Ever since the world’s most popular and tax-free virtual currency bitcoin went live in 2009, one of the biggest mysteries related to it has been its inventor Satoshi Nakamoto. However, Wired might have solved the mystery by outing Australian Craig Steven Wright as the person behind the pseudonymous entity.
Even though this isn’t the first time media tried to make headlines by naming various individuals as the “father” of bitcoin, this time there is some pretty strong evidence that Wired might actually be right for Wright.
The lengthy investigative piece includes posts from Wright’s blog that prove he had been announcing the bitcoin even before the world was presented with the new alternative and decentralised currency. For example, a post published in August, 2008, includes his intentions to release a “cryptocurrency paper.” Additionally, in November, 2008, he posted PGP public key linked to Satoshi Nakamoto and an e-mail address satoshin@vistomail.com.
Possibly the strongest evidence that this 44-year old Australian genius that holds a master’s in law, master’s in statistics and a couple of doctorates is related to bitcoin is the blog post from 10th of January, 2009. The now deleted post announces the launch of the currency with the sentence “The Beta of Bitcoin is live tomorrow. This is decentralized… We try until it works.” There wouldn’t have been anything suspicious with this post if it hadn’t been published before bitcoin’s official launch at 3pm EST on the 9th of January, 2009.
Naturally, lots of attention was given to Wired’s revelation and even WikiLeaks reacted by publishing a post on Twitter claiming that Craig S Wright was highly unlikely “to be the principal coder behind Bitcoin.” Furthermore, according to The Guardian, police raided the entrepreneur’s home in Sydney suburb Gordon on Wednesday afternoon; nevertheless, the Australian Federal police denied the raid was related to the bitcoin claims.