Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto… is Not Satoshi Nakamoto

Yesterday, Newsweek dropped a story claiming they had definitive proof that revealed the shadowy creator of bitcoin.

Satoshi Nakamoto, the man or entity, posted their work on a peer-to-peer and decentralized digital currency in 2008. He left the bitcoin community in 2010, but not before handing off the development reins to other members.

More importantly, he left the community with one million bitcoins in his possession, having been the first to mine for the digital currency. This fact is critical.

We move to the present day, and bitcoin is on the cusp of being a pop culture phenomenon. Not many people understand it regardless, but if you’ve heard of it, you have an opinion on it.

Newsweek did what no one else could – they found the man behind the curtain, and revealed that Satoshi Nakamoto was… Satoshi Nakamoto, a man in his 60s living in California who now goes by the name of Dorian. The details of his life suggest that he may have been the mastermind behind the protocol. He worked for Hughes Aircraft, creating “defensive electronics and communications,” according to a former boss and he left that to take a job as a systems engineer in New Jersey.

But the Satoshi Nakamoto from California, now known as Dorian Nakamoto, is starkly different from Satoshi Nakamoto, the bitcoin inventor.

For one, Dorian is in to model trains. He’s also the same person who wrote this Amazon review on Royal Dansk cookies.

Compare that style of writing to the Satoshi who released the bitcoin paper.

Obviously someone reviewing a tin of cookies likely wouldn’t be as elegant or technically inclined in their writing style, but the differences in grammar and syntax are there.

There’s also the fact that Dorian Nakamoto has recently flat-out denied that he has created bitcoin in a follow-up interview with the AP, attributing it to a misunderstanding between he and Leah Goodman, the Newsweek journalist behind the story.

He also claims that he hadn’t even heard of bitcoins until a few weeks ago.

The most damning evidence against Dorian Nakamoto being the inventor of bitcoin:

On the P2Pfoundation’s online board where Satoshi Nakamoto originally revealed his plans for bitcoin, he posted “I am not Dorian Nakamoto.”

Do you remember those million bitcoins that are sitting in Satoshi’s possession? They’ve been untouched for years and at one point in December of 2013 were worth up to $1.1 billion.

It would appear that Satoshi didn’t create bitcoin for fame or fortune, as the history with interacting with other developers and not cashing out his coins suggest a person or group of people very aware of protecting their anonymity, along with a continuing belief in the idea of cryptocurrencies as a force of change.

Regardless, it doesn’t matter who Satoshi is or isn’t. Satoshi brought into the world something disruptive with the potential to shake up the old systems.

Hopefully the media will realize not to pester a weary man from California who just wants to be left alone.