Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Satoshi Nakamoto was the author of the Bitcoin whitepaper and was active on cypherpunk mailing lists where like-minded people discuss ways of reclaiming personal privacy in the electronic age. After publishing the original whitepaper, Satoshi continued to participate on Bitcoin forums until December 2013, and then vanished.

Satoshi Nakamoto also owns or controls a significant number of bitcoins, estimated in 2013 by cryptocurrency security consultant Sergio Lerner at 1 million bitcoins. This represents just under 5% of the total 21m bitcoins that will ever be created, if the protocol rules don’t change. If Satoshi ever moves any bitcoins thought to be associated with him, the community would immediately find out. The transactions would be visible on the blockchain and addresses thought to be associated with Satoshi Nakamoto are monitored.

Satoshi’s real-world identity matters because, if the real person or group of people were discovered, their views and voice could dominate the future of Bitcoin. However, this centralisation is what they are trying to avoid. They would also have extremely high personal security risk. It is never a good idea for people to know (or even believe) that you have significant amounts of wealth, especially in cryptocurrency.

There have been a number of high profile attempts at exposing Satoshi’s identity. These are known in the industry as ‘doxxings’: the public revelation of an internet nickname’s real-world identity. It is however highly unlikely that the real truth about Satoshi’s identity is among these doxxings.

If you decide to do some sleuthing, there are a few things to remember that people seem to have forgotten: a digital signature proves possession and use of a private key, but private keys can be shared among multiple people. So you cannot guarantee the mapping of private key to an individual. Private keys can also be lost. An email address can be shared. A whitepaper can be written collaboratively, so grammatical clues simply reveal the habits of the editor, not necessarily those of the author. It is very hard to tie the identity of an individual to the author of a paper. On the other hand, it may be better if Satoshi Nakamoto is not found.