Satoshi Nakomoto

Satoshi Nakomoto is the pseudonym for the inventor of Bitcoin. Some people claim that Satoshi Nakomoto is an individual while others believe it is a group of computer scientists or developers although there is no concrete evidence that points to either. Many people have falsely claimed to be Satoshi Nakomoto and many others thought to be 'him' have vehemently denied it. The reasons for the anonymity is not known but it may be for security reasons because Satoshi Nakomoto is believed to own around a million bitcoins which would make them one of the richest, if not the richest billionaire in the world.

Satoshi Nakomoto did not invent blockchain, nor were they the first with the idea of cryptocurrency but they were the first to utilize blockchain technology to create a decentralized digital currency. Satoshi Nakomoto was first used as an alias in forum posts and correspondence with crypto developers and the bitcoin community. Satoshi Nakomoto published the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008. This whitepaper solved the problem of double spending in earlier crypto models with the use of blockchain and laid the foundation of what is cryptocurrency today. Satoshi Nakomoto however vanished in 2011 and said in their last known correspondence that they had "moved on to other things".

There has been a lot of speculation and investigation to find out the real identity of Satoshi Nakomoto, but they remain anonymous to this day. Evidence has however given a few pointers. Satoshi is believed to be from an English-speaking country because of their fluency in the language although the name suggests they are Japanese. The times their correspondences were sent were during European working hours so it is believed that they did not reside in Japan or Asia. Using this information, some people have been speculated to be Satoshi including Hal Finney, the first user of Bitcoin, Nick Szabo, the creator of bit gold(a pre-Bitcoin digital currency) and Dorian Nakomoto, a Japanese-American academic. However, there is no proof that any of these people are the real Satoshi Nakamoto and they all denied the possibility.  

References

[1] Binance Academy, 'Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto?' (Online, 2021) <https://academy.binance.com//en/articles/who-is-satoshi-nakamoto>