Bitcoin has become a multi-billion dollar thing of the world!
Yet, the ‘Father of Bitcoin’ is still missing, and no one has legibly stood-in as the person behind it.
The exact Bitcoin founder and inventor is still dramatically unknown till date.
Different false alarms has been raised towards many prominent individuals suspected to be the people behind Bitcoin.
Satoshi Nakamoto made the cryptocurrency software in 2008, which he made open source in January 2009.
And in 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared into the thin air – nowhere to be found up-till now!
No one even knows what pronoun to use (he, she, or they), while referring to the popular Satoshi Nakamoto.
It is still not clear whether he/she is a person, or group of individuals that came together to form the name.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
10 years after Bitcoin’s launch, the identity of Bitcoin’s mysterious founder is still unknown.
That being said, there are a few potential candidates of who might be Satoshi Nakamoto.
Let’s take a look at each of them… If you’re ready, let’s begin!
Craig Steven Wright
Craig Wright is an Australian Entrepreneur, as claimed by BBC, on 2nd May 2016 to be the founder and inventor of Bitcoin.
However, when examined by core Bitcoin developers like; Peter Todd, Craig was unable to provide any acceptable supporting evidence for such claim though.
So that alone made him obsolete for the claim.
Though initially, he said he would come back with relevant evidence, he failed to do so, and said on his blog that he was “sorry” and “didn’t have the courage” to continue.
Hal Finney
Hal Finney was a vocal cypherpunk and was heavily involved in cryptography even before hearing about Bitcoin.
Hal was on the mailing list that received Bitcoin’s whitepaper and has then built an online relationship with Satoshi where they discussed how to improve Bitcoin.
He also had the honor of being the receiver of the first Bitcoin transaction ever, which was sent by Satoshi himself.
Sadly, Hal passed away in August 2014, after battling Lou Gehrig’s disease for 5 years, a degenerative disease.
Nick Szabo
Nick Szabo is a well-known cryptographer and cypherpunk.
Years before Bitcoin went live, Nick Szabo already published a concept for a platform called ‘Bit Gold’.
Although this e-currency never got any traction due to its technical limitations, it does undoubtedly draw many parallels to Bitcoin.
Many think that Nick Szabo improved his concept and re-launched it as ‘Bitcoin’ some years later under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto.
Adam Back
Adam Back started his career studying the intersection between cryptography and computers.
In 1997, Adam developed the concept for ‘Hashcash’, which was an early application of Proof of Work (PoW).
This is the reason why many connect him to the creation of Bitcoin.
Adam is now the CEO of Blockstream, a blockchain technology company focused on building solutions.
Blockstream is one of the few institutions that provide funding to Bitcoin developers.
Throughout the years, there has been several false alarms, like when an individual actually called Satoshi Nakamoto was thought to be Bitcoin’s mysterious creator, or when Craig Wright publicly announced that he was Satoshi Nakamoto.
Both occurrences where debunked shortly after due to a lack of proof, which leads us back to the question:
Who is the anonymous billionaire named Satoshi Nakamoto?
Dorian Nakamoto
In March 2014, another speculation came on the identity, when a news source claimed to found Satoshi, and his home in California, USA.
Reportedly, his full names are; Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto.
He was a physicist and a systems engineer who had recently been laid off by the government.
Later, the person identified denied the claims, and insisted he is not the Satoshi Nakamoto, which everyone has been searching for.
Why’s Satoshi Nakamoto so popular?
The name ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ is the pseudonym of the inventor of Bitcoin cryptocurrency.
In 2008, someone used this name and mailed the Bitcoin white paper to a cryptographic mailing list.
This mailing list contained people who believed in decentralization and cryptography, thus the name became so famous.
Apparently, Satoshi it’s presumed to be a Japanese man, but his flawless use of English in the white paper raises doubts about this conclusion anyways.
Why does Nakamoto have so much BTC?
Although Satoshi never bought any Bitcoin, he was the first Bitcoin miner and was also the only miner for what is estimated to be around 1 year.
This can be deduced by the fact that the Bitcoin hash-rate from January 3 (2009) until January 25 (2010) was 7 Mhash/s.
Hence, if we assume that Satoshi was the only miner in the first 14 days of Bitcoin’s existence.
He was a dominant miner for the rest of the year as the hash-rate remained relatively unchanged in that period.
At that time, the Bitcoin block reward was 50 BTC, which means Satoshi amassed up-to 980,000 Bitcoins in total.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallet address
The reason why nobody knows the exact number of Bitcoins that Satoshi holds is because they are not held in the same crypto wallet, but rather scattered around thousands of different wallets.
Below is the only Bitcoin cryptocurrency wallet address, which is confirmed to belong to Satoshi, since it mined first Bitcoin genesis block:
1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNaSurprisingly, this wallet keeps receiving confirmed Bitcoin transactions.
Whether these are just tips sent as a tribute, or if there are some other things more – No one knows for now.
Satoshi Nakamoto net worth
It is believed that Satoshi Nakamoto owns 1 million Bitcoins (or more), which makes his present net worth to be $2.6 billion.
In 2009 January, Satoshi mined the Genesis block, and in 2010, he officially stopped communicating.
Between this period, the BTC came into existence on the blockchain ledger, but they have not been used or spent.
1 million BTC is a huge number which, if dumped suddenly, could wreak havoc on the cryptocurrency market.
That’s why Bitcoin has also suspected to be a crypto scam by some people, because the speculative founder owns a significant share.
Satoshi Nakamoto dead or alive?
Some people criticize Satoshi’s anonymity, while others consider it Bitcoin’s greatest asset that its creator is unknown.
Only time will tell if Nakamoto is dead or alive to reveal his true identity.
And until that happens (if ever), we will continue observing how a faceless Billionaire keeps amassing wealth as Bitcoin progresses on its exponential adoption curve.
Satoshi Nakamoto holds approximately 980,000 Bitcoins, and by the time the Bitcoin price would have to reached $1,000,000 per coin, he would have become a Trillionaire.
Since there will never be more than 21 Million Bitcoins, that would put the total Bitcoin market capitalization at 21 Trillion.
While the price is currently very far from that goal, proponents of Bitcoin as the new global reserve currency see that as a possibility.
If Bitcoin becomes global money, or at least a form of digital gold, then its arguably not unlikely that Satoshi may claim the #1 spot on the Forbes billionaires list.
