The inventor of Bitcoin may be this unknown Australian genius

By Adam Voorhes | Gail Anderson + Joe Newton

Even as his face towered more than 10 feet above the crowd at the Bitcoin Investor Conference in Las Vegas, Craig Steven Wright was a nonentity to most of the crypto and finance crowd in attendance. When the 44-year-old Australian appeared via Skype video on a giant screen in the D Hotel’s ballroom, he was dressed unremarkably: a black blazer and a rumpled shirt without a tie; his brown hair was neatly parted; his name did not appear on the conference’s list of featured speakers. Even the panel’s moderator, a Bitcoin blogger named MicheleSeven, was a little concerned that the audience would wonder why he was there. Wright introduced himself as “a former academic who did some obscure research,”
At this time the host interrupted him.

"Wait, who are you? Are you a computer scientist?"
“A little bit of everything,” Wright replied. “I have a master’s degree in law… a master’s degree in statistics, two doctorates…”

“How did you first learn about Bitcoin?” the host interrupted again, as if still trying to determine what Wright meant by that.

Wright pauses for three full seconds. "Well. I've been involved in this for a long time," he says, pausing between words. "I try to, um... not draw attention to myself." He seems to be suppressing a smile.
The host continued to ask other people.
Just like countless other times over the past seven years, I swallowed the conclusion of the Wired magazine study:
That is, “I am Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.”

Since the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto first released the Bitcoin code on January 9, 2009, the digital currency he created has grown from a geeky novelty to an economic phenomenon. From international remittances to the online sale of illegal drugs, the digital currency has grown to nearly $1 billion in total value. Whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is, this person controls a nine-figure fortune (which, at its peak in 2014, was worth more than $1 billion), and yet the true identity of Bitcoin's creator remains unknown. Numerous media outlets, from the New Yorker to Fast Company to Newsweek, have investigated but have been unable to reach a definitive conclusion; Newsweek claimed to have found Satoshi, but only found someone who later denied any involvement in cryptography, let alone cryptocurrency. In short, the world's Satoshi hunters have come up empty-handed, and the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has become one of the most stubborn unsolved mysteries of the 21st century. The significance of his true identity goes far beyond the curiosity of a few crypto enthusiasts and has direct economic implications.

Over the past few weeks, this magazine has obtained strong evidence for the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. There are signs that Craig Steven Wright, who has never been on any list of Satoshi candidates, fits the profile of the cryptocurrency inventor in almost every detail. Despite the overwhelming evidence, we cannot say with absolute certainty that the cold case has been solved. We are faced with two possibilities: either Wright invented Bitcoin, or he is a particularly clever prankster who really wants us to think he invented Bitcoin.

evidence

The first evidence pointing to Wright emerged in mid-November when anonymous sources close to Wright began leaking documents to an independent security researcher and dark web analyst who goes by the pseudonym Gwern Branwen. Branwen provided these documents to Wired magazine, which immediately led to some direct, publicly visible evidence links between Satoshi Nakamoto and Wright:

In a blog post published in August 2008, a few months before the Bitcoin white paper was released in November 2008, Wright mentioned his intention to release a "cryptocurrency paper" and mentioned "triplet bookkeeping," the title of a 2005 paper by financial cryptographer Ian Grigg, listing several ideas similar to Bitcoin.

A post on the same blog in November 2008. The post asked readers who wanted to contact him to encrypt their messages using a PGP public key. A PGP key is a unique string of characters that allows a user to receive encrypted emails. The one used by Wright, when checked against the database of the MIT server where it is hosted, points to the email address [email protected] , which is very similar to the email address used by Satoshi Nakamoto, [email protected] , which was used by Nakamoto to send the white paper introducing Bitcoin to contacts on the mailing list.

An archived copy of a since-deleted Wright blog post from January 10, 2009, states: “Bitcoin’s beta goes live tomorrow. It’s a decentralized… We’ll keep trying until we succeed.” (If you look at the date alone, January 10, 2009, that’s after Bitcoin’s launch on January 9. But if Wright lives in eastern Australia and he posts after midnight on the 9th, that would still be before 3pm EST on the 9th.) The post was subsequently replaced with very obscure text: “Bitcoin is all about getting banged up, and the best place to hide it is in the open.” Sometime after October of this year, the post was deleted entirely.

In addition to the three blog posts, we also received leaked emails, transcripts of audio recordings, and accounting spreadsheets that all confirm this inference. One leaked message shows Wright mentioning "a P2P distributed ledger" to his lawyer in a June 2008 email, which is clearly a reference to the public record of bitcoin transfers known as the blockchain. The email goes on to mention that Wright plans to publish a paper in 2009 titled "An Electronic Cash System Without a Trusted Third Party."

Another leaked email was sent from Wright to his close friend, computer forensics analyst David Kleiman, about a paper they had worked on together, before Bitcoin launched in January 2009. Wright decided to retire early and invest hundreds of computers to test his ideas.
In a PDF Kleiman wrote, he agreed to manage a trust fund codenamed "Tulip Trust" that would manage 1.1 million bitcoins. The PDF contained Kleiman's PGP signature, which uses cryptography to ensure it cannot be altered. Kleiman died in April 2013.

The million bitcoins in the Tulip Trust are consistent with the amount of money in a long-standing mysterious bitcoin wallet address that can be viewed through the bitcoin blockchain and is widely believed to be controlled by Satoshi Nakamoto himself. To date, only Satoshi Nakamoto has hoarded so many bitcoins, and the fact is that only he has the ability to "mine" so many bitcoins using a relatively small amount of processing power in the evolution of bitcoin. There is no other bitcoin pile of this magnitude, and no bitcoin has ever been spent from the highly-regarded address.

Another clue to Wright's bitcoin wealth that didn't make it directly to Wired is still on the website of corporate consulting firm McGrathNicol: a liquidation report for a company Wright founded called Hotwire, which was to create a bitcoin bank. It shows that the company's assets in June 2013 were $23 million worth of Wright's bitcoin. At the time of the company's founding, Wright invested an amount equivalent to 1.5% of all bitcoins in existence. For a relatively unknown player in the bitcoin world, this number is a bit strangely large.

Other evidence: A leaked email from January 2014 about Wright's tax dispute with the Australian government. In it, he appears to consider using the name Satoshi Nakamoto to influence New South Wales federal senator Arthur Sinodinos, saying "what would happen if our Japanese friends come back?" It also includes another email to the senator, which is signed "Satoshi Nakamoto."
There is also a recording of Wright's conversation with his lawyers and tax collectors in February 2014: he was annoyed: "I have been trying to hide the fact that I have been running Bitcoin since 2009," Wright said. "By the end of this month, I think half the world will know."

On December 1, Wired sent Wright an encrypted email, stating that we knew his secret and asking for a meeting. A few hours later, we received an email from [email protected] , the address of which is well known to cypherpunks as the giant corporation described in William Gibson's "Contagion Trilogy," and which Wright has referenced in his Twitter profile. The email's IP address showed that it came from Panama and was controlled by Vistomail, the same service that Satoshi used to send emails introducing Bitcoin and running Bitcoin.org. "This is a throwaway account. Even Tor [anonymizing software] is not completely reliable, but the people of Panama are very nice and do not invade people's privacy," the email ended. "You are digging, the key is how deep you are going to dig? Best regards, Director Tessier-Ashpool."

A few hours later, we received another, even more puzzling message from the same account. "I chose this nickname for a reason. I have the resources now. That makes me what I am. I am still trying to figure out how much I am capable of. So even with the resources I have now, I am still vulnerable." "You seem to know something. It's more than you should know."

We wrote back describing the three blog posts mentioned earlier that showed Wright’s clear connection to Bitcoin’s creation, and again asked for a meeting, to which he gave a revealing response: “While we all crave a degree of recognition, much is past. … Many people already know the secret, but the world doesn’t need to know. There are other ways to lead change besides becoming a dictator.”

After we again requested an opportunity to talk, Wright responded that he would consider our request. He then never responded again.

Spilled breadcrumbs?

While all of these clues are compelling, none of them fully prove that Wright is Satoshi. It is possible that all of this is an elaborate hoax, even orchestrated by Wright himself. The unconfirmed leaked documents may be forged, or even partially forged. Most puzzling of all, archives of the three blog posts show that the author made some edits - inserting evidence of his Bitcoin history. The PGP key corresponding to Satoshi's email address and the upcoming "cryptocurrency paper" and "triplet accounting" were added after 2013, even the one that pointed to the beta version of Bitcoin is questionable. Although ostensibly published in January 2009, it later appears to have been deleted and then undone, so it is possible that its creation was sometime between October 2013 and June 2014.

Why these breadcrumbs were dropped remains a mystery. Is Wright trying to steal the glory (or money) by passing himself off as Satoshi Nakamoto? Or is he quietly trying to reveal himself as the creator of Bitcoin?

But one thing is clear: if Wright wanted to pretend to be Satoshi, the scam would be as difficult as Bitcoin itself. Some of the clues added to his blog were added 20 months ago, and look like the work of a very patient scammer, if Wright is a scammer. His reference to Greger's "triple-entry bookkeeping" paper would be a very inventive lie, representing an inspiration that could have led to the invention of Bitcoin. And there is still some doubt that Wright is a Bitcoin tycoon. His $600,000 Bitcoin fortune has been publicly audited by McGrathNicol.

Wright’s blog, his public record, his verifiable email correspondence, and Twitter messages all make him stand out from other Nakamoto candidates. He subscribed to the “Crypton” mailing list as early as the 1990s. He is committed to anti-authoritarianism and cryptography, and is an advocate of gold as a financial instrument. He is an accomplished C++ programmer, a security professional who can write Bitcoin-like protocols that are difficult to hack, a libertarian, has fought with the tax authorities, and is a fan of Japanese culture.

Even if Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, he is a very strange and commendable person: he is an almost paranoid self-learner. He has obtained two doctoral degrees and claims that he can get a master's degree in one year. He is an opponent of the theory that human activities affect climate change, a serial entrepreneur, and his entrepreneurial fields range from network security consultants to Bitcoin banks. He claimed on his blog that he once accepted the challenge of making a pencil completely by himself, which took him several years. He even made bricks and built a kiln to process the graphite needed for pencils.

Wright’s blog and leaked emails reveal a man who is dedicated to building a cryptocurrency. He has mortgaged three of his properties, invested $1 million in computers, electricity, and internet, and even laid fiber optic cables to his remote country house in eastern Australia to mine bitcoin. His company, Tulip Trading, has built two supercomputers that are officially ranked in the top 500 in the world, which seem to be related to his cryptocurrency project. (Wright seems to have a special liking for tulips, which seems to be a sarcasm to those who call Bitcoin the "Tulip Bubble"). The first supercomputer he named Sukuriputo Okane - Japanese for "script money." The other, Co1n, is the most powerful private supercomputer in the world. At the Bitcoin investor conference, Wright told everyone that this second machine will be used to study Bitcoin's scalability, and that he is also building a more powerful supercomputing cluster in Iceland, which has cheap geothermal power resources.

Bitcoin watchers have long speculated why Satoshi’s bitcoins have never moved. Wright’s Tulip Trust’s 1.1 million bitcoins may hold the answer. The PDF of the trust signed by Wright’s late friend David Kleiman says the bitcoins will be unlocked in 2020, but Wright has the right to borrow them for “research on P2P systems and commercial activities that can enhance the status and value of Bitcoin.”

Despite these exceptions to the rule, the million-plus coins have not moved to date, even after Kleiman’s death in 2013. Wright could use the fund in less obvious ways, such as legally transferring ownership of the funds while still keeping the bitcoins in their previous addresses, leaving them to the companies that funded him. Or, he could still be waiting for January 1, 2020, to lift the lid on what could be the largest bitcoin fortune yet.

admit

Despite all these clues about Wright’s secret life, including those he himself has let slip — Wright has demonstrated his extraordinary ability to resist detection and his love of privacy to the point that even Satoshi admirers have never considered that he could be Satoshi. When asked at a Las Vegas conference what effect Bitcoin has on property rights, Wright said, “If we don’t want to come out and say, ‘I’m a billionaire,’ or, ‘I’m running XYZ,’ or, ‘This is my life, we should have the right not to do that. We should be able to choose how we live our lives.”

Leaked emails show Wright angry at people trying to figure out who invented Bitcoin. "I'm not American! My name is not Dorien (sic) ."
A message from Wright to a colleague on March 6, 2014.
On the same day, Newsweek published an article stating that the inventor of Bitcoin was American Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto.

"I don't want to be on your cover. I am not found and I don't want to be found," he wrote to a colleague the day the article was published, titled "Please Go Public," which may have been an early version of Satoshi's denial that he was Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. When the denial was eventually published through Satoshi's P2P Foundation forum account, it became "I am not Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto."

But Wright's private life was far from peaceful. "Don't look for it... You know what privacy means? A free gift is just that, no nonsense!
At times, however, Wright seems almost envious of Satoshi’s. “People love my secret identity but hate me,” he complained in a 2011 email to Kleiman. “I have hundreds of papers. Satoshi has only one. Nothing but one paper that I [don’t] associate myself with!”

If Wright is the creator of Bitcoin, the news will not only satisfy the curiosity of millions of Bitcoin enthusiasts, but more importantly, the Bitcoin economy will need to consider that if his trust for millions of Bitcoins is unlocked in 2020, Wright and other beneficiaries will be able to distribute Bitcoins and sell them freely on the open market, potentially causing the price of Bitcoin to plummet; the Bitcoin community, currently arguing over Bitcoin's "block size", may seek guidance from the long-lost Satoshi Nakamoto; and when his company publishes its own research results on Bitcoin, the world will have to re-understand the full scope of Wright's vision. Others who are considered possible Satoshis can breathe a sigh of relief, as can those of us who like to pry for information. And the history of cryptocurrency ideas will be rewritten forever.

Despite his dissatisfaction with Satoshi seekers, Wright seems to be giving up on his double life in recent times. He has been writing about Bitcoin more frequently on his blog over the past two years; he even drops a lot of hints on Twitter (although he deleted many of them earlier this month and switched to a private setting on Twitter).

"'Identity' is not your name. People often mistakenly fail to recognize it as just the experience you share with others," he wrote in a tweet in October.

And when a UCLA professor nominated Nakamoto for a Nobel Prize earlier this month — and he was subsequently declared ineligible because his identity was not public — Wright blasted: “If Satoshi was up for an ACM Turing Award (sic) or Alfred Nobel Prize in Economics, he would have let you damn well know it,” he wrote on Twitter, adopting the Japanese “chan” suffix to indicate familiarity or nickname.

“I never wished to be a leader, but the choice is not mine,” Wright declared in a recent tweet. “We are products of what is created for us. They change us. ”

In a cryptic blog post on September 1, Wright reflected on his long career and even seemed to acknowledge that no one could have Satoshi’s wealth and remain anonymous indefinitely. “There is a certain power and mystery to secrecy,” Wright mused.

“I’ve slowly come to realize and accept,” he added, “that no secret can last forever.”

From: Coin Technology