The real Satoshi: Who people think created Bitcoin and what AI told us

The year is 2022. Everybody knows about Bitcoin, and still, nobody knows who created it.

We, at buidlbee, will also not let that secret out — at least for now 🙂 But we can trace together which people were considered likely candidates to fill the role of Satoshi Nakamoto throughout history.

We recruited AI for help when preparing this article, and this is how Satoshi Nakamoto may look, according to the Midjourney neural network.

We are not sure that the people listed below are similar to this art, but there are other arguments for that. 

Craig Wright

The main argument is that this man claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto himself. This is even mentioned on his official website. But is it true? Well, the crypto community is not so sure.

What we do know for sure is that Craig Wright is a computer scientist from Australia who currently lives in the United Kingdom. First conjectures about him being a creator of Bitcoin were revealed in 2015 by Wired. In 2022, discussions on this matter are still going on. Mr. Wright even sued podcaster Peter McCormack who called him “a liar” in 2019.

Still, the proofs that Craig Wright presented for now — cryptographic signature, correspondence, etc. — are not considered convincing enough, though famous Bitcoin investor Paalsky, for example, is satisfied with it.

Ironically, Mr.Wright already got a US copyright on a Bitcoin whitepaper because US Copyright Office “does not investigate whether there is a provable connection between the claimant and the pseudonymous author.”

Nick Szabo

In contrast with Craig Wright, Nick Szabo has never claimed to be a creator of Bitcoin. More than that: he denied it, while others assumed it many times.

And why would they not? Nick is a computer engineer with outstanding competence in cryptography. For example, he is a man who developed a smart contract concept — and it was back in 1996! Also, in 2008 (a significant year, isn’t it?), Mr.Szabo wrote in his blog that he was going to create a new digital currency.

So, there is a lot to think about, and some people like Dominic Frisby, the author of “Bitcoin: The Future of Money?”, have already decided who the creator of Bitcoin is. And this person for them is Nick Szabo. However, many accepted as an argument against it in this panel discussion when Szabo demonstrated that he doesn’t understand how the Bitcoin system works:

It is again ironic that the person who did explain it to Szabo was Craig Wright 🙂

Dorian Nakamoto

The list of possible candidates is extensive but let’s stop at a lucky number of three. And the third person we present to you is Dorian Nakamoto. Is the family name not a pretty good argument for you? Oh, you are a suspicious one!

But okay, that’s of course not the only similarity. Mathematical skills and a background in computer engineering and cybersecurity — this was enough for the journalist Leah Mcgrath Goodman to call Dorian Satoshi in 2014. He was actually the first candidate for this role; that is why he is so important. 

Still, Dorian denied these assumptions, as well as Satoshi — he wrote it on the Bitcoin forum. All these stories lead us to a few questions, like…

How to confirm that the person claiming they are Satoshi Nakamoto is Satoshi Nakamoto?

People on Reddit discuss it aggressively. Some say it is simple — this person just has to make a transaction with Satoshi’s key — but others argue against it.

Still, it seems that it does come down to a signature, after all, and the author of the Reddit topic agrees.

“He could sign messages with his Bitcoin private keys, but he also used email, which was signed with his PGP (pretty good privacy) keys. It would probably be easiest for him to just sign messages with the same PGP key to prove his identity”, — a @cooltexture Reddit user explains in their comment.

Funny how people continue to write “he,” while Satoshi can be a “she,” or — as some people claim that it is even more possible — they. Simply because, well, why can’t Satoshi Nakamoto be a name for a group of people?

The other big question is whether it who they are matters.

“It does not matter who invented them. What matters is they are ideas that work to solve problems. Don’t get fooled into thinking who Satoshi [is] matters”, — @Adrian-X writes. 

Maybe, he is right so let’s finish this text with another great art by Midjourney. That’s what we got after the “Satoshi Nakamoto creating Bitcoin” request. Looks inspiring, isn’t it?

There is also an alternative art, which makes us think Satoshi knew about pandemics long before the pandemics… An extraordinary human being, what else can we say.

So, what do you think about Satoshi’s identity? Does it matter to you? Share your thought in the comments!