Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym of the person (or group of people) who invented Bitcoin. In November 2008 he published the so-called whitepaper of the Bitcoin protocol, which is a pdf describing how it works.

In early 2009, he distributed the relative software, but as of April 23, 2011, he disappeared. The sensational thing is that there are several times when Satoshi could have left traces, such as the IP address of when he created the email or registered the bitcoin.org domain. Instead, probably already sensing the scope of his invention, he was so careful and meticulous that he left no trace of himself. In his last email of Dec. 12, 2010, he writes:

“I’ve moved on onto other things. It’s in good hands with Gavin and everyone.”

With Gavin, he refers to Gavin Andersen, one of the first developers to work on Bitcoin. Among “everyone” there is certainly Hal Finney, perhaps the one who has contributed most to the project by being almost the only one who participated from the beginning until much later (he passed away in 2014), always being the first to test proposed innovations, and moderating many discussions on the mailing list dedicated to Bitcoin. Hal is also the one who received the first transaction in the Bitcoin history by receiving from Satoshi himself 10 bitcoins (which had no value at the time), and thus one of the main suspects to be Satoshi Nakamoto himself.

Satoshi wanted to give the impression that he had disappeared. He wanted to take the attention off himself. But how can a great inventor, after telling the world about his creation, suddenly move on to devote himself to something else, right at the most beautiful moment? In April 2011, in fact, bitcoin surpassed the value of $1, certainly not an insignificant milestone, and a capitalization of about $20 million, which may seem ridiculous today but was nonetheless indicative that the project was rapidly gaining momentum.

Why did he disappear just as his project was taking off? Perhaps because he knew that in order to create the perfect decentralized machine, only one element was missing, and that was to “eliminate” any trace of its creator. Until then Bitcoin was not totally decentralized, without him it would become so.

Bitcoin’s predecessors

But then who was Satoshi really? Was he one person or a group of people who took turns using this pseudonym? The names of the early programmers who worked on this project with Satoshi are well known and, in general, all those who belonged to the Cypherpunk movement, a movement that advocates the intensive use of computer cryptography as part of a path for social and political change, are possible candidates.

Bitcoin certainly did not come out of nowhere. Similar projects had been launched in the years prior to its birth, but for one reason or another they had all failed. eCash (by David Chaum), E-gold (by Douglas Jackson and Barry K. Downey), Hashcash (by Adam Back), B-money (by Wei Dai), BitGold (by Nick Szabo) are just the most famous. Satoshi could be one of them, or all of them, or none of them. It doesn’t matter. Bitcoin is open-source. It was created for the community and everyone can contribute to its development. Bitcoin brings together the best of these previous experiments and other inventions resulting from research over several decades.

eCash in particular, launched in the 1980s, was in fact the first working form of digital money. David Chaum, its founder, had solved the main problem, the so called “double spending”. In fact until then with a digital currency it was possible to spend the balance twice by sending the total to two people at the same time. Chaum patented the system of “blind signatures” (which are the basis of Bitcoin’s operation) in 1983, and until 2005 no one could use this technology. That is why only a few years later Bitcoin could be born.

Some of those who had launched these later failed projects were the very people who helped Satoshi in the development of Bitcoin, including Wei Dai, Adam Back, and Nick Szabo. Satoshi himself describes Bitcoin as the implementation of Adam Back’s Hashcash, Wei Dai’s B-money, and Nick Szabo’s BitGold, and of using the discoveries of Raplh Merkle and Haber and Stornetta. All previous failures allowed Satoshi to learn from their mistakes and devise the perfect protocol that succeeded where all other experiments had failed.

Who self-proclaim to be Satoshi

It is really unlikely, however, that those who claim to be Satoshi, such as Craig Wright, actually are. It would put themselves in danger and also the existence of their own creation, as it would take away some of the decentralization of having an anonymous founder. Craig Wright was even disproved by this message signed on the blockchain by many addresses he claimed to own:

“Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud. He doesn’t have the keys used to sign this message. The Lightning Network is a significant achievement. However, we need to continue work on improving on-chain capacity. Unfortunately, the solution is not to just change a constant in the code or to allow powerful participants to force out others. We are all Satoshi.”

This message, in addition to ridiculing Craig Wright so much that he earned the nickname “Faketoshi” in the crypto community, also very effectively expressed one of the concepts at the heart of Bitcoin’s philosophy. “We are all Satoshi” emphasizes the main feature of Bitcoin, namely decentralization, and it seems to invite curious people to stop investigating his identity because he, as an individual, is not that important. To carry out this revolution, because it is a real revolution, we need everyone’s contribution. In short, precisely, we are all Satoshi.

The immaculate conception of Bitcoin

If, after more than 10 years, it is still not clear who Satoshi Nakamoto is, it is possible that this mystery may never be unraveled. Even if everyone is very curious, it may not be a good thing for Bitcoin to discover who he really is. Especially if he would be still alive or if we would be sure that his heirs have the availability of all his bitcoins (an estimated 1 million bitcoins).

One of the features that make Bitcoin unique and essentially impossible to recreate nowadays is precisely the fact that its founder is unknown, a kind of “immaculate conception” as it has been called, which contributes to make it the most decentralized cryptocurrency of all and probably a story so fascinating and mysterious to be unrepeatable.

At the end of the day, it is not important who Satoshi Nakamoto is. Perhaps it is better that we never know because with Bitcoin everyone can help improving it by proposing code changes. So beyond who put together the initial rules, it is the community that contributes to its evolution and sanctions its success. As that message written on the blockchain and which has become one of the movement’s main mottos reads: “We are all Satoshi.”

Image Credits: Yegor Petrov