Satoshi Nakamoto: What else do you know besides "the father of Bitcoin"?

  Who is he? Nakamoto Satoshi (?-) founded the Bitcoin system, a market value that once approached $1 billion. Curiosity: We don’t know whether “Nakamoto Satoshi” is a man or a woman, how old he is, what country he is from, whether the name “Nakamoto Satoshi” is a real name, or even whether “Nakamoto Satoshi” is a person or an organization.

     “Satoshi Nakamoto,” the man who created Bitcoin on the Internet, claims to be a 37-year-old man living in Japan, but no one believes this claim.

     In fact, we know almost nothing about him. We don’t know whether “Satoshi Nakamoto” is a man or a woman, how old he is, what country he is from, whether the name “Satoshi Nakamoto” is a real name, or even whether “Satoshi Nakamoto” is a person or an organization.

     Everything about "Satoshi Nakamoto" is a mystery, and our understanding of him is limited to the Bitcoin system he founded.

     In November 2008, "Satoshi Nakamoto" appeared out of nowhere and published a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" on a cryptography website metzdowd.com mailing list. In the paper, he envisioned an electronic currency that could not be manipulated by any political or financial forces.

     Three months later, "Satoshi Nakamoto" turned the idea of ​​this paper into reality, and the first Bitcoin client program was officially released. Bitcoin is generated through a large amount of calculation based on a specific algorithm. Anyone who invests CPU power and time in calculations can obtain Bitcoin.

     "Satoshi Nakamoto" was the first person to run this program and obtained the world's first batch of 50 bitcoins.

     Although Bitcoin is not the world's first electronic currency system, its perfect design has attracted many people who have previously developed electronic currency systems, including Wei Dai who founded the B-Money system and Nick Szabo who founded the Bit Gold system.

     Later, the Bitcoin system began to become popular among programmers, and it gradually began to play its role as a currency. The earliest person who used Bitcoin to trade was Laszlo Hanyecz. On May 22, 2010, this programmer from Florida exchanged 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas. May 22 was also designated as "Bitcoin Pizza Day."

Bitcoin Pizza with a B

     What also pushed Bitcoin to become the world's first widely accepted electronic currency system was the US subprime mortgage crisis that broke out in 2008.

     To be honest, the causes of the subprime mortgage crisis are actually quite complicated. But at the time, the American people generally attributed the responsibility to the greed of Wall Street and the stupidity of the US government. Due to distrust of Wall Street and the government, people naturally turned their attention to Bitcoin, an electronic currency that is completely independent of political forces and financial giants.

     The Bitcoin craze was sparked by WikiLeaks , which released hundreds of thousands of cables between the U.S. State Department and U.S. embassies abroad on November 28, 2010, most of which were classified documents.

     This move angered the US government, which not only attacked the WikiLeaks website and paralyzed it, but also put pressure on major financial institutions, including banks, credit card payment institutions, and even PayPal, to block WikiLeaks founder Julia Assange and WikiLeaks' related financial accounts.

     Julia Assange then appealed to the world for help via Twitter , saying she was willing to accept Bitcoin as a source of funding. Then a steady stream of financial assistance came into Assange's hands in the form of Bitcoin, and in the end WikiLeaks miraculously survived the crisis by relying on Bitcoin.

In the process of helping WikiLeaks overcome the crisis, Bitcoin demonstrated its effectiveness and efficiency, and Bitcoin became famous overnight.

     However, as the founder of Bitcoin, "Satoshi Nakamoto" was not happy to see this situation. He posted a post on the forum to protest: "The Bitcoin system is still very immature, and the attention to Bitcoin brought by Assange will destroy Bitcoin."

Despite his protests, Satoshi Nakamoto was powerless to stop Bitcoin from becoming more and more popular. From 2010 to 2011, the value of one Bitcoin jumped about 150 times.

     As Bitcoin became famous, more and more people began to ask: "Who is 'Satoshi Nakamoto'?"

     However, all efforts to find "Satoshi Nakamoto" seem to be in vain, with only various speculations and rumors.

     Some people say that "Satoshi Nakamoto" may not be Japanese because all the messages he posted were in English and there were no grammatical errors or inappropriate words.

     Some people say that "Nakamoto Satoshi" is a pseudonym. The name Nakamoto Satoshi comes from the combination of NAKAmichi, MOTOrola , SAmsung , and TOSHIba .

Laszlo Hanyecz, the programmer mentioned above who bought pizza with Bitcoin, thinks "Satoshi Nakamoto" may be an organization.

     People's interest in "Satoshi Nakamoto" is growing, but "Satoshi Nakamoto" is slowly disappearing. A week after posting a post protesting WikiLeaks, "Satoshi Nakamoto" posted his last post about Bitcoin on the forum, talking about some updates to the latest version. Afterwards, "Satoshi Nakamoto" began to slowly reduce the frequency of replying to emails until it stopped completely. Just like that, "Satoshi Nakamoto" lost contact.

     However, the Bitcoin system he built became more and more popular. Since the end of 2012, the price of Bitcoin has slowly climbed, from more than a dozen dollars to more than a hundred dollars.

     In just one month from October to November 2013, Bitcoin went completely "crazy", soaring at a rate of almost one "limit up" every day. The highest price once reached $1,200 per Bitcoin. The total value of all Bitcoins exceeded $1 billion.

Bitcoin's performance in 2013 and 2014

     There are many reasons for the rise in Bitcoin prices, including its effectiveness as an electronic currency, its freedom from government and Wall Street manipulation, media hype, and the popularity of Internet giants.

     But the most important factor is capital. When the price of Bitcoin began to rise in 2012, more and more people joined the ranks of buying and selling Bitcoin. At this time, Bitcoin was more like an investment commodity such as oil, gold, and housing.

     As more and more capital enters the Bitcoin market, a surge in Bitcoin prices is inevitable.

     But such capital operations will eventually collapse.

     Just as the Chinese witnessed the stock market soar from 2200 points to 5200 points and then quickly fell back to 3200 points not long ago, the price of Bitcoin has plummeted since 2014. By September 2015, the price of Bitcoin had fallen to around $230, only one-fifth of its peak.

     At the same time, there are more and more doubts about Bitcoin. Nobel Prize winner in economics Paul Krugman believes that Bitcoin's market value is too volatile to make it a large-scale currency. Other economists also believe that Bitcoin has no economic or political power to back it up, so it is actually worthless.

     The security of the Bitcoin system has also attracted attention. In February 2014, Mt.Gox, which once handled more than 70% of the world's Bitcoin transactions, was attacked by hackers. More than 850,000 Bitcoins were stolen, with a loss of nearly $500 million. Subsequently, Mt.Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in court.

     All this seems to confirm what “Satoshi Nakamoto” said: “The Bitcoin system is still very immature, and the attention Assange brings to Bitcoin will destroy Bitcoin.”

     However, we cannot know what Satoshi Nakamoto is thinking now, because after 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto has never expressed any opinions on Bitcoin.

     He last appeared online in March last year, when Newsweek published an article claiming that the real identity of "Satoshi Nakamoto" was Dorian Nakamoto, a Japanese American living in California.

     Three days after Newsweek published the article, Nakamoto posted a message on the website: “I am not Dorian Nakamoto.”

     After that, he never appeared again, leaving behind only countless bitcoins and unsolved mysteries for the world.