It’s been the greatest nerd hunt of the 21st century. Who is, or who was Satoshi Nakamoto? As nerd hunts go, though, the search for Satoshi has also been something of a non-starter. For several years, names like Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, Adam Back, and even that of the great Satoshi imposter Craig Wright, have been recycled over and over in an ever-repeating game of Bitcoin Guess Who.
Only rarely does anyone dive into the Satoshi Nakamoto mythos, only to resurface to boldly say: “Hey, sorry guys, but you’re all barking up the wrong tree completely.”
The Satoshi Nakamoto Origin Story
In 2008, and to simplify Satoshi Nakamoto’s origin story as concisely as possible, someone, or some group, went to great lengths to anonymously establish several ultra-secure email addresses before also registering the domain name bitcoin.org just as anonymously.
To this day, no one is 100% certain how Satoshi was able to register the bitcoin.org domain without leaving a single financial fingerprint. However, we do know that one email provider Satoshi was using, (anonymousspeech.com), was able to take payment for new email (but not hosting services) in E-Gold. (E-Gold being a now-defunct precursor to contemporary cryptocurrency.)
Anyone anywhere can also verify via Whois.com that bitcoin.org was initially registered to a company by the name of “Anonymousspeech LLC.” This implies that Satoshi and a Swiss national by the name of Michael Niklaus Weber, the founder of Anonymousspeech, may have collaborated in some way to secure bitcoin.org. (Presumably by Satoshi sending Weber some E-Gold to cover the cost of him registering bitcoin.org on his behalf.)
That said, Satoshi may have just as easily made use of a prepaid credit card to register bitcoin.org, before falsely identifying himself as “Anonymousspeech LLC.”
In either case, the steps which Satoshi took to communicate only via ultra-secure email providers, third-party domain registrars, and services like TOR (right from the beginning of his appearance online), suggest that Satoshi was keenly aware of the surveillance powers of agencies like the NSA. This is despite the fact that it would be four more years before the scope of such powers would be exposed by Edward Snowden.
Satoshi Secures His Scapegoats
Today, when names like Gavin Andresen and Adam Back are recycled by Bitcoin whitepaper whodunits, it is not because they once appeared on the Bitcoin scene organically.
Rather, on August 18, 2008, after Satoshi successfully registered bitcoin.org, he quickly got to work launching a cryptography-centric forum, one which still exists today in the form of bitcointalk.org.
On the surface, the aim of bitcoin.org was to give fellow cryptographers a place to review Satoshi’s work on Bitcoin. There was just one problem. It can take weeks, if not months, for a new forum to populate organically. Satoshi, therefore, began emailing several experts in cryptography directly to draw attention to his project.
Drawing direct attention to bitcoin.org in this way proved successful. Think of a name today connected with Bitcoin, and you’ll likely find the same name on the original Bitcoin mailing list.
In retrospect, it also seems to be the case that Satoshi was making plans to disappear right from the start. A second goal of bitcoin.org, therefore, seems to have been to find people who would continue to maintain and represent Bitcoin in the event of Satoshi going AWOL.
We see evidence of this in Satoshi Nakamoto’s immediate trust in people like the Icelandic student, Martti Malmi.
Shortly after discovering bitcoin.org (apparently by accident), Malmi was able to impress Satoshi with his ability to explain the underlying premise of Bitcoin better than Satoshi himself. Malmi subsequently took over the creation of all FAQ content on bitcoin.org, before shortly after taking over official ownership of the entire forum.
As one of the only original Bitcoin miners (if not the only miner after Satoshi), there is also a case to be made that Malmi, a child prodigy who learned to code at the age of 12, might actually be Satoshi. However, when it comes to unmasking the genius behind Satoshi Nakamoto, it quickly becomes clear that Satoshi was a master of subterfuge.
Whatever You Do, Don’t Follow the Breadcrumbs
Just five months after establishing bitcoin.org, Satoshi himself began mining the Bitcoin genesis block. When he did, he left a short message in microcode within the genesis block itself, one which is preserved to this day on the Bitcoin blockchain. “The Times 03/Jan/2009,” it reads. “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
As Bitcoin by nature is inflation-proof and decentralized, Satoshi seemed to be saying, “Welcome to Bitcoin, the solution to the current global financial crisis.” However, his use of a reference to the UK newspaper, The Times, and his use of the UK time and date format, seems to also suggest that Satoshi Nakamoto himself was British.
In a way, Satoshi fired the starting gun for the greatest nerd hunt of the 21st century all by himself. Specifically, by giving the world its first real hint to his true identity. However, this message would eventually prove to be one of several carefully placed breadcrumbs, none of which really help us identify the real persona behind Nakamoto. In fact, the more breadcrumbs one discovers, the more obscure the true identity of Satoshi becomes.
- Remember Michael Niklaus Weber, the founder of anonymousspeech.com who accepted E-Gold payments and who likely assisted in the purchase of bitcoin.org? Well, at the time that bitcoin.org was registered, Weber was himself residing in Tokyo. This isn’t a suprise, as Anonymousspeech LLC was then registered at a physical address in Nakano-ku, Tokyo-to, Japan. Weber would also later post occasionally on bitcoin.org. Whenever he did, he, like Satoshi, would also appear to use British spelling and grammar; and like Satoshi, use the term “block chain,” as opposed to “blockchain.
- As well as the alias “Satoshi Nakamoto” being a quite common name in Japan, it can also be translated in Chinese to mean “the wise one of the Chinese currency.”
- Those who have studied the posting behavior of Nakamoto on bitcoin.org prior to his disappearance have discovered that Satoshi’s posting patterns match those of a college or university student. This is thanks to Satoshi only posting sporadically during academic term times, as opposed to more frequently between semesters.
- The penchant for embedding sneaky political messages in code, like Satoshi did with his Times newspaper headline, is one shared by another contributor to bitcoin.org, the British cryptographer Adam Back, who (at the time of writing) is the current CEO of Blockstream.
- For some reason, a full copy of the Bitcoin whitepaper has been hidden as an Easter egg in the code of every Apple computer since the release of macOS Mojave in 2018. This is despite Apple as a company having shown long-standing disinterest in participating in the Bitcoin or wider crypto ecosystem. Some, though, suggest that the whitepaper being present in macOS is evidence that Satoshi may have been an Apple software engineer or perhaps even the late great Steve Jobs.
- The bibliography of the Bitcoin whitepaper, which Satoshi released on Halloween 2008, is clumsy and disorganized. Most academics reading it would subsequently assume that whoever Satoshi is, he has never been a student of higher education.
- The lengths to which Satoshi went to disguise his identity have proved impossible to thwart, despite over a decade of intense investigations. This suggests a level of cybersecurity awareness comparable to employees of three-letter agencies, like the NSA or CIA.
- On the official profile for Satoshi Nakamoto on the Peer to Peer Foundation website, Satoshi lists his birthday as April 5, 1975, and his country of residence as Japan.
- Several programming experts familiar with Bitcoin say that Bitcoin’s coding is simply too perfect to be the work of a single individual. More likely, they argue, Bitcoin was originally the result of a team collaborating for several months or even years before Nakamoto made the decision to present the code publicly.
In short, every time one finds a breadcrumb pointing to the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, it inevitably leads down one of several different rabbit holes.
Was Satoshi the Icelandic student genius Martti Malmi? Did Satoshi ever study at university? Was Satoshi British or just pretending to be British? Might Satoshi be Adam Back? Or was Satoshi always the Swiss privacy-focused tech mogul and early E-Gold adopter, Michael Niklaus Weber?
Alternatively, was Satoshi always Nick Szabo, the cryptographic father of smart contracts and early precursor projects to Bitcoin itself?
There are even breadcrumbs in the Satoshi origin story that place him at a gay guesthouse in Tokyo at one point.
Frustratingly, it eventually becomes clear that every breadcrumb we think might unravel the mystery of Satoshi’s identity has been intentionally placed. This means that Satoshi didn’t post on bitcoin.org during the same times a student might. Rather, he posted when he did to purposefully appear as a student.
Likewise, Satoshi didn’t share the same spelling and grammar as people like Weber. Neither did he really have a habit of leaving political Easter eggs in code like Adam Back. (After all, he only left one, possibly two.)
Satoshi was simply mimicking these people’s known behaviors, knowing that doing so would better obfuscate his identity later.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
To tell a lie is one thing. However, to obfuscate the truth so completely in the so-called information age is nothing short of astonishing. This accomplishment also suggests that Satoshi Nakamoto was never a mere individual.
Let us remember that Bitcoin is a technology which demands expertise in several disparate fields to create anew singlehandedly. Satoshi, therefore, wasn’t just a cryptographer; he was an outstanding programmer, had expertise in computer science, distributed computing, peer-to-peer networks, game theory, human psychology, national and international monetary policy, law, economics…
And he just came out of nowhere, before going back to wherever he came from in the blink of an eye.
In effect, Satoshi birthed the most magical technological unicorn of the century. One which by now makes him just as rich as Bill Gates. And then he just disappears. This, and presumably watches from the sidelines as several hundred thousand people adopt, copy, and piggyback his creation, and become obscenely wealthy in the process.
I’m sorry, but none of this makes any sense. That is unless Satoshi simply never existed in the first place. What makes more sense, when we look at how choreographed his attempts were to appear as different people like Adam Back and Michael Niklaus Weber, is the premise that Satoshi Nakamoto was always just a persona put together in the same way as a CIA, NSA, MI5, or Mossad shell company.
Satoshi Wanted an Equitable World – But Then He Suddenly Didn’t
From the very beginning, there is clear evidence that Satoshi was using bitcoin.org to connect several individuals who Satoshi hoped would continue to maintain and represent Bitcoin in his absence. However, there is also evidence that Satoshi made his exit from the emerging Bitcoin scene significantly sooner than he originally thought he might.
In June 2010, the infamous whistleblowing website WikiLeaks was featuring almost daily in global news headlines. The cyberpunk group’s exposure of U.S. atrocities in the Middle East was making America furious. Several U.S. Senators were subsequently successful in pushing for a complete financial blockade of the organization. That was at least until some in the still-fledgling bitcoin.org community began to sympathize with WikiLeaks’ plight.
In early 2011, one poster on bitcoin.org made a suggestion to Nakamoto himself that they should reach out to WikiLeaks to suggest that WikiLeaks start using Bitcoin to circumvent the then-financial blockade imposed on them. However, Nakamoto wasn’t just unhappy with this suggestion. Rather, he was openly hostile to it. Then, shortly after, Nakamoto bid farewell forever to bitcoin.org with the simple message that he had: “Moved on to other things.”
The Case for the CIA or NSA Creating Bitcoin
There are several reasons why Nakamoto might have felt it necessary to flee the Bitcoin scene in 2011.
If WikiLeaks were to begin accepting Bitcoin, Bitcoin was certain to become the next day’s headline news. This would subsequently put Bitcoin and all participants in bitcoin.org in the spotlight of global intelligence agencies.
If Bitcoin was a clandestine operation by a three-letter agency of the U.S. government, it might also be very embarrassing for that agency to suddenly have Bitcoin become the savior of WikiLeaks, a group which other agencies were then hell-bent on obliterating.
As it came to pass, Bitcoin was subsequently thrust into the global news spotlight. As predicted, the CIA also immediately took interest. This interest saw the CIA formally invite Gavin Andresen, the person Satoshi left in charge of Bitcoin, to a meeting to explain exactly what Bitcoin was in June/July 2011.
Back in the Early Days Bitcoin Was Still Vulnerable
When I say that Satoshi seems to have left the Bitcoin scene much earlier than he anticipated, I don’t say so lightly. In his own words, Satoshi was doubtful that the then-fledgling Bitcoin network would be able to handle any significant number of transactions to WikiLeaks.
The scale of the Bitcoin network at this point would also make the cryptocurrency very easy for the likes of the CIA or NSA to obliterate if they so wished. At this time, there were still very few people mining Bitcoin and processing Bitcoin transactions. The fledgling cryptocurrency was also reeling from the closure of the first Bitcoin exchange, BitcoinMarket, due to PayPal wishing to sever ties with the currency.
February 2011 had also seen bitcoin.org user Ross Ulbricht already establish the Silk Road Dark Net marketplace where Bitcoin was the preferred way for people to purchase illicit drugs and services. Several three-letter security agencies, therefore, had both the power and the motive to take down Bitcoin completely if they so wished. All they would have had to do is start mining the currency themselves, before staging a 51% attack on Bitcoin, thereby invalidating its feasibility as a currency. Alternatively, a simple DDoS attack on the few hundred people running Bitcoin nodes would have been enough to deal a death blow to Satoshi Nakamoto’s unicorn gone rogue.
This then poses the question: Why the hell didn’t they?
Imagine a Boot Stamping on a Human Face Forever
I am not alone in my supposition that Satoshi Nakamoto never existed. Neither am I alone in my supposition that the Bitcoin origin story is really the story of a branch of the CIA or NSA pretending to be a grassroots cyberpunk movement here to liberate humanity from the shackles of the current financial status quo. Recently, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson hit the headlines by presenting the very same supposition.
As for why an agency like the CIA or NSA might have given us the gift of cryptocurrency in the first place, there are several reasons.
Physical cash is problematic for governments. They have to trust that people like service staff in restaurants will declare their tips, so that governments can tax them. Governments also like to know what you are doing with your money. If you buy a Rolex in cash and stash it somewhere, that Rolex won’t be on any list of your assets in the event that you default on a loan and someone comes to seize what you own.
For several years, society has subsequently been coached to accept the idea of a one-day “Cashless Society.” Namely, an economy where physical cash is completely replaced with digital information.
Bitcoin, to put it as simply as possible, has always just been a clever way to slowly condition humanity to think of cryptocurrency as cool, not a looming totalitarian nightmare of total financial state surveillance and interference.
This, of course, is very uncomfortable for most people to think about. However, the idea of the likes of the CIA creating Bitcoin is much more logical than the premise of a single man creating Bitcoin. After all, by now that man is the poorest richest man in the world. And although he’s such an expert at being anonymous, he doesn’t touch his Bitcoin billions simply because…
Well, because…