SATOSHI Nakamoto is the founder of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
But what is the story behind Nakamoto and what is his net worth?
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym for the person or people who published the Bitcoin white paper and the concept of cryptocurrency on October 31, 2008.
The ‘genesis block’ of Bitcoin (the first Bitcoin) was mined on January 3, 2009, by Satoshi Nakamoto, which officially launched the blockchain.
In February 2009, Nakamoto created an online message board post dedicated to cryptocurrency, on the P2P Foundation forum and remained active until about 2010.
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In their first post, they said: “I’ve developed a new open source P2P e-cash system called Bitcoin.
“It’s completely decentralized, with no central server or trusted parties, because everything is based on crypto proof instead of trust.
“Give it a try, or take a look at the screenshots and design paper.”
Nakamoto sent their last email in April 2011 saying they had “moved onto other things.”
They haven’t been heard from since March 2014 when they posted in a forum: “I am not Dorian Nakamoto,” after Newsweek magazine named the Japanese-American physicist as the creator of Bitcoin.
Why was Bitcoin created?
Nakamoto created Bitcoin in response to the great financial crash of 2008 which showed the world’s biggest banks weren’t too big to fail.
Nakamoto wanted to take back financial control and give ordinary people a chance to take part in a decentralized financial system.
Bitcoin remains open-source to this day which means no one has the power to own or control it.
Who has been rumoured to be Satoshi Nakamoto?
Dorian Nakamoto
In 2014, Newsweek published an article entitled ‘The Face Behind Bitcoin’ and identified Dorian Nakamoto as the Bitcoin creator.
Dorian Nakamoto has, however, denied any involvement with Bitcoin.
Satoshi Nakamoto confirmed on an online Bitcoin forum that they are not Dorian Nakamoto which put an end to the rumors.
The crypto community raised more than 100 Bitcoin for Dorian Nakamoto, after they accused Newsweek of violating his privacy.
Hal Finney
Hall Finney was a computer scientist who died in 2014, aged 58.
Other than Nakamoto, Finney was allegedly the first person to have worked on improving Bitcoin’s open-source code.
He also received the first Bitcoin transaction in 2009.
Finney denied claims he was Satoshi Nakamoto, however.
Craig Wright
Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist, has claimed he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
Wright made the claims in 2016 after Wired Magazine released a profile on him titled ‘Is Bitcoin’s Creator this Unknown Australian Genius?’ which was based on documents leaked to Wired.
The documents included a paper on cryptocurrency supposedly published on Wright’s blog a few months before Bitcoin’s white paper was released.
Leaked emails about a ‘P2P distributed ledger’ also came to the surface.
But evidence proved this not to be true as the blog posts had been backdated.
Wired later took back its claim and edited its article.
Nick Szabo
Nick Szabo has also been rumoured to be Satoshi.
In 2015, The New York Times published an article titled ‘Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto and the Birth of Bitcoin’.
Szabo pioneered the concept of Smart Contracts in a 1996 paper titled ‘Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets’.
What is Satoshi Nakamoto’s net worth?
Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to have more than 1 million Bitcoins.
At today’s price, Nakamoto’s net worth is around $23 billion at least.
However, other than 10 BTC they transferred to Hal Finney in 2009, Nakamoto’s Bitcoin has never been moved and continues to lay dormant.