
Satoshi owns the most amount of Bitcoins and is considered to be one of the richest people in the world.
How many Bitcoins does Satoshi Nakamoto own?
According to the analyst at Whale Alert, Satoshi Nakamoto owns 1,125,150 million bitcoins.
Satoshi Mined 54,316 blocks to mine the cryptocurrency. The bitcoins are stored in multiple wallets.
None of the bitcoins mined by Satoshi Nakamoto have been moved.
According to Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed creator of bitcoin, the bitcoins are stored in the Tulip Trust he created with Dave Kleiman.
Was Satoshi Nakamoto a team of people?
Gavin Anderson, a bitcoin core developer and the founder of the bitcoin foundation says the Bitcoin code was written very well to written by one person.
If Satoshi Nakamoto was a single person he would be a genius. He believes the bitcoin software has been written by more than 1 person and there have been very few bugs in the system.
Hal Finney, the first Bitcoin miner and the creator of the Proof of Work System also believes the code could not have been written by one person.
Craig Wright claims he and Dave Kleiman have written the code and had been working on the system since 2007. However, some experts say he is not the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
To conclude, the real Satoshi Nakamoto and the persons/ person behind the creation of Bitcoin is still the greatest mystery in the cryptocurrency space.