Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?!

Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the individual or group of people who developed Bitcoin, the world's first cryptocurrency. Satoshi also authored the Bitcoin White Paper and was the first to mine a Bitcoin (Genesis Block 0) which rewarded 50 Bitcoins at the time. Satoshi was involved with the continued development of Bitcoin until December 2010 in which people believe he stepped away from the project as he stopped posting on his P2P foundation account.

You're probably asking, why does it matter who Satoshi is? To answer that question we must first realise that Satoshi's known Bitcoin wallets still holds in total roughly 980,000 BTC which is estimated to be valued at $19 Billion at the time of the 2017 bull run. This would've made Satoshi the worlds 44th wealthiest person at the time! Quite incredible when one is still unknown and hasn't shown any sign of revealing their true identity any time soon. Also, we must realise that people have claimed to be Satoshi to gain wealth and power within the crypto community.

A perfect example of this would be Craig Steven Wright, an Australian academic who claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto and stated to have evidence to prove his claims. However many prominent Bitcoin promoters called this an "elaborate hoax" and "intentional lies to scam the crypto community". Craig Steven Wright, aka "Faketoshi" also is responsible for Bitcoin SV a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash, which has currently been making headlines for being delisted from the majority of major exchanges such as Binance and Kraken. This is due to the failure of Mr Wright to provide any form of hard evidence to his claims of being Satoshi and more importantly, his aggressive behaviour towards those who challenge this. As you can probably tell by now, the importance of Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity is extremely high and warranted due to these recent events.

Some within the crypto community disagree with this sentiment as they believe that the whole purpose of Bitcoin is to keep your anonymity and that by Satoshi remaining unknown helps promote this purpose. Reports also suggest that if the real Satoshi was to reveal their identity, they could be faced with a string of legal issues due to Bitcoin's association with illegal activities.

John Mcafee, the founder of McAfee software company and cryptocurrency enthusiast, has stated that he knows the true identity of Satoshi. John Mcafee also said that he would be revealing the real Satoshi if they didn't come forward themselves. He stated he was doing this due to Craig Steven Wright's apparent false claim and the damage it can and has done. He has so far said that the real Satoshi lives in America and that a group of people were responsible for Bitcoins creation but that a single person wrote the actual white paper for Bitcoin. He was supposed to have revealed the real Satoshi by now; however, according to John Mcafee, he is unable to release the true identity due to legal reasons.

Though this, in the end, did not help us with finding out who Satoshi is, John Macfee's "clues" do help when we look at some other facts. Firstly Satoshi Nakamoto is and sounds like a native Japanese name. However, if we break it down we can find; Satoshi Nakamoto is an acronym for (SA)msung, (TO)shiba, (NAKA)michi, and (MOTO)rola. Coincidence or breakthrough? Satoshi had claimed to be a 37-year-old male who lived in Japan, but some speculated this to be unlikely due to his perfect English and his Bitcoin software not being documented or labelled in Japanese. Also, Satoshi would use the occasional English spelling and terminology in both source code comments, and forum postings led to speculation that Satoshi or at least someone in the potential group behind Satoshi was of Commonwealth origin. Moreover, the first bitcoin block that could only be mined by Satoshi contains the encoded text The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks which implies that he was reading London's The Times newspaper at the time of the inception of bitcoin.

In conclusion, where are we left? We know that there are valid arguments for both sides when it comes to Satoshi revealing who they are to the world or not. But are we closer to knowing who Satoshi is? Sadly we are not, we have individual clues to indicate that Satoshi is not Japanese or at least isn't native to Japan. There is a big possibility that there is a commonwealth resident within the group or is Satoshi. Other than that we wait for more speculation and evidence to arise from the community for the hopes that one day we discover the true person or persons behind Satoshi Nakamoto. For now, the hunt continues…