This morning, a 50 BTC transaction with a UTXO from February 2009 was made, sending the Bitcoin community into a storm of speculation. Was it Satoshi who was moving the coins, or someone close to the original, mysterious creator of the first-ever cryptocurrency?
The discussion has brought back discussion as to who Satoshi actually could be. With who the cryptocurrency’s creator is once again a hot topic, we’re rounding up all of the usual suspects who are commonly thought to be the figure behind the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto.
The Origins of Bitcoin
In early 2009, the first version of the Bitcoin protocol was released on Sourceforge coinciding with the mining of the Genesis block.
The Genesis block and the earliest blocks mined by early Bitcoin miners earned 50 BTC each.
This morning, 50 BTC moved associated with Bitcoin that was mined back in February 2009, just one month after the Genesis block was mined and added to the blockchain.
Related Reading | Blast From Bitcoin Past: Is Someone Close to Satoshi Moving 50 BTC From 2009?
The movements of funds have caused speculation to run wild across the cryptocurrency space. First, the community believed it could be Satoshi moving the coins. Next, others assert it must be someone associated with the creator of the cryptocurrency.
More rational crypto enthusiasts claim it is likely just an early Bitcoin miner and bears little significance in the overall grand scheme.
Whatever the meaning behind it or who the sender is, it has revived discussion about who the creator of Bitcoin may be.
And while we may never know who exactly Satoshi Nakamoto is or they are, here is a list of the most commonly accused or associated with being the creator of Bitcoin.
Meet The List of People Who Have Been Said to Be Satoshi Nakamoto
Craig Wright
Dr. Craig Wright has long laid claim to being the creator of Bitcoin. The Bitcoin SV frontman has been challenged to then move some of the BTC supply said to be held by the real Satoshi to prove the claims.
Wright has yet to access this Bitcoin. However, in a strange turn of events, the 50 BTC sent this morning has been tied to Wright in some way.
Court documents highlighting the wallet addresses owned by Wright include the early Bitcoin address that moved 50 BTC today.
This in no way proves Wright is Satoshi, or if he even owns the account. Wright is currently being accused of defrauding Dave Kleiman’s estate of a massive sum of Bitcoin and various intellectual property rights.
Paul Le Roux
Last year, a conspiracy theory surfaced involving a cartel boss programmer turned DEA informant.
The theory claimed that South African crime kingpin Paul Le Roux created Bitcoin as a way to launder money. Le Roux was not only a cartel boss, but he had extensive experience with encryption technology used in cryptocurrencies.
Adam Back
Adam Back is the CEO of Blockstream and a lead Bitcoin developer. But prior to this, Back invented Hashcash, considered to be a precursor to Bitcoin.
Hashcash brought the concept of proof-of-work to the world, which later inspired the blockchain technology powering BTC.
Back even now is regularly accused of being Satoshi Nakamoto. And while Back is certainly flattered, he denies the claims.
Nick Szabo
Nick Szabo is also among the earliest supporters of digital currencies. Szabo had designed a digital currency called Bit Gold, said to be a direct precursor to Bitcoin’s technology.
The currency got its name because Szabo was as closely as possible “trying to mimic” the “security and trust characteristics of gold” but have it exist in cyberspace. Sound familiar?
Hal Finney
The late Hal Finney was a computer scientist and developer for PGP Corporation focusing on “pretty good privacy.” He was an early contributor to Bitcoin and was among the first to run the client. He also received the first BTC transaction from Nakamoto himself, or so it is said.
Finney is the most likely candidate out of everyone to actually be Nakamoto, but he denied it up until his passing.
Dorian Nakamoto
Dorian Nakamoto is often used as the face of Satoshi, due to a Newsweek report identifying a Japanese California man as having been born with the name Satoshi Nakamoto.
Coincidentally, Nakamoto worked as a systems engineer for tech and finance firms. And even more unusually coincidental, Finney and Nakamoto both lived in Temple City, California at one point.
It’s speculated that either the two conspired together to create Bitcoin, Finney created it and used the Nakamoto name or some other scenario where the two merged their visions for what the cryptocurrency ultimately became together.
There’s potential that the crypto asset was created by any person on this list or some combination of them. We may never know who Satoshi Nakamoto is or was, but their legacy will live on forever through Bitcoin. origin »
Well, that didn’t take long. The ‘Pro Bitcoin’ Nakamoto initiative has already whipped up a Crypto Tweetstorm and had its Telegram channel shut down in just three days. The Nakamoto Initiative Disheartened by the lack of discussion about the “philosophical principles that motivated Satoshi Nakamoto, or the society that he wanted to build” a group of high-level intellectuals launched the Nakamoto website on Jan 3.
Craig Wright complains the discussion about digital assets is focused on fallacies He considers the media should focus on real crypto discussions Craig Wright, the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, wrote an article in which he explains the logic of false argumentation.
By CCN: The man, the meme, the legend – Alex Jones has become an ingrained part of the Bitcoin subculture in recent years, thanks to several revelations made on his flagship show Infowars.
Last week, there was a panel at SXSW that was effectively a debate on the merits of permissioned blockchains versus permissionless systems like Bitcoin. I listened to the entire audio of the panel discussion, after Programming Bitcoin author Jimmy Song tweeted it out the other day, and I thought he did an awesome job of pointing out the key value proposition of Bitcoin and why it is not worth comparing to permissioned systems.
An IBM executive is unfazed by the current market realities, saying he sees Bitcoin (BTC) reaching a value of $1 million as a present possibility. Jesse Lund, vice president of Blockchain and Digital Currencies at IBM, shared his predictions at the IBM Think 2019 Conference, which took place February 12–15, 2019.
Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto, (almost certainly) a pseudonym, that no one has been able to conclusively connect to an actual person or group of people to this day.
Bitcoin Cash ‘Satoshi’s Vision’ (BSV), the new hard fork of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), is a “pure dumpster fire,” Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has said. Cool Vs. Dumpster Hot Air In a Twitter discussion with cryptocurrency commentator and entrepreneur Tuur Demeester December 25, Buterin debated the pros and cons of two algorithms used by many cryptocurrencies: Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
The P2P Foundation profile for bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto mysteriously became active earlier today, sparking a wave of discussion across the crypto community. Satoshi Nakamoto’s profile on P2P Foundation was last active on February 18, 2009.
Cryptocurrency has been around since 2009, when bitcoin was launched by a pseudonymous programmer called Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto’s big innovation was developed with the intention of verifying secure financial transactions outside the authority of a centralized bank.
On the most recent episode of Let’s Talk Bitcoin!, the hosts discuss the now-defunct Bitcoin Alert system, devised by Satoshi himself. A rarity in the podcast space, this episode’s exploration involved no guest appearances, instead relying on the wealth of experience that Adam B.
Over time, it has been proven that Bitcoin Cash (BCH) theatrics are head line makers. However, this time round, the topic of discussion—whether or not to hard fork is existential. Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC are diverging on how best to upgrade the network.
The mystery of the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has been a topic of discussion in the cryptocurrency community for years after he/she/they mysteriously disappeared. But a website, created on June 29th, states that Satoshi is back.
With the creation of Bitcoin and its blockchain, Satoshi Nakamoto introduced an entirely new practical application for cryptography, unearthing an unexplored area for computer science and technological development.
On Feb. 18, 2025, Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck, Matthew Sigel, published a long post on X, claiming that he is convinced Jack Dorsey is Satoshi Nakamoto. Sigel backed his claim with a body of evidence compiled by…
Coinbase director Conor Grogan surmised that Kraken and its founder Jesse Powell may have access to Satoshi Nakamoto’s real identity due to a 2016 acquisition.
On Jan. 30, 2025, several crypto influencer accounts celebrated the solo miner who managed to solve a block and grabbed the entire reward of 3.146 BTC for themselves. However, it turned out that the hashrate of the solo miner was…
The crypto world is celebrating 16 years since Bitcoin’s Genesis block was mined on Jan. 3, 2009. This landmark event not only marked the birth of the top digital asset but also laid the groundwork for today’s digital financial revolution.
On Dec. 24, 2024, the amount of mined bitcoins crossed the 19,800,000 mark, leaving less than 1.2 million bitcoins remaining until the total supply is exhausted. After the 2024 halving, approximately 450 bitcoins are mined each day. According to one…
Frank Richard Ahlgren III, an early Bitcoin investor from Texas, has been sentenced to two years in prison for tax fraud. According to the Department of Justice, Ahlgren underreported $3.7 million in Bitcoin (BTC) capital gains on his 2017 tax…
US Spot Bitcoin ETFs have significantly transformed both Bitcoin and the broader crypto industry. These ETFs have seen their value and holdings grow massively since their launch in January 2024, breaking multiple ETF records in traditional finance.
