Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
I am frequently asked who Satoshi Nakamoto is. The quick answer is the name used by the presumed person who developed Bitcoin and authored the Bitcoin white paper. However, it is widely known to be a pseudonym used by an actual person. I believe it is Jack Dorsey. Below are some facts that lead to this conclusion. However, we may never know the exact identity. What do you think?
Time Period early Aug '08 - Jack
Jack finds out he's going to be fired from Twitter 8/18/08 - Bitcoin .org is registered 8/20/08 - "Satoshi" emails Adam Back 9/8/08 - Jack tweets he has a plan in his back pocket 10/5/08 - Satoshi registers account on SourceForge 10/15/08 - Jack fired from twitter 10/30/08 - Jack takes his blog (gu .st) that's been running for 7 years offline 10/31/08 - Bitcoin White Paper released 2/11/09 - Satoshi announces Bitcoin on P2P Foundation. 2/11/09 - Jack launches payments company named Squirrel, later Square. 12/5/10 - Satoshi tells people not to donate Bitcoins to WikiLeaks. 12/7/10 - Visa bans payments to WikiLeaks. 12/13/10 - Satoshi stops logging into the Bitcoin forum. 12/14/10 - Twitter receives secret court ordered demand over WikiLeaks. 3/28/11 - Jack returns to Twitter as Executive Chairman while remaining CEO of Square. 4/23/11 - Satoshi sends goodbye email ("I've moved on to other things"). 4/27/11 - Visa invests in Jack's company Square. 5/23/11 - Twitter's tech lead suggests that Jack's company Square might integrate with Bitcoin.
C++ for Bitcoin source code Now confirmed Jack coded in C++ as far back as mid-90s
C in the White Paper Now confirmed Jack coded in C as far back as mid-90s.
Satoshi pseudonym "Satoshi" was the first tweet Jack's best friend (Crystal Taylor) made on the beta version of Twitter in 2006 in reference to DJ Satoshi Tomiie. Jack revealed this on Tumblr in March 2011.
Adam Back, the first person that Satoshi emailed Jack wore an Adam Back code t-shirt in his college yearbook photo and linked to Back's website in the 90s from his own with the note "Very good."
Hal Finney, the first person to really help Satoshi Jack linked to Hal's website in the 90s from his own with the note "essays, explanations, and challenges".
Ecash (What Satoshi originally called Bitcoin) Jack linked to David Chaum's Digicash (ecash) website and to a page that contained Cypherpunks' C library-based ecash-lucre in the 90s. Jack noted this page as being "The best."
Cryptography Jack is confirmed to have been obsessed with cryptography, dedicating his personal website to it in the 90s
Cypherpunks Jack confirmed to be one of ~1,300 subscribed cypherpunks in the world in 1996, and made the list a central focus of his website while promoting its mission. Another one of his emails is confirmed to have been on the list in 2000.
Bitcoin White Paper The White Paper cited a 1997 ACM Research paper and Jack was a confirmed member of ACM in 1997.
Research Paper Production Jack ran a team of programmers in the 90s at Mira Digital Publishing that wrote academic research paper production and distribution software. Such papers were formatted like the Bitcoin White Paper.
St. Louis In 2014, a hacker tried to extort Satoshi after breaking into his email by publishing a doctored Invoice with a St. Louis address. Jack is from St. Louis.
Windows (what Satoshi first coded Bitcoin for) Jack is confirmed to have coded for Windows, Mac, BSD, Linux, and Blackberry all prior to Bitcoin's release.
Numerology 11/19 - Satoshi joined the Bitcoin forum on 11/19 (Jack's birthday) 1/11 - Satoshi's first transaction to Hal Finney was 1/11 (Jack's mom's birthday)
California Satoshi's IP is widely believed to have leaked on 1/10/09, placing him in California. Jack was in California at the time.
Sailor's Adage The bitcoin source code contained the phrase "Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three." Jack was obsessed with sailing.
Denials" 2020 - Jack tells Lex Fridman that if he was Satoshi he wouldn't tell him. 2023 - Jack tells a conference interviewer in an odd denial that "Bitcoin and Satoshi in 2009 was a combination of my childhood and my curiosity and everything that I aspired to be and everything I loved."
British Spellings Satoshi occasionally used British spellings, but not all the time. Jack in 2009 shared that he sometimes changes the language settings in his phone. So UK English settings would have therefore auto-corrected his American English to British.
Craig Wright The COPA lawsuit that disproved Wright as Satoshi was financed primarily by Jack.
Jak Wright claimed to own thousands of Bitcoin addresses in a lawsuit but this was thrown into doubt in 2020 when 145 of them signed a message claiming Wright was a fraud.
Novels Jack's friend Alyssa Milano wrote 2 books (Hacktivist 1 and 2) about Jack, that claimed that he had been living a double life under a famous hacking pseudonym. The first was written in 2013. Jack is godfather to her child. First Jack's company Square was the first publicly traded company to talk to the SEC about Bitcoin. Jack's company Square was the first publicly traded company to sell Bitcoin.
Web-based Payments Jack's company Dnet first contemplated web-based payments without a bank account starting in 1998. Jack's company Square revolutionized retail POS payments (founded in 2009).
Self-control Jack is already a twice self-made and publicly famous billionaire. Satoshi's "wealth" of Bitcoins would hardly be enticing, especially given his philanthropic attitude and behavior.
Reasons to hide in the beginning In July 2008, E-Gold Ltd. (E-Gold), an Internet-based digital currency business, and its three principal directors and owners, pleaded guilty to criminal charges relating to money laundering and the operation of an illegal money transmitting business.
Reasons to keep hiding in 2010-2011 Twitter was in the hot seat with the US government over WikiLeaks' usage of twitter to distribute information. Twitter's board was planning to bring Jack back into a day-to-day role. People were using Bitcoin to fund WikiLeaks. Visa was planning to invest in Jack's company Square. Visa had banned payments to WikiLeaks. Visa announced its investment in Jack's company a couple days after Satoshi announced his goodbye.
Wei Dai, Nick Szabo Adam Back testified in the COPA lawsuit that he did not think Satoshi was familiar with Wei Dai's "b-money" because he had to tell him about it. Meanwhile, the cypherpunks had to tell Satoshi about Nick Szabo's "Bit Gold." Jack's cypherpunk fan page mentions several cypherpunks including Adam Back and Hal Finney, as mentioned before, but did not mention Wei Dai or Nick Szabo, as if he perhaps he wasn't aware of them either, just like Satoshi.
Open Source Track Record Jack's commitment to open-source software is well established and can be traced going back to the mid-90s. From Dnet to apps he wrote, to statements he made, to forums he posted on.
Attempts to disprove The only attempt to disprove the Jack is Satoshi theory was debunked by the likelihood that Satoshi could have and likely did post to the internet from a cell phone, thereby eliminating perceived time conflicts between Jack and Satoshi.
Denials from others Nick Szabo, Adam Back, Hal Finney, Peter Todd, Wei Dai, etc. all deny being Satoshi.
Who Finances Bitcoin Development Today? In the Fall of 2024, 1A1z released its report that revealed that Jack Dorsey was the primary financier of Bitcoin's development today.
SEC Disclosure Jack filed a shareholder letter with the SEC in early 2024 stating that Square (now Block) is following "Satoshi Nakamoto's" design when it comes to cryptocurrency. The implication is that the company is simply following the CEO's design.
Today Satoshi shirt, JackjackBITS username on github, release of BITchat, Block/Square is bitcoin-integrated payments company with $1B of Bitcoin on balance sheet
Jack Dorsey is Satoshi Nakamoto
I hope you are having a great summer.