Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto And What Is Satoshi? | ZenLedger

August 18, 2008: DNS bitcoin.org was registered

October 31, 2008: A link to a document produced by Satoshi Nakamoto known as “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” was sent to a cryptography mailing group 

3 January 2009: Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), and the bitcoin network was born

Since then, the world and especially the crypto community has been looking for answers to who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Is this a name for a single individual, or does it refer to a group of people? Is Satoshi a native of the United States or a foreigner?

With the US having seized $1.2 billion in digital assets (more than 1,700 times the amount seized in 2019), the mystery of the founder of Bitcoin is coming to the surface again.

Read on to find out more about who Satoshi Nakamoto is and all the people who are claimed to be the founder of Bitcoin. Additionally, we’ll take a look at what a satoshi is and how is it different from bitcoin?

Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto?

The crypto community considers that the founders of Bitcoin, the first-ever cryptocurrency go by the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Although the name Satoshi Nakamoto is frequently associated with Bitcoin, the real person who bears the name has not yet been identified. This mystery has led many to speculate that it is a pseudonym for a person or group of people with a different identity.

The first written account of Satoshi Nakamoto was in the whitepaper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” which painted a compelling picture of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system and was the document that kicked off the cryptocurrency movement.

Traditional Currency Vs Digital Currency

Physical notes or coins can only exist in one place at a time. So the problem of being replicated in many transactions does not occur with physical currencies. On the other hand, since digital currencies do not exist in physical space, utilizing them in a transaction does not necessarily mean that they are no longer in someone’s possession.

However, if the third party cannot be trusted, this trust-based paradigm still exposes the user to fraud risk. Only by incorporating encryption into transactions could the third party be eliminated.

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

Satoshi advocated a decentralized solution to transactions, which led to the development of blockchains. In a blockchain, a transaction’s timestamp is appended to the end of previous timestamps depending on proof-of-work, establishing an immutable historical record.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for hackers to obtain enough control of the system to rewrite the ledger for their own benefit because the record of transactions is dispersed among multiple nodes in the system. Small-scale assaults are not very common due to the amount of computer power necessary to reverse the blockchain data.

But Really, Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Satoshi Nakamoto was a key persona in the development of Bitcoin in the early years. He had contributed to the initial version of the program in 2009. However, due to the lack of personal or background facts available for Nakamoto, it was difficult to determine who he was.

Nakamoto’s participation with Bitcoin ceased in 2010. The inability to put a face to the name has sparked a lot of conjecture about Nakamoto’s identity, especially considering the increasing popularity of cryptocurrency. 

This probably was the reason that several people have claimed to be the “genuine” Satoshi Nakamoto, with Dorian Nakamoto topping the list. Other assumptions are Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, Craig Wright. Although all of them have been claimed to be the founder of the first-ever Bitcoin, none of them has been verified to be Nakamoto. 

Dorian Nakamoto

Dorian is Japanese-American, having earned a physics degree from California Polytechnic and worked on classified security projects. He was recognized as the Bitcoin founder by Leah McGrath Goodman in a March 2014 Newsweek story. This was perhaps the most high-profile attempt to discover bitcoin’s creator.

The article’s publishing caused a stir in the tech and most importantly, in the crypto communities since it was the first time a mainstream journal sought to uncover the identity of bitcoin’s founder.

Satoshi Nakamoto and Dorian Nakamoto, according to popular journalists, have significant similarities. Both were said to have a Japanese connection and are highly qualified, for example.

Craig Wright

Craig Wright, an Australian professor as well as a businessman is one of the most flamboyant personalities to be proposed as Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity. 

Several pieces of evidence included references on Wright’s blog to a “cryptocurrency document” that emerged months before the bitcoin whitepaper became widely circulated. A “P2P distributed ledger” was also mentioned in stolen emails and conversations with Wright’s lawyer.

Following inquiries, it was discovered that he was the culprit of a hoax.

Various contradictions were pointed out in Wright’s account. The blog postings, for example, looked to be outdated. Public encryption keys associated with Satoshi Nakamoto were also tampered with, according to evidence. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, who does not usually deal with politics in the cryptocurrency realm, publicly called Wright a fraud.

Nick Szabo

Szabo is a legal scholar and a computer engineer. He proposed a digital currency named “Bitgold” in a blog post in 2005, which would not rely on third-party trust.

He presented Bit Gold as a technique for creating unforgeable expensive bits online with little reliance on trustworthy third parties. This is analogous to the bitcoin idea, in which transactions are verified and validated via a series of bits generated by a network of computers without a central head.

In a 1996 article, he is credited with being the first to propose the notion of smart contracts.

In his book “Bitcoin: The Future of Money?”, author Dominic Frisby advances the case that Nick Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto. Frisby sought the advice of a stylometrics specialist, who determined that Szabo’s writing style was comparable to that of Satoshi. Another hint is that both Szabo and Satoshi mention Carl Menger, an economist.

Even now, not only the crypto community, but the entire world is looking for answers and evidence to Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Now let’s move on to our next question: what is satoshi?

What Is Satoshi?

According to Coindesk, $1 was worth 12,270 satoshi on September 28, 2019. Well then, what is satoshi?

The lowest unit of the bitcoin is the satoshi. It is named after none other than Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin and the blockchain platform by the same name. 

The general ratio is one bitcoin to 100 million satoshis.

Significance Of Satoshi

Now the question is when we can already execute transactions with bitcoin, what is the need for a smaller denomination, or “satoshi”?

Simply put, smaller denominations make bitcoin transactions easier to carry out and allow for the reading of extremely tiny transactions. 

As per the overall structure of bitcoin:

• 1 bitcoin (BTC) = 1,000 millibitcoins (mBTC)
• 1 bitcoin (BTC) = 1,000,000 microbitcoins (BTC)
• 1 bitcoin (BTC) = 100,000,000 satoshis 

In other news, while the actual figure is unclear, Satoshi Nakamoto is said to be in possession of one million bitcoins, or 100,000,000,000,000 satoshis.

The Bottom Line

Bitcoin was, at one point in time, synonymous with cryptocurrency. It was once a fringe concept that is now used by over 100 million individuals throughout the world. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, are exceedingly volatile.

On the other hand, there’s a vast majority of individuals who will never use bitcoin in their lives. However, the existence of a person (or individuals) who have altered financial markets and helped people acquire great fortunes remains a fascinating enigma.

Satoshi Nakamoto FAQs

1. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Satoshi Nakamoto was a key persona in the development of Bitcoin in the early years. He had contributed to the initial version of the program in 2009. However, the lack of personal or background facts available for Nakamoto, it was difficult to determine who he was.

2. Is Craig Wright the real Satoshi Nakamoto?

Although several pieces of evidence included references on Wright’s blog to a “cryptocurrency document” that emerged months before the bitcoin whitepaper became widely circulated, following inquiries, it was discovered that he was the culprit of a hoax.

Various contradictions were pointed out in Wright’s account. The blog postings, for example, looked to be outdated. Public encryption keys associated with Satoshi Nakamoto were also tampered with, according to evidence. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, who does not usually deal with politics in the cryptocurrency realm, publicly called Wright a fraud.

3. What is Satoshi?

The lowest unit of bitcoin is the satoshi. It is named after none other than Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin and the blockchain platform by the same name.

The standard ratio is one bitcoin to 100 million satoshis.

4. Why do we need satoshi when bitcoin can be used in transactions?

Simply put, smaller denominations make bitcoin transactions easier to carry out and allow for the reading of extremely tiny transactions.

As per the overall structure of bitcoin: