While the knowledge around cryptocurrencies is increasing, there’s almost nothing that we know about the person who created Bitcoin - Satoshi Nakamoto.

One of the best kept secrets of the internet, there have been multiple conspiracy theories around who Satoshi Nakamoto is. Some believe he’s a group of programmers while others believe he’s this eccentric genius who wants to remain hidden under a pseudonym. However, whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is, it is perhaps best for him to remain under covers.

Satoshi is reportedly a man born on 5th of April, 1975 in Japan. This has led to the speculation that he might be of a Japanese origin but does not necessarily live there. However everything that anyone knows about him is purely based out of speculation.

Satoshi Nakamoto’s Net Worth

One of the biggest reasons as to why Satoshi Nakamoto remains undercover is because of the amount of Bitcoins he owns. Reportedly, Satoshi owns around a Million Bitcoins. If you put that in context with the average price of Bitcoin as of September 2017, the net worth of Satoshi Nakamoto is somewhere between $4 Billion to $5 Billion.

This would make the man an instant high-profile target. The massive net worth of Satoshi Nakamoto is one of the biggest reasons why he does not want to reveal his identity.

However, over the years there have been numerous guesses and conspiracy theories around who this man is:

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto: Possible Answers

Time and again there have been names which have been often speculated to be Satoshi Nakamoto. There have also been claims from people that they are Satoshi Nakamoto. Let us take a closer look at the people who have been suspected to be the man behind Bitcoins:

• Dorian Nakamoto

Who better to fit the profile than a man known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Dorian Nakamoto, born as Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto is a man who trained in Physics and worked in a number of classified defence projects as a computer engineer. Reportedly he was of libertarian thought and urged his daughter to think big and think entrepreneurial - to start off an enterprise which is ‘not under the government’s thumb’. All of this points at a possibility that this man is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto - the creator of Bitcoins. Dorian has publicly denied knowing anything about Bitcoins or the person he is alleged to be.

• Nick Sczabo

Another popular theory indicates that Nick Sczabo ‘a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent’ to be Satoshi Nakamoto. He has been a long time cryptocurrency enthusiast and was even working on a concept similar to that before Bitcoins came around. What he had conceptualized was Bit Gold - which was pretty similar. However, he too, has vehemently denied these rumors and has claimed that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto.

• Craig Steven Wright

This is unlike other people on this list. While others have been suspected to be Satoshi Nakamoto, they have vehemently declined these rumors. However, when Craig Wright was claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, he accepted it.

Since December of 2015, Craig Steven Wright was being pursued by media organizations and news outlets claiming that he could possibly be Satoshi Nakamoto - the creator of Bitcoins. While Wright refused to give any press statement, the pressure started to mount and hackers started breaking in - leaked e-mail documents found that Satoshi Nakamoto is a joint pseudonym that is used by Wright and David Kleiman, a computer science forensic analyst who has since passed away.

Following these reports, Australian Tax authorities started raiding his home and offices and the police were involved too. There were a number of disputes that arose. Months later, in May of 2016, Craig Steven Wright openly accepted in a blog post that he is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto.

However, after his acceptance, the Bitcoin Core project as well as a group of hackers claimed that the proof posted by him was false and forged. However it was later also proved that he was claiming this on instructions of a Canadian firm possibly looking at profiting from these claims and Craig’s fame.

Want to Buy Bitcoin? Read: How to Buy Bitcoin?

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto: The NSA Knows The Answer

While the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is largely unknown, it is believed that the NSA - the USA’s National Security Agency knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is. The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t officially confirmed this but reports about this have been rampant.

Satoshi Nakamoto was reportedly identified by the NSA using Stylometry - a technology which maps his own words against him. There are a large number of public posts and emails written by Satoshi Nakamoto. The NSA used the ‘writer invariant’ method of stylometry to identify Satoshi.

Here’s an extract from a Medium post which claims how it was done:

By taking Satoshi’s texts and finding the 50 most common words, the NSA was able to break down his text into 5,000 word chunks and analyse each to find the frequency of those 50 words. This would result in a unique 50-number identifier for each chunk. The NSA then placed each of these numbers into a 50-dimensional space and flatten them into a plane using principal components analysis. The result is a ‘fingerprint’ for anything written by Satoshi that could easily be compared to any other writing.

This ‘fingerprint’ was then analyzed against trillions of writings from the web to finally identify who the person is. A positive match was determined in less than a month. Reportedly, the Obama government was speculative of the fact that Nakamoto could be a Russian or a Chinese agent to disrupt economies.

However, once all is said and done, only a very few people know the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto and it is highly unlikely this mystery will ever be solved.