The Mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto: Who is the Invisible Billionaire Holding $60 Billion?

The Mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto: Who is the Invisible Billionaire Holding $60 Billion?The internet has no secrets, except for the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Despite the relentless efforts of experts, hackers, onlookers, and those with malicious intent to uncover his true identity, this invisible billionaire, who holds 5% of the world's Bitcoin, worth $60 billion, remains elusive

The Mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto: Who is the Invisible Billionaire Holding $60 Billion?

The internet has no secrets, except for the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Despite the relentless efforts of experts, hackers, onlookers, and those with malicious intent to uncover his true identity, this invisible billionaire, who holds 5% of the world's Bitcoin, worth $60 billion, remains elusive. In fact, he has vanished for 13 years.

On October 8th, HBO released a documentary titled "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery," which, using a similar approach to "Infernal Affairs," indirectly suggested that Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity is Peter Todd, one of Bitcoin's early developers. However, this claim was quickly and firmly denied by Todd. He expressed concerns that such irresponsible speculation could put him in danger.

To this day, no one knows for sure who this vanished, enigmatic super-wealthy individual is in real life. His profession, age, and gender are shrouded in mystery. People continue their tireless search for him, even though it seems pointless. Yet, the quest for Satoshi itself has become a peculiar internet phenomenon, a collective bit of kitsch.

I. The Vanished Creator

In December 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto, as usual, posted on a forum, discussing a technical issue related to DoS. This was not unusual; he had posted hundreds of times in the two years prior, collaborating with developers to improve Bitcoin's code. What was unusual was that after this post, Satoshi Nakamoto suddenly disappeared. Five months later, he sent an email to a developer, saying he was "moving on to other things," and was never seen again. For the past 13 years, people have never given up the search for Satoshi.

Satoshi Nakamoto is the founder of cryptocurrency, known as the "Father of Bitcoin." On January 3rd, 2009, he released the Bitcoin code he had spent over a year writing. Satoshi planned to release 21 million Bitcoins over 20 years, controlled by software code, with automatic coin minting occurring every 10 minutes through a lottery-like mechanism. Miners, who attempt to acquire Bitcoin, use brute-force methods to guess, and the winner receives Bitcoin.

Unlike sovereign currencies, Bitcoin has no physical currency or backing from a nation; it is merely tens of thousands of lines of code and a white paper less than 10 pages long.

During the two years Satoshi was active online, Bitcoin was a niche concept, not garnering much attention. However, after his disappearance in 2013, Bitcoin's price skyrocketed, sparking a blockchain boom that lasted for several years. Despite the constant naysayers, some even claiming it was "worthless," Bitcoin's price fluctuated, reaching $60,000 per coin in 2024, undeniably becoming one of the assets with the highest return on investment.

Satoshi Nakamoto holds 1.1 million Bitcoins, approximately 5% of the total, worth over $60 billion at current market prices. This colossal fortune has remained untouched on the internet since 2011.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Why would he ignore such a massive amount of wealth? This is one of the internet's greatest mysteries.

Satoshi claimed to be a 36-year-old Japanese man who, dissatisfied with sovereign nations' financial monetary policies after the 2008 financial crisis, wanted to create a currency that was not controlled by real-world monetary policies or bankers, which eventually became Bitcoin.

Nouriel Roubini, the economist who accurately predicted the 2008 financial crisis, is a known critic of cryptocurrency. He believes that if the network collapses, all assets will be wiped out. However, he doesn't hold back his admiration for Satoshi Nakamoto: "Satoshi might be an idealist, genuinely concerned about rescuing those who have been bullied too much."

But this idealist, in hundreds of posts over two years, never revealed any personal details, leaving no valuable clues for those searching. He used an untraceable email address and website, and there are no records of any coders using the name "Satoshi Nakamoto" before Bitcoin.

Adam Back, the cryptographer who invented Hashcash (a technology used to implement cryptocurrency) and Satoshi Nakamoto, had some email exchanges from 1997 to 2008. He was the first person to interact with Satoshi. However, he claims he's not even sure if "Satoshi Nakamoto" was actually Japanese or just a unique pen name. "It's like a biblical story. No one knows exactly what happened because it was so long ago."

Through near-perfect anonymity, Satoshi aimed to disappear completely. "He thought of everything," said Cullen Hoback, director of "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery."

II. The Search for Satoshi

Satoshi Nakamoto took every precaution to protect his privacy, but that doesn't mean the internet is powerless. As the Locard Principle of modern forensics states, "Every contact leaves a trace." Some computer experts have approached Satoshi's code like linguists.

Satoshi chose C++ as his programming language, and they started their investigation from his code proficiency. They suspect that C++ was not Satoshi's primary programming language, implying he was not a programmer by trade.

Others attempted to find clues from the natural language Satoshi used - English. His posts exhibited the language skills of a native English speaker, and he used British English exclusively. His content spanned from Austrian economics to business market history.

One of the most noteworthy points is a phrase Satoshi inserted into the code when mining the first 50 Bitcoins (also called the genesis block): "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." Many believe from this that Satoshi is European, as The Times' distribution area only covers a few European countries.

Others have analyzed Satoshi's posting times and frequency, concluding that Satoshi was a doctoral student with summer and winter breaks, someone with a strong foundation in cryptography, economics, and computers.

These seemingly conclusive deductions significantly narrowed the search scope, which is what Joshua Davis, a reporter for The New Yorker, believed. He consecutively accused Michael Clear, a 23-year-old cryptography graduate student at Trinity College Dublin, and Vili Lehdonvirta, a Finnish virtual currency researcher, of being Satoshi, only to be met with awkward smiles and silence. His guesses were not widely accepted.

After The New Yorker, the baton of the quest for Satoshi was passed to more media outlets and members of the cryptocurrency community. They followed the few existing clues, continuing to guess Satoshi's true identity, like a pilgrimage.

In 2015, The New York Times accused cryptographer Nick Szabo of being Satoshi, as his concept of "bit gold" was highly similar to Bitcoin, and their writing styles were comparable, both citing the famous quotes of economist Carl Menger.

In 2016, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright claimed to be Satoshi, and was recognized by media outlets like The Economist and BBC. However, a British court ultimately ruled that he was not Satoshi and convicted him of false statements and forgery.

American writer Evan Hatch believed that all discussions about Satoshi's identity were misleading, even "plain stupid and unethical." In a 2021 article, he argued that Len Sassaman, a late cryptographer who was known for developing PGP and Mixmaster, privacy tools, was Satoshi. He was also part of the same group as Satoshi called Cypherpunk.

The number of plausible guesses continues to grow, most of which cannot be confirmed or refuted.

Before the release of "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery," Polymarket, a decentralized prediction platform based on Ethereum, launched a poll: "Who will HBO's documentary identify as Satoshi Nakamoto?" The day before the documentary's release, Nick Szabo was in the lead, with an index reflecting the betting trend exceeding 32%, and even Elon Musk was on the list. As of October 8th, the total bet amount surpassed $44 million.

Now, the answer is revealed. The documentary's director, Cullen Hoback, noticed that Todd had responded to a post on the Bitcoin forum by Satoshi in 2010. He believes this was a case of Satoshi forgetting to switch accounts and responding using his real identity. Another reason is that Todd, in recent interviews with the documentary, remembered this detail from over a decade ago vividly.

However, this guess was firmly denied by Todd himself.

In the age of post-truth, the Satoshi Nakamoto mystery continues. It is a fascinating example of how the internet can create and sustain legends, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The search for the man behind the code will likely continue for years to come, a testament to the enduring power of mystery and the allure of the unknown.