Nearly a decade has passed since the world first learned about Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin whose identity has been shrouded in mystery ever since. Quite a few research and investigative efforts over the years have failed to establish Nakamoto’s identity; the most infamous effort conducted by Newsweek as part of the magazine’s revival ended up becoming a terrible nuisance for an elderly Japanese American scientist and his family.
The Search for Satoshi Nakamoto
News stories have shown that the search for Satoshi Nakamoto has hardly subsided; instead: it has increased considerably and could actually result in reasonable clues. One news report centers on a dubious claim by a man from Hawaii who not only says he is Nakamoto but is also working on an autobiography. Another news story is focused on a crowdfunding effort to hire private detectives around the world to track down the elusive Satoshi, who may not even be a man for all we know; in fact, a valid theory is that the pseudonym refers to a group of cryptocurrency developers who place great value on privacy and anonymity.
The purported Satoshi autobiography is fake
The writer who claimed to have written the first chapter of a Satoshi Nakamoto autobiography caught the attention of linguists who specialize in the field of stylometry, which looks at certain patterns of writing and literary style to determine if texts have been written by the same author. The works of Nakamoto are widely available online; after all, the white paper that resulted in the blockchain and the Bitcoin digital currency token was released as an open source project. Using this white paper, stylometry investigators have already determined that the purported Satoshi autobiography is fake.
Why Do Investors Care About Satoshi Nakamoto’s Identity?
As for the crowdfunding effort to investigate Nakamoto’s background and identity, financial backers feel more confident that their pooled resources will yield positive results. The private detectives being evaluated to take on the case have contacts in the world of cryptocurrency development, and they are based around the world. Some of these investigators are being retained on a contingency basis, which means that they can expect a substantial bonus if they solve the case.
It is not clear whether revealing Nakamoto’s identity will have a positive or negative effect on the markets. Investors are more likely to pay attention to research that determines how many Bitcoin tokens Satoshi actually mined; some estimate the figure is in excess of one million, although many experts believe that the figure is closer to 400,000 coins.
