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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
The incentive to stay anonymous.Who is the Real Satoshi Nakamoto? Possible Answers and IdentitiesNick SzaboWe mentioned Nick Szabo’s name earlier in this chapter. Nick is a reclusive American computer programmer best-known for creating the world’s first idea for a cryptocurrency. Szabo created BitGold in 1998. The project laid the foundation for a cryptographically-secured online currency. However, the currency was never launched. Szabo, to his credit, has continuously and vehemently denied any connection to Satoshi Nakamoto and has no public connection to the bitcoin project, although he remains involved in the crypto industry to this day.Craig Steven WrightDr. Craig S. Wright is the only individual on this list to actually claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto. Everyone else has publicly denied any connection to Satoshi. Dr. Wright chose a different path. In December of 2015, a number of media outlets identified Dr. Wright as the creator of bitcoin. Dr. Wright refused any press statements, which of course led to increased speculation.Soon after, Dr. Wright’s house was raised by Australian tax authorities, sending speculation into a feverish pitch. In May 2016, Dr. Wright finally admitted the truth in a blog post: he was Satoshi Nakamoto.Hackers attacked Dr. Wright’s emails, uncovering an email that revealed Satoshi Nakamoto to be a joint pseudonym used by Dr. Wright and David Kleiman, a computer forensic science specialist who has since passed away. Dr. Wright and Kleiman were business partners (in late 2017, meanwhile, it was announced that Kleiman’s family was suing Dr. Wright for bitcoins the pair supposedly mined during the early days of bitcoin).How did Dr. Wright prove he was Satoshi? Well, he couldn’t. Dr. Wright posted proof online, but that proof was quickly debunked by members of the Bitcoin Core development team. They claimed anyone could have made that proof, and there was nothing within that proof to show that Craig was definitely Satoshi.The raid by Australian tax authorities, meanwhile, also had nothing to do with bitcoin. The Australian government claimed they were investigating Dr. Wright’s general business dealings for reasons outside of crypto.Ultimately, Dr. Wright would later withdraw his claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto. The entire chapter remains a bizarre blip in the history of bitcoin. Some continue to believe that Dr. Wright is Satoshi. There’s no doubt he was there during the earliest days of bitcoin’s launch (he was one of the first to mine a large amount of bitcoin), but it’s unclear
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