The early days of Bitcoin date back to October 31, 2008, when a person (or group of people) operating under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin White Paper entitled” Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System ” (in French)” Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic payment system ”). This short scientific document outlines the theoretical bases and technical principles of the Bitcoin system.
The actual launch of Bitcoin took place on January 3, 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block on the network, called Block Genesis. This first block contained the famous message” The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks. This referred to an article in the British newspaper The Times and highlighted global financial problems, while also highlighting one of the motivations behind the creation of Bitcoin: offering an alternative to traditional financial systems.
On January 9, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released version 0.1 of the Bitcoin software. Three days later, the first Bitcoin transaction took place between Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney. Satoshi sent 10 bitcoins to Finney in this historic transaction. This event marked an important milestone, as it demonstrated that the transfer of value between two people without a trusted intermediary was technically feasible thanks to the Bitcoin protocol.
During the first few months of 2009, the Bitcoin community started to grow slowly, with the arrival of developers and users joining the network and contributing to the project. Satoshi Nakamoto continued to communicate with the community through online forums, mailing lists, and private emails, while making updates and improvements to the Bitcoin software.
However, in early 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto abruptly stopped communicating with the Bitcoin community and left the project. His unexpected departure, surely caused by the adoption of Bitcoin by the NGO WikiLeaks, raised many questions and speculations. This decision by Satoshi to withdraw from the project and maintain his anonymity fuelled the mystery surrounding his identity.
Who could Satoshi Nakamoto be?
This nickname of Satoshi Nakamoto inevitably leads to curiosity. Since 2009, numerous potential candidates have been identified as possibly the creator of Bitcoin. Let's discover together the candidates most often mentioned, and the arguments validating or invalidating these hypotheses.
Hal Finney
Hal Finney was an experienced engineer and cryptographer. A graduate of the California Institute of Technology with a degree in computer engineering, Finney was a pioneer in public key cryptography and an active member of the cypherpunk community. He worked as a developer for PGP Corporation alongside Phil Zimmermann.
Hal Finney was the recipient of the very first Bitcoin transaction made by Satoshi Nakamoto in January 2009. He also contributed to the first versions of Bitcoin, working closely with Satoshi.
Arguments that he could be the creator of Bitcoin include his extensive knowledge of cryptography, his active involvement in the development of Bitcoin software, and his direct communications with Satoshi. Hal Finney also lived in the same locality as a certain Dorian Nakamoto, a Japanese-American physicist falsely identified as the creator of Bitcoin by Newsweek magazine in 2014. However, Hal Finney has always denied being Satoshi Nakamoto.
In 2009, Hal Finney was diagnosed with Charcot's disease. On March 19, 2013, he posted a moving message on the Bitcointalk forum, entitled” Bitcoin and me ”, in which he tells his story with Bitcoin and his illness. Hal Finney passed away in August 2014 and was cryogenized by the Alcor Foundation.
Nick Szabo
Nick Szabo is an American computer scientist, lawyer, and cryptographer known for his significant contributions in the fields of smart contracts and digital currencies. He has a computer science degree from the University of Washington and a law degree from George Washington University Law School. Szabo is a leading member of the cypherpunk community and an advocate for online privacy.
His links with Bitcoin come mainly from his previous project, the “BitGold”, perceived by many to be the ancestor of Bitcoin. BitGold, conceptualized in 1998, was a decentralized digital currency system based on proof of work, similar to the mechanism used in the Bitcoin protocol. Although BitGold was never officially deployed, its concepts and ideas were surely taken up in the design of Bitcoin.
Nick Szabo has always refuted claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
Len Sassaman
Len Sassaman was a computer security researcher and a talented cryptographer. He studied at the University of Leuven in Belgium, where he worked under the supervision of cryptographers Bart Prenel and David Chaum.
Sassaman was also an active member of the cypherpunk community and a close collaborator of Hal Finney. He contributed to the development of the PGP software and was the creator of the Zimmermann-Sassaman electronic signature protocol.
Len Sassaman passed away in July 2011, just a few months after Satoshi Nakamoto's farewell message on the Bitcointalk forum.
Craig Wright
Craig Wright is an Australian computer scientist and entrepreneur who has become a controversial figure in the Bitcoin community. Wright received a degree in computer science from Charles Sturt University and claims to have several postgraduate degrees, including a doctorate in computer science from the University of London.
In 2016, Wright publicly declared that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, causing heated debates and mixed reactions in the community. Indeed, several arguments contradict this claim. First, the evidence put forward by Wright to prove this, such as the digital signature of some Bitcoin transactions, has been largely discredited and identified as forged.
Second, Wright's personality and public behavior often contradict the values and ethics espoused by Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright's litigation and public disputes with other members of the Bitcoin community have also raised questions about his credibility as a potential creator of Bitcoin.
Adam Back
Adam Back is a British cryptographer and computer scientist who holds a doctorate in computer science from the University of Exeter. He is primarily known for the invention of Hashcash, a proof-of-work (PoW) system designed to combat spam and denial of service attacks. Hashcash inspired the consensus mechanism used in the Bitcoin protocol.
The arguments that Adam Back could be Satoshi are largely based on his invention of proof of work and his mention in the Bitcoin White Paper. As we explained to you in our article on Bitcoin and ecology, the Proof-of-Work mechanism is the cornerstone of the Bitcoin protocol.
His current role as CEO of Blockstream also demonstrates his commitment to the development of Bitcoin. Another important element is his sudden appearance on the Bitcointalk forum shortly after Satoshi Nakamoto left.
However, Adam Back has always denied being Satoshi Nakamoto.
The other candidates mentioned
There are plenty of other candidates who could be Satoshi Nakamoto. Among these, there are obviously various cryptographers and developers involved in the cypherpunk movement such as Philip Zimmermann, the inventor of PGP, Gavin Andresen, who took over from Satoshi, or even Wei Dai, the designer of b-money.
Some have put forward other more surprising theories. In 2019, journalist Evan Ratliff revealed in a book that a former employee of Paul Le Roux told him that his boss was the inventor of Bitcoin. Paul Le Roux is a talented self-taught cryptographer. He is the creator of the E4M encryption software. It is also known for its various criminal activities. His arrest in 2012 coincided with Satoshi's hasty departure.
Others have suggested that Satoshi could have been Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the famous darknet marketplace SilkRoad, who was arrested in 2013 and then sentenced to life imprisonment in 2015.
A former SpaceX employee even revealed in a 2017 blog post that Elon Musk could be Satoshi Nakamoto. The person concerned later denied this statement.
As you can see, even to this day, the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains a total mystery. New hypotheses have emerged every year since the beginning of the 2010s, and yet no one really knows who the inventor of Bitcoin is. The central element of thought in these hypotheses is often the hasty departure of Satoshi Nakamoto in 2011.
The enigma surrounding Satoshi's identity becomes all the more fascinating when one considers the possibility that he has a colossal fortune in bitcoin.
How many bitcoins does Satoshi Nakamoto have?
At the launch of the protocol, and for several months, Satoshi Nakamoto was the main Bitcoin miner. Since the number of users of the young payment system was still small, he took care of maintaining sufficient computing power himself.
In 2013, The research of cryptographer Sergio Demian Lerner made it possible to highlight some specific practices in Satoshi Nakamoto's way of mining. Lerner carried out an in-depth study of the blocks extracted from 2009 to 2010 and discovered several elements that make it possible to differentiate a mining model, in particular at the level of nonces and extra-nonces.
As we explained to you in our article on proof of work, the nonce is a modifiable value within the block header. Miners use it to change the header hash in the hope of finding a valid block and earning the associated reward. In reality, sometimes the nonce is not enough to find a hash that is lower than the target. Miners can then increment an extra nonce in the Coinbase transaction.
A miner operating between 2009 and 2010 adopted an atypical management of his extra-nonces, thus departing from the original code of the Bitcoin software. Lerner also pointed to an unusually non-random distribution of the nonce value within these blocks.
This specific signature reveals that the miner behind these blocks used a different approach than other users at the time. This suggests that this user was probably Satoshi Nakamoto himself, since the mining algorithm used was specific and unique. This mining method has been named “Patoshi,” a combination of the terms “pattern” and “Satoshi.”
Thanks to the identification of the Patoshi, it is estimated that Satoshi Nakamoto mined just over a million bitcoins, which represents considerable value at the moment. However, the majority of the bitcoins associated with this Patoshi signature have never been spent.
This colossal sum is perceived by some as a monumental Bug Bounty bonus. If the ECDSA digital signature algorithm was ever compromised, or if another major vulnerability was revealed on Bitcoin, attackers would be encouraged to target Satoshi's bitcoins first. This would alert the Bitcoin community to the existence of this flaw, thus allowing a rapid resolution of it.
If you want to learn more about the Patoshi model, I suggest you read this excellent article by Jameson Lopp: Was Satoshi a Greedy Miner?
More than 14 years after the launch of Bitcoin, the identity of its mysterious creator, acting under the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto, is still unknown. It is not even known if Satoshi is a single person, or a group, and if he is still alive. Each year, new theories about Satoshi's real identity appear, often based on troubling coincidences, but without ever providing sufficient evidence.
Thanks to the identification of a specific mining model, called the Patoshi, we are in a position to estimate that Satoshi Nakamoto is potentially in possession of more than one million bitcoins. But so far, this colossal sum has never been spent.
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