US man denies he’s Bitcoin creator

A man named as being the enigmatic creator of Bitcoin on Thursday denied having a role in the virtual unit, telling reporters he was “not involved.”

In an exclusive report, Newsweek identified a 64-year-old Japanese-American physicist as being the mysterious person known as “Satoshi Nakamoto” behind the Bitcoin revolution.

However the man, who told Associated Press his name is Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, told reporters outside his modest two-story house in suburban Los Angeles: “I’m not involved in Bitcoin.”

Since its 2009 launch, the Bitcoin phenomenon has been hailed as a financial revolution, despite scandals over its use in drug trafficking and money laundering.

Nakamoto, who was pursued by a media pack as he drove off for an interview at the AP’s offices, told the agency that the first time he heard of Bitcoin was when his son told him he had been contacted by a Newsweek reporter three weeks ago.

He said he phoned police when the magazine’s reporter knocked on his door.

While acknowledging that some of the biographical details in the Newsweek report were true, Nakamoto denied its claim that he was “the face behind Bitcoin.”

But Newsweek stood by its story, saying his career involved classified work as a systems engineer for the US government and that he initially tacitly acknowledged his role in creating the crypto-currency that has rocked the banking world.

The Bitcoin Foundation, which supports the development of the currency, would not confirm Newsweek’s story.

“We have seen zero conclusive evidence that the identified person is the designer of Bitcoin. Those closest to the Bitcoin project, the informal team of core developers, have always been unaware of Nakamoto’s true identity, as Nakamoto communicated purely through electronic means,” it said.

Gavin Andresen, chief scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation, said he had corresponded online with a man called Satoshi Nakamoto from June 2010 to April 2011 as they refined the Bitcoin code.

But they never spoke on the telephone and Andresen did not learn anything about his personal life.

After trading for cents per Bitcoin for the first two years of its existence, it began a frenzied climb in 2011 that took it to $US40 ($A44.16) a coin in late 2012 and $US1100 last year, before falling off to the current $US650 level.

Meanwhile, Japan’s government said that Bitcoin is not a currency but that it could be “subject to taxation,” in a move that might pave the way for formal regulation.