There has been a lot of talk in recent hours about Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who has repeatedly proclaimed himself as the creator of the Bitcoin protocol, under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
Yesterday, an article was published by Forbes highlighting new evidence of a possible correlation between Wright and Nakamoto.
Have we finally reached the discovery of the century?
Let’s look at all the details together.
Summary
The story of Satoshi Nakamoto: the inventor of Bitcoin
On 31 October 2008, an anonymous individual with the nickname “Satoshi Nakamoto” published a very important document on the cryptographic mailing list “metzdowd.com.”
It is one of the most influential manifestos of cypherpunk culture, titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” introducing to the world for the first time the primordial idea of a blockchain-based digital currency that does not rely on a central bank.
The philosophy of a decentralized protocol that would allow P2P virtual money exchanges was immediately endorsed by a number of engineers and computer nerds, who began work on what we now know as “Bitcoin.”
These include the names of Hal Finney, Mike Hearn, Gavin Andresen, and Jeff Garzik, who had the honor of conversing online with the still unknown Satoshi Nakamoto.
On 23 April 2011, Satoshi disappeared from the scene definitively, stating as his last correspondences to software developer Mike Hearn that he would “move on to other things” and that the project had been placed in “good hands“
From then on, as the Bitcoin project continued to expand and become more important, no one heard from Satoshi.
To this day we still do not know whether a single person or a group of individuals is behind this pseudonym.
The only thing that is certain is that the address with which Satoshi generated the first block of the Bitcoin infrastructure, known as the “Genesis Block,” contains (along with other addresses) an amount exceeding 1 million BTC.
Not one single satoshi (sat) has been spent from that wallet, which in the jargon indicates the smallest expendable part of the coin, or one hundred millionth of BTC.
For this reason many believe that Nakamoto is dead, or that he was captured (according to some conspiracy theories) by the CIA or some special force belonging to a supposed government.
Over the years a number of speculations have come forward about the real identity of the computer genius, first the name of “Dorian Nakamoto,” a Japanese programmer, emerged, then that of Craig Wright, an Australian engineer who proclaimed himself “the creator of Bitcoin.”
Precisely in reference to the latter figure, Forbes released some details that would show an impeccable correlation between the two figures.
New speculation on Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity: the famous Bitcoin creator could be Craig Wright
Since the publication of the Forbes article, speculation has increased about a possible attribution of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity to Craig Wright.
The individual has been claiming since 2016 to be the inventor of the cryptocurrency, having even won a lawsuit related to copyright ownership of Bitcoin’s Whitepaper.
Some prominent members of the Bitcoin community, such as programmer Gavin Andresen, had confirmed in the past that Wright was Nakamoto, though later he withdrew his assumptions.
He was reportedly working with Dave Klaiman, a deceased 2013 cybersecurity expert, on the creation of the decentralized protocol, according to the direct reports.
As of today, speculations of a real correlation between the Australian engineer and the famous Satoshi Nakamoto are becoming more and more concrete.
Most notably, it has emerged that Wright allegedly published a blog post on 10 January 2009 announcing the launch of Bitcoin, which would actually be launched a few hours later.
The post was reportedly deleted a day after its publication and rediscovered a few days ago from an online archive.
In any case, despite this “evidence,” no one in the Bitcoin community believes in the convergence of Craig Wright’s identity with Satoshi Nakamoto.
Primarily because Nakamoto himself reportedly stated in a 2015 hidden note marked with one of his addresses that:
“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.”
Having briefly reappeared on the scene with this message after the real creator of Bitcoins dropped out of the 2011 project developments, no one believed Wright’s claims anymore.
As for the latest blog post that would prove knowledge of the protocol even before it was published, some users on Twitter came to the rescue, pointing out that it is easily possible to create a URL that falsely claims a certain date reference.
The actual publication of the post would be dated between 2014 and 2015.
Will Craig Wright ever be able to destroy the Bitcoin protocol?
Beyond the real correspondence between the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, originator of the Bitcoin philosophy, and Craig Wright, the latest Forbes article warned the crypto enthusiast community about a significant danger.
The Australian computer scientist, in fact, is in possession of as many as 800 patents related to the development of blockchain technologies and waiting to receive 3,000 more in 46 different jurisdictions.
According to Forbes, the huge amount of patents could one day force all programmers around the world to stop approving transactions on the Bitcoin network, should Wright decide to make the coin’s code “closed-source.”
Thus, one of the most important open-source software in the history of the Internet is in danger of being attacked by a petty individual who, while having failed in his attempt to reclaim the figure of Satoshi Nakamoto, could ruin the work of the past 14 years.
Even though at the moment the danger still seems to be far away, there will be a struggle in the coming years to prevent the technological developments of the entire industry from being compressed by Craig Wright, who, to put it bluntly, would never have tried to centralize the system if he really were Satoshi Nakamoto.
However things turn out, Bitcoin and its ecosystem have become so strong and compact that they can be considered resilient to any kind of censorship or privatization, whether by an institution or a private individual.
Blockchain technology and cryptography allow anyone to collaborate anonymously with the Bitcoin network, enabling its perpetual survival.
Craig Wright may be able to claim his position and name on a variety of blockchain-related activities, but he will never be able to stop a libertarian movement that is now established worldwide.
Craig you will never own us.
We are all Satoshi.
