Craig Wright: Australian man could be behind Bitcoin creator ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’, reports claim

A previously little-known academic has been thrust into the spotlight for being named as the man behind the cryptocurrency — but nobody’s really clear who he is

Andrew Griffin
Wednesday 09 December 2015 20:40 GMT
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Australian Federal Police officers walk down the driveway after searching the home of Craig Wright in Sydney
Australian Federal Police officers walk down the driveway after searching the home of Craig Wright in Sydney

A man has been named as the person behind Bitcoin, and then arrested — but nobody’s sure who exactly he is.

Journalists and others have been searching for years for the person or people behind Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the person who created Bitcoin. Nakamoto was first mentioned years ago, when he was named as the author of a white paper explaining the technology — and since then the cryptocurrency has gone on to be worth billions, and get used as a way of transferring money around the world.

Satoshi Nakamoto is a man called Craig Wright, from Australia, according to reports from Wired and Gizmodo. He helped create the cryptocurrency with another man who has since died, according to those reports.

Soon after the reports came out, Wright’s house was raided by Australian police. Officers were “clearing the house”, reporters told Reuters.

Finding Satoshi Nakamoto would solve the biggest mystery about Bitcoin: how and why the digital currency was made.

Whoever is behind the currency is also thought to be sitting on huge riches. The person behind the Nakamoto character has an account full of Bitcoin that has at points been valued as high as $1 billion.

Why do people think he is?

The claims mostly revolve around an apparent trove of emails that have been sent to at least Wired and Gizmodo. Those emails contain a host of messages — including those that seem to indicate

Since those messages were revealed, others have brought up other bits of evidence that Wright had something to do with Bitcoin. Those include discussions where he seems to be cagey about his involvement with Bitcoin — though nothing where he outright says that he was involved with it.

Mr Wright has been involved in a huge amount of cryptocurrency and cyber security work, and has been involved in the community around Bitcoin. But he does not appear to have been mentioned before as one of its possible creators.

Why might it be a hoax?

Even Wired recognised that they might be wrong about the identification: “two possibilities outweigh all others: Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.”

The first and perhaps most important reason to think that Wright isn’t Nakamoto is how many times this has been claimed before. They’ve (obviously) been wrong every time.

The most famous false claim was Dorian Nakamoto — a Japanese-American man from California who was named as the Bitcoin creator in a huge Newsweek story. After a huge media storm — and a car chase — the story has been largely rejected as inaccurate.

But other parts of the story don’t add up. Many have pointed out that there are inconsistencies in the dates in the story, and that nothing conclusively suggests that Wright had information about Bitcoin before it was actually released.

Others also say that they have received the emails. Nathaniel Popper, a New York Times reporter who has written much about Bitcoin, has said that he received “a very curious email attempting to dox Craig Wright […] back in Oct”. “Didn’t find it convincing at the time,” he wrote.

Why is he being arrested?

It isn’t entirely clear, and police initially told journalists that they couldn’t answer questions.

But the Australian Federal Police later said that the police presence at the house “is not associated with the media reporting overnight about bitcoins”. Any further questions were passed on to the Australian Tax Office, which has told reporters that it is unable to answer questions about specific people’s tax affairs.

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