Satoshi Nakamoto

Satoshi Nakamoto (fl. 31 October 2008 – 26 April 2011) is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Nakamoto also devised the first blockchain database. Nakamoto was active in the development of bitcoin until December 2010.

Nakamoto's true identity is unknown. Various people have been posited as the person or group of people behind his name. He used a Japanese name and gave his residence as Japan, but many have speculated that he is actually a British software and cryptography expert who worked on Bitcoin in the United Kingdom. If Nakamoto is an individual person, then his bitcoin holdings make him one of the wealthiest people in the world. His wallet, which has been untouched since 2010, holds an estimated 1.1 million bitcoins. At their July 14, 2025 price of more than $123,000 each, these were worth nearly $135 billion.

Development of bitcoin

Nakamoto said that the work of writing bitcoin's code began in the second quarter of 2007. On 18 August 2008, he registered the domain name bitcoin.org, and created a web site at that address. On 31 October, Nakamoto published a white paper on the cryptography mailing list at metzdowd.com describing a digital cryptocurrency, titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System".

On 9 January 2009, Nakamoto released version 0.1 of the bitcoin software on SourceForge and launched the network by defining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins. Embedded in the coinbase transaction of this block is the text: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks", citing a headline in the UK newspaper The Times published on that date. This note has been interpreted as both a timestamp and a derisive comment on the alleged instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.

Nakamoto continued to collaborate with other developers on bitcoin's software, making all modifications to the source code himself until mid-2010. He then gave control of the source code repository and network alert key to Gavin Andresen, and transferred several related domains to various prominent members of the bitcoin community. In 2011, Nakamoto wrote in an email to co-developer Mike Hearn that he had “moved on to other things,” and he was never heard from again.

As of 2021, Nakamoto is estimated to own between 750,000 and 1,100,000 bitcoin. In November 2021, when bitcoin reached a value of over $68,000, his net worth would have been up to $73 billion, making him the 15th-richest person in the world at the time.

Characteristics and identity

Nakamoto has never revealed personal information when discussing technical matters. On his P2P Foundation profile as of 2012, he claimed to be a 37-year-old man who lived in Japan, and gave his date of birth as 5 April 1975. Some theorize that the date referenced the signing of Executive Order 6102, which prohibited the ownership of gold coins in the United States, and 1975 as the year it was repealed. Author Dominic Frisby categorized the date as an "obscure but brilliant reference" and as "extremely political".

It is speculated he was unlikely to be Japanese due to his native-level use of English. The bitcoin white paper was not initially translated into Japanese. Analysis of the time of his posts indicates activity aligning with a western time zone. Stefan Thomas, a Swiss software engineer and active community member, graphed the timestamps of each of Nakamoto's bitcoin forum posts (more than 500); the chart showed a steep decline to almost none between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (midnight to 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time). This was between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Japan Standard Time, suggesting an unusual sleep pattern for someone living in Japan. As this pattern held even on Saturdays and Sundays, it suggested that Nakamoto was consistently asleep at this time.

Others have considered that Nakamoto might be a team of people. Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who read bitcoin's code, said that Nakamoto was either a "team of people" or a "genius"; Laszlo Hanyecz, a developer who had emailed Nakamoto, had the feeling the code was too well-designed for one person; Andresen has said of Nakamoto's code: "He was a brilliant coder, but it was quirky."

The use of British English and slang in both source code comments and forum postings, such as the expressions "bloody hard", "lad" and "mate" as well as terms such as "flat" and "maths", and the spellings "grey" and "colour", as well as double-spaced sentences led to speculation that Nakamoto is British, or a citizen of a Commonwealth nation. The incorporation of text in the first bitcoin block from the headline of an article on the front page of London's Times newspaper on the same day suggests he was located in the UK.

Possible identities

Nakamoto's identity is unknown, but speculations have focussed on various cryptography and computer science experts, most of whom are of non-Japanese descent. Bitcoiners and cryptographers have suggested various methods by which a person could prove their identity as Nakamoto, such as moving the earliest bitcoins mined or signing a message with the key associated with the first bitcoins. On the other hand, a denial of being Nakamoto is very difficult to confirm.

Hal Finney

Hal Finney (4 May 1956 – 28 August 2014) was a pre-bitcoin cryptographic pioneer and the first person (other than Nakamoto himself) to use the software, file bug reports, and make improvements. His home in Temple City, California, was also a few blocks from a programmer named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, according to Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg. Greenberg asked the writing analysis consultancy Juola & Associates to compare a sample of Finney's writing to Nakamoto's, and found it to be the closest resemblance they had yet come across, including when compared to candidates suggested by Newsweek, Fast Company, The New Yorker, Ted Nelson, and Skye Grey. Greenberg theorized that Finney may have been a ghost writer on Nakamoto's behalf, or that he simply used his neighbour's identity as a "drop" or "patsy whose personal information is used to hide online exploits"; but after meeting Finney, seeing the emails between him and Nakamoto and his bitcoin wallet's history (including the first transaction from Nakamoto to him, which he forgot to pay back) and hearing his denial, Greenberg concluded that Finney was telling the truth. Juola & Associates also found that Nakamoto's emails to Finney more closely resemble Nakamoto's other writings than Finney's do. Finney also denied knowing Dorian Nakamoto, who was himself named by Newsweek as a likely candidate for the creator of bitcoin.

Dorian Nakamoto

In a high-profile March 2014 article in Newsweek, journalist Leah McGrath Goodman identified Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, a Japanese-American man living in California, whose birth name is Satoshi Nakamoto, as the Nakamoto in question. Besides his name, Goodman pointed to a number of facts that circumstantially suggested he was the bitcoin inventor. Trained as a physicist at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Nakamoto worked as a systems engineer on classified defence projects and computer engineer for technology and financial information services companies. According to his daughter, Nakamoto was laid off twice in the early 1990s, turned libertarian, and encouraged her to start her own business "not under the government's thumb". The article's seemingly biggest piece of evidence was that when Goodman asked him about bitcoin during a brief in-person interview, Nakamoto seemed to confirm his identity as its founder, saying: "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."

The article's publication led to a flurry of media interest, including reporters camping out near Nakamoto's house and chasing him by car when he drove to an interview. Later that day, the pseudonymous Nakamoto's P2P Foundation account posted its first message in five years: "I am not Dorian Nakamoto." In a subsequent interview, Nakamoto denied all connection to bitcoin, saying he had never heard of it before and that he had misinterpreted Goodman's question as about his previous work for military contractors, much of which was classified. In a Reddit "ask-me-anything" interview, he said he had misinterpreted Goodman's question as related to his work for Citibank. In September, the P2P Foundation account posted another message saying it had been hacked, raising questions over the authenticity of the message six months earlier.