Australian Federal Police officers search the home of probable creator of cryptocurrency bitcoin Craig Steven Wright in Sydney’s north shore December 9, 2015.
The stakes are high in the hunt for Satoshi Nakamoto, the person or people behind bitcoin, not just for the journalist who gets it right first, but also for the cryptocurrency itself.
An Australian entrepreneur and academic, Craig Steven Wright, is the latest candidate, outed in articles by Wired magazine and technology news website Gizmodo hours before his home and office in Sydney were searched by police.
Both articles said investigations based on leaked emails, documents and web archives pointed strongly to Wright being "Nakamoto". "Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did," said Wired.
But the search has already tripped up several journalists, most famously Newsweek’s Leah McGrath Goodman, who identified Japanese American Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto in March 2014 as bitcoin’s creator.
Dorian Nakamoto denied it – as has nearly everyone else alleged to be the mastermind credited with writing the paper, protocol and software in 2008 that gave rise to bitcoin and its underlying blockchain technology.
Unmasking the "real" Nakamoto would be significant both for the future development of bitcoin and, potentially, the currency’s market value.
While any changes to the bitcoin protocol can only be implemented by consensus, the proven founder of the cryptocurrency could hold considerable sway."Decision-making power doesn’t rest with any individual, but Nakamoto is such a mythical figure, if he appears he could become a sort of messiah to the community," said Roberto Capodieci, a Singapore-based entrepreneur focusing on the blockchain.ELECTRONIC MINERSPersuading that community is not easy: while the system is decentralized by design, a cluster of so-called bitcoin miners based in China are key, Antony Lewis, a Singapore-based bitcoin consultant, said.Unlike traditional currency, bitcoins […]
