The mysterious identity of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, who broke his silence, has been linked to Elon Musk

After an account under the nickname @satoshi broke its silence on Platform X, formerly known as Twitter, for the first time in several years, hype flared up in the cryptocurrency community. After all, Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the unknown person or several persons who created Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin is a predicate machine,” a character calling himself Satoshi Nakamoto wrote in a recent tweet. “Over the next months we will explore various aspects that were not explicitly covered in the white paper.” All of these aspects are part of Bitcoin and are very important.”

The tweet in question offers an exploration of aspects not explicitly contained in the original Bitcoin whitepaper, and has received over 1.5 million views.

However, skeptics say the likelihood that this account is actually linked to Bitcoin’s elusive creator is extremely low, given Platform X’s policy of allowing anyone to get a verified account through a paid subscription. Many users believe that the real Satoshi Nakamoto would not sign up for a feature that compromises anonymity or use an application that poses a potential security risk.

Following the publication of the Bitcoin white paper in 2008, the “real” Satoshi Nakamoto gradually retreated from public speaking and eventually disappeared from online forums around 2010. The disappearance of the mysterious figure has only fueled further speculation and curiosity about her identity, and the resurgence of the handle @satoshi has reignited debate and theories about Satoshi’s whereabouts.

Let us recall what is known about the mysterious character. It is believed that Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym of a certain person (or even a group of people) who developed the Bitcoin cryptocurrency protocol and created the first version of the software in which this protocol was implemented.

At the end of October 2008, under the name Nakamoto, an article was published about Bitcoin, which describes a completely decentralized electronic cash system that does not require trust or administration. And already at the beginning of the next year, he published the first version of the client module of the Bitcoin network, launching its work.

Nakamoto created a fog around himself. The information he shared on the Internet (that he was born on April 5, 1975 and lives in Japan) raised doubts among many. He demonstrated too good a command of the English language for a Japanese. In addition, there were several allusions in the indicated date of birth: on April 5, 1933, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed decrees prohibiting the possession of gold in bars and coins, but it was in 1975 that the right to own gold for investment purposes was returned to the Americans.

Presumably, Nakamoto owns from 750 thousand to 1.1 million bitcoins, received for the formation of the first blocks and never transferred to other addresses.

It is believed that anonymity for Nakamoto is a means of protecting both privacy and the integrity of the decentralized system he created. Despite a number of attempts to reveal who is hiding under this name, the intrigue continues to this day.

In the past, it has been suggested that Satoshi Nakamoto is Nick Szabo, a cryptographic and legal expert who published a paper on the digital currency Bit Gold, which is considered the immediate predecessor of Bitcoin. There was an assumption that the creator of Bitcoin was Japanese-American Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto (but he himself denied this information). Another candidate for the role of Nakamoto was the Australian businessman and computer scientist Craig Wright, who stated in 2016 that he was the author of Bitcoin (accordingly, he claims copyright for this cryptocurrency). But his statements and the evidence he provided were considered unconvincing, not to say false.

The Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA) has entered into legal battles with Craig Wright, filing a civil lawsuit against him in the UK in 2021. Wright has been asked to prove he is the author of the Bitcoin white paper, with an expected trial date last year pushed back to early 2024.

Be that as it may, some people, in light of the appearance of a tweet under the nickname @Satoshi after almost five years of inactivity, believe that the account is controlled by Craig Steven Wright and that he is just joking.

The version that Satoshi Nakamoto is Elon Musk stands out. Allegedly, his early ventures, such as Zip2 and X.com or PayPal, required solid knowledge in the field of cryptography. And he himself, as far as we know, speaks advanced programming languages, including C++. And this is believed to illustrate the level of technical proficiency that matches the skills possessed by the individual (or group) behind the Bitcoin coding system.

Well, the fact that Musk, whose name is associated with innovative enterprises and daring ambitions, has repeatedly mentioned cryptocurrencies, recognizing their potential and impact on the future of finance, serves as an “iron” argument for supporters of this theory. And even the fact that the billionaire himself has consistently denied that he is Satoshi Nakamoto is unlikely to convince them.

And this is only part of the assumptions that appeared from time to time in the media and the expert community about Satoshi’s personality. Moreover, some versions suggest that we are talking about an individual “genius”, but about a group of people.

The disappearance of Nakamoto from the radar added fuel to the fire of speculation.

In April of this year, several websites widely discussed the assumption that the secret services were involved in this story. According to this version, former lead Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen announced in 2011 to the cryptocurrency community on the Bitcoin Talk forum that he was going to visit the CIA headquarters to give a presentation on cryptocurrency at a conference on new technologies – this event coincided with the disappearance of Satoshi Nakamoto. And just since 2011, Satoshi has not made any public statements or comments. God knows how all this is connected, but these two facts were enough for conspiracy theorists who believe that the American spy agency has something to do with the creation of Bitcoin.

The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto remains unsolved. But this character managed to acquire a monument – in Budapest, in one of the parks, a sculpture was recently unveiled in honor of the creator of Bitcoin. The authors of the idea were the editor of the leading Hungarian crypto news site Kripto Akadémia, András Györfi, as well as several other figures in the blockchain industry.

The Satoshi statue is an ordinary human figure wearing a hoodie with a cryptocurrency logo on the chest. The sculpture is made of bronze, but the face is made of a special bronze-aluminum composite, so each viewer can see his own face when looking at the statue. The meaning here is very symbolic, they say, “we are all Satoshi.”