Who is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin?

This resource is a wikidebate, a collaborative effort to gather and organize all arguments on a given issue. It is a tool of argument analysis or pro-and-con analysis. This is not a place to defend your preferred points of view, but original arguments are allowed and welcome. See the Wikidebate guidelines for more.

Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original reference implementation.

Hal Finney

Harold Thomas Finney II (May 4, 1956 – August 28, 2014) was a developer for PGP Corporation, and was the second developer hired after Phil Zimmermann.

Arguments for

• Pro Hal Finney lived near a man named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, he could have been inspired by him for his pseudonym.

Arguments against

• Con Hal Finney's first contributions were corrections to the Bitcoin code, including cryptographic errors.
  • Objection This argument does not prove or disprove Finney´s relation with Nakamoto.

Nick Szabo

Nicholas "Nick" Szabo is a computer scientist, legal scholar, and cryptographer known for his research in digital contracts and digital currency.

Arguments for

• Pro Szabo's writing style is the closest to that of Satoshi Nakamoto.

Arguments against

• Con Nick Szabo denied to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
• Con Nick Szabo designed Bit gold under his real name.
  • Objection This argument does not prove or disprove anything. Maybe he would have wanted to be anonymous on a new creation, bitcoin.
    • Objection But it makes it less likely that Szabo will change his anonymity behaviour.

Craig Wright

Craig Steven Wright (born October 1970) is an Australian computer scientist and businessman. He has publicly claimed to be the main part of the team that created bitcoin, and the identity behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

Arguments for

• Pro He is skilled with Bitcoin Script.

Arguments against

• Con Craig Wright claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto without providing public cryptographic proof.
• Con Craig Wright makes technical mistakes on subjects he should have mastered to create Bitcoin.

Adam Back

Adam Back (born July 1970) is a British cryptographer and cypherpunk. He is the CEO of Blockstream, which he co-founded in 2014. He invented Hashcash, which is used in the Bitcoin mining process.

Arguments for

• Pro Satoshi Nakamoto wrote in British English and referred to the British newspaper Times in the genesis block.
  • Objection This could easily be a strategy to confuse the issue of his/her identity.
• Pro Both Satoshi Nakamoto and Adam Back consistently used two spaces after each sentence in the Bitcoin Forum.
  • Objection The use of two spaces was common in the Anglo-Saxon world until at least the 2000s.

Arguments against

• Con All of Adam Back's cryptocurrency-related projects (both before and after Bitcoin, including Hashcash and Blockstream) have been conducted publicly under his real name.
• Con Adam Back denied to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
  • Objection Denying to be someone does not make it any less plausible that he is Satoshi Nakamoto.

Further reading

• Satoshi Nakamoto, wikipedia.org