Bitcoin Genesis God Disappears in the Cyber Universe Abandoning 60 Billion

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This article is from the WeChat official account: Snow Leopard Finance Society, author: Liu Yimo, the picture is from: Visual China
The internet has no secrets, but Bitcoin’s founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, is an exception.
Even though experts, hackers, onlookers, and malicious people from all over the world have been searching for any clues about him, this invisible billionaire who holds 5% of the world’s Bitcoin, worth $60 billion, has never revealed his true identity. In fact, he has disappeared for a whole 13 years.
On October 8th, HBO released the documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” which hints at the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, one of the early developers of Bitcoin, using a similar approach to “Infernal Affairs.” The documentary suggests that Peter Todd, one of the early developers of Bitcoin, is Satoshi Nakamoto.
However, Todd strongly denies this claim. He states that such irresponsible speculation could put him in danger.
Until now, no one knows for sure the real-life identity of this elusive billionaire. His profession, age, and gender are all shrouded in mystery. People continue to tirelessly search for him, although it seems to be futile.
But the search for Satoshi Nakamoto has become a fascinating phenomenon on the internet.
I. The Disappearance of the Creator
In December 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto posted on a forum as usual, discussing a technical issue related to DoS. This was not unusual, as he had posted hundreds of times over the years, collaborating with multiple developers to improve the Bitcoin code.
However, what was unusual was that after this post, Satoshi Nakamoto suddenly disappeared.
He sent an email to a developer five months later, saying he had “moved on to other things” and was never seen again.
Since then, people have never given up on the search for Satoshi Nakamoto.
Satoshi Nakamoto is the founder of cryptocurrency and is known as the “father of Bitcoin.” On January 3, 2009, he released the Bitcoin code, which he had spent over a year writing.
Satoshi Nakamoto planned to issue 21 million Bitcoins over a period of 20 years, controlled automatically by the software code. Every 10 minutes, new Bitcoins would be minted through a lottery-like mechanism, with miners (those trying to obtain Bitcoins) using trial and error to guess the correct solution and be rewarded with Bitcoins.
Unlike sovereign currencies, Bitcoin has no physical form or endorsement from any country. It consists of tens of thousands of lines of code and a less than 10-page “Bitcoin Whitepaper.”
During the two years Satoshi Nakamoto was active on the internet, Bitcoin was still relatively unknown and did not receive widespread attention. However, after his disappearance in 2013, the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed, triggering a blockchain frenzy that lasted for years.
Despite the constant criticism, with some even claiming it is “worthless,” the price of Bitcoin has fluctuated over the years and reached $60,000 per coin by 2024, undoubtedly becoming one of the highest-return assets for investment.
Satoshi Nakamoto holds 1.1 million Bitcoins, accounting for approximately 5% of the total supply. At the current market price, this amount is worth over $60 billion. This massive fortune has been sitting idle on the internet since 2011, without any movement.
Who exactly is Satoshi Nakamoto? Why did he ignore such a huge fortune? These questions remain one of the biggest mysteries of the internet age.
Satoshi Nakamoto claimed to be a 36-year-old Japanese individual who, dissatisfied with the monetary policies of sovereign countries after the 2008 financial crisis, wanted to create a currency free from the control of traditional currencies and bankers, which later became Bitcoin.
Economist Nouriel Roubini, who accurately predicted the 2008 financial crisis, is a well-known critic of cryptocurrencies. He believes that if the internet collapses, all assets will be reset to zero. However, he spoke highly of Satoshi Nakamoto personally, saying, “Satoshi Nakamoto may be an idealist who genuinely cares about rescuing people who have been bullied.”
But this idealist never revealed any personal details in his hundreds of posts over two years, leaving no valuable clues for the searchers.
He used an untraceable email address and website, and there had been no previous records of anyone using the name “Satoshi Nakamoto” as an encoder before Bitcoin.
From 1997 to 2008, Adam Back, the inventor of Hashcash (a technology for implementing cryptocurrencies), and a cryptographer, had some email exchanges with Satoshi Nakamoto and was the first person to have contact with him. However, he stated that he was not even sure if “Satoshi Nakamoto” was truly Japanese or just a unique pseudonym. “It’s like a biblical story. No one knows exactly what happened because it was a long time ago.”
Satoshi Nakamoto planned his exit strategy perfectly.
“He thought of everything,” said Cullen Hoback, the director of the documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery.”
II. The Search for Satoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi Nakamoto took great measures to protect his privacy, but that does not mean the internet is incapable of finding him. It’s similar to the Locard’s exchange principle in forensic science: “Every contact leaves a trace.”
Computer experts have been studying the code left by Satoshi Nakamoto, just like linguists studying languages. Satoshi Nakamoto chose the programming language C++, and they suspect that C++ may not have been the first programming language he mastered or that he may not have a programming background.
Others have tried to find clues from the natural language Satoshi Nakamoto used, English. In his posts, he demonstrated the language proficiency of a native English speaker, and he consistently used British English, covering topics ranging from the Austrian School of Economics to the history of the business market.
The most attention-grabbing clue is a sentence Satoshi Nakamoto inserted into the code when he mined the first 50 Bitcoins (also known as the Genesis Block) in 2009: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” Many people speculate that Satoshi Nakamoto is actually European because The Times newspaper is only distributed in a few European countries.
Some people have tried to deduce Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity based on his posting time and frequency, believing that he may be a doctoral student with summer and winter breaks, with a profound accumulation of cryptography, economics, and computer knowledge.
These seemingly solid inferences have significantly narrowed the search scope. Joshua Davis, a journalist from The New Yorker, also believed in this approach. He successively identified Michael Clear, a 23-year-old cryptography graduate from Trinity College Dublin, and Vili Lehdonvirta, a Finnish virtual currency researcher, as Satoshi Nakamoto, but only received awkward smiles and silence from them. His speculations did not gain widespread recognition.
After The New Yorker, the baton of searching for Satoshi Nakamoto was passed to more media outlets and people in the cryptocurrency industry. They have been tirelessly speculating about Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity, walking on a pilgrimage-like path, following the few threads of clues.
In 2015, The New York Times identified cryptographer Nick Szabo as Satoshi Nakamoto because his concept of “Bit Gold” aligns closely with Bitcoin, and both of them quote the economist Carl Menger.
In 2016, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto and received recognition from media outlets such as The Economist and the BBC. However, a UK court ultimately ruled that he was not Satoshi Nakamoto and convicted him of false statements and forgery.
American writer Evan Hatch believes that all discussions about Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity are misleading and even “completely foolish and unethical.” In a 2021 article, he argues that the late cryptographer Len Sassaman is Satoshi Nakamoto. Sassaman was known for developing privacy tools such as PGP and Mixmaster and was also a member of the Cypherpunk group, where Satoshi Nakamoto was also associated.
With more and more speculative guesses, most of which cannot be confirmed or disproven, it seems that the truth is becoming increasingly elusive.
Before the release of the documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” Polymarket, a decentralized prediction platform based on Ethereum, launched a poll: “Who will HBO’s documentary confirm as Satoshi Nakamoto?” The day before the documentary aired, Nick Szabo was ranked first, with the index reflecting the betting trend exceeding 32%, and Elon Musk was also on the list. As of October 8th, the betting amount exceeded $44 million.
Now the answer is revealed. The director of the documentary, Cullen Hoback, noticed that under one of Satoshi Nakamoto’s forum posts from 2010, there was a reply from Todd. He believes that this was a mistake made by Satoshi Nakamoto, forgetting to switch accounts and inadvertently replying with his real identity. Another reason is that Todd vividly remembers this detail from over a decade ago during interviews for the documentary. However, Todd himself strongly denies this speculation.
The inclination towards the post-truth era is becoming more evident—who Satoshi Nakamoto is is not important; what matters is who people believe Satoshi Nakamoto is.
III. “We Are All Satoshi Nakamoto”
As a challenger to sovereign currencies and the financial order, Satoshi Nakamoto’s disappearance may have been a wise choice.
One characteristic of Bitcoin is that it prioritizes privacy compared to sovereign currencies. Although Satoshi Nakamoto knew that Bitcoin was not completely untraceable and unmonitored, it could still be considered a utopia for economic libertarians compared to sovereign currencies.
However, those who attempt to challenge the existing sovereign currency order often face legal troubles.
In 1998, an American citizen privately minted silver and gold coins and named his own currency Liberty Dollar. In 2011, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and fined $500,000.
Internet-issued currencies are not exempt from the law. e-Gold was a digital gold currency issued by a private company in the United States, with over 5 million accounts at its peak. In 2007, the U.S. government accused e-Gold of money laundering and other crimes because users did not need to provide complete identification when using the currency. Shortly after the arrest of the founder, the e-Gold project was shut down.
Revealing oneself as the founder of Bitcoin would not be beneficial for Satoshi Nakamoto but would instead bring high risks.
Moreover, being innocent oneself while holding such a massive fortune could pose a significant security risk. Director Hoback believes that Satoshi Nakamoto understands that once Bitcoin is successful, such as being accepted by central banks, and he holds a sizable portion (about 5%), he would undoubtedly become a target.
All the people who have been suspected of being Satoshi Nakamoto have avoided this speculation without exception. It’s as if the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is an ominous thing.
“If I were Satoshi Nakamoto, I would destroy the ability to prove my identity as Satoshi Nakamoto, so I would never be tempted to come forward,” Todd said. On social media, there are numerous comments that do not agree with the documentary’s judgment and express a desire to protect Satoshi Nakamoto, with many users writing, “We are all Satoshi.”
Technically, the truth about Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity may never be conclusively determined.
One important reason why none of the mainstream speculations have been confirmed is that since 2011, there has been no message signed with a widely acknowledged private PGP key belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto. This is the least controversial way of self-verification. Jerry Brito, the executive director of Coin Center, a Bitcoin think tank, further believes, “Even if someone successfully signs with Satoshi Nakamoto’s PGP key, that still does not prove conclusively that they are Satoshi Nakamoto.”
Another reason Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity is difficult to determine is that he may have died and can no longer come forward or make Bitcoin transactions. Many of the speculations about Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity involve individuals who have already passed away, such as Sassaman, who died by suicide in 2011, and cryptographer Hal Finney, who passed away in 2014. If Satoshi Nakamoto is among these individuals, not only would no one claim the identity, but the wealth of over $60 billion would continue to float around on the internet.
When the real Satoshi Nakamoto cannot prove himself, anyone could be Satoshi Nakamoto.
Today, the price of one Bitcoin has exceeded $60,000, but it has yet to become electronic cash or a widely accepted means of payment in most parts of the world, and Satoshi Nakamoto’s original intention remains unrealized.
If he is still alive, facing repeated speculations, he might sympathize with the writer Qian Zhongshu, who once said, “The book is good enough; why must we see the chicken that lays the eggs?”
This article is from the WeChat official account: Snow Leopard Finance Society, author: Liu Yimo.
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