Cryptocurrency billionaire Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, has stated that the continued anonymity of Bitcoin's creator is beneficial. In an interview with TBPN on April 9, Zhao remarked that revealing the founder's true identity would inevitably lead to a series of consequences. He added that since the Bitcoin creator, who has used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto since 2008 and disappeared from the crypto community after 2011, has remained anonymous, Bitcoin has become the most decentralized cryptocurrency. This lack of a single leader prevents any individual from exerting significant influence over it and helps it avoid becoming a target for regulators.
Zhao, a co-founder of Binance and Blockchain.com, has recently surpassed Bill Gates in wealth to become the richest person in the cryptocurrency sector. His fortune, estimated at approximately $110 billion, includes 1,400 Bitcoins, valued at around $100 million.
On Wednesday, April 8, The New York Times published an in-depth investigative report naming Adam Back, a British cryptographer and CEO of Blockstream, as the prime suspect for being Bitcoin's anonymous creator. Back promptly denied the claim on platform X and reiterated his denial in an interview with Yahoo Finance the following day.
Numerous individuals have been speculated over the years to be Bitcoin's creator.
Adam Back: The British cryptographer and Blockstream CEO's Hashcash system is directly cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper. Prior to The New York Times investigation, the Financial Times and programmer John McAfee had also suggested Back as a potential candidate.
Nick Szabo: A computer scientist who designed Bit Gold, a direct precursor to Bitcoin, in 2005. His initials, NS, are the reverse of Satoshi Nakamoto's SN. In 2013, blogger Skye Grey's textual analysis found Szabo's writing style to be the closest match to the Bitcoin whitepaper. Szabo has repeatedly denied the speculation.
Hal Finney: A cryptography pioneer who was the first person to receive a Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto and lived just a few blocks from a man named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. Text analysis by Juola & Associates indicated that, among all candidates tested at the time, Finney's writing style was the closest to Nakamoto's. Finney denied the claims before his death in 2014 from ALS.
Peter Todd: A prominent Bitcoin core developer who was highlighted in the 2024 HBO documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery." The film presented circumstantial evidence from a forum post suggesting Todd was Bitcoin's creator, but Todd stated the post was a joke taken out of context. He denies being Nakamoto, and the crypto community widely disputes the documentary's conclusion.
Wei Dai: A computer scientist whose "b-money" system directly inspired Bitcoin's architecture. He was one of the few people Nakamoto contacted via email before publishing the whitepaper. Dai has consistently denied involvement in Bitcoin's creation, suggesting Nakamoto independently developed similar ideas.
Len Sassaman: A cryptographer who died by suicide in July 2011, coinciding with the month Nakamoto sent a possible farewell email. A widely circulated Medium article listed Sassaman as a suspect due to his alignment with Bitcoin's principles and technical background. However, all evidence is circumstantial, and his death prevents verification.
Craig Wright: An Australian computer scientist who has publicly and legally claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto for nearly a decade. In 2024, the UK High Court ruled that Wright had forged supporting documents and committed perjury, making him the only suspect officially excluded by law.
Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto: A retired Japanese-American engineer from California, whose only connection to Bitcoin is sharing a name with its creator. A 2014 Newsweek cover story mistakenly linked him to Bitcoin based on a misreading of an interview. He has always denied involvement, and despite lacking technical evidence, he remains popularly associated with the identity.
The New York Times investigation was led by John Carreyrou, the journalist who exposed the Theranos fraud. Carreyrou spent 18 months using AI to analyze decades of cypherpunk mailing list archives, finding that Back's writing style matched Nakamoto's far more closely than other suspects. Both used British spelling, double spaces after sentences, and made similar hyphenation errors. Back's 1997 Hashcash invention is directly referenced in the Bitcoin whitepaper, and he was among the first people Nakamoto contacted before its release.
Additionally, when Nakamoto faded from the crypto scene in 2011, Back's online activity also paused, resuming only after Nakamoto's complete disappearance. Since the whitepaper's release in 2008, publications like The New Yorker, Fast Company, Newsweek, Forbes, and Wired have attempted to uncover Nakamoto's identity without success. The October 2024 HBO documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery," directed by Cullen Hoback, previously known for exposing QAnon, pointed to Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd as the creator. Todd denies being Nakamoto and reportedly faced real-life safety threats after the film's release.
In his Yahoo Finance interview, Back denied the claims, stating, "Satoshi likely wouldn't grant interviews to documentary crews, speak with investigative journalists, or participate in forums or conferences under his real identity. Therefore, we may never know who he is."
Bitcoin's current market capitalization stands at $1.4 trillion, maintaining its position as the largest cryptocurrency by market value, with a price exceeding $70,000 per coin. Ethereum, the second-largest, trades around $2,000 per coin, highlighting a significant price gap. Since hitting an all-time high of over $126,000 in October of last year, Bitcoin's price has fallen by more than 44%. In 2011, Bitcoin's price first surpassed $1 per coin.
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