Satoshi Nakamoto

Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, authored the Bitcoin whitepaper, and created and deployed Bitcoin’s original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Nakamoto also devised the first blockchain database. Nakamoto was active in the development of Bitcoin up until December 2010.

There has been widespread speculation about Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity, with a variety of people posited as the person or persons behind the name. One person, Australian computer scientist Craig Steven Wright, has publicly claimed to be Nakamoto, though this claim has been met with skepticism. Though Nakamoto’s name is Japanese, and he stated in 2012 that he was a man living in Japan, most of the speculation has involved software and/or cryptography experts in the United States or Europe.

Nakamoto owns between 750,000 and 1,100,000 bitcoin. In November 2021, when bitcoin hit its still-highest value of over US$68,000, that would have made his net worth up to US$73 billion, which would have made him the 15th-richest person in the world at the time.