Satoshi Nakamoto invented and developed Bitcoin and wrote the Bitcoin whitepaper. Nakamoto was active in the development of Bitcoin until December 2010.
In October 2008, Nakamoto sent an email to the mailing group The Cryptography about his work on a "new digital asset system that is completely peer-to-peer without a trusted third party". The work describes the cryptography-secured and decentralized management of digital assets. It also states that it solves the problem of double-spending.
Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin
On January 12, 2009, during the first Bitcoin transaction, Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 Bitcoin (BTC) to Hal Finney who is a computer scientist.
Satoshi Nakamoto, along with other developers, continued to work on the Bitcoin blockchain until 2010. However, in 2010, Nakamoto left the Bitcoin community and stopped developing Bitcoin. Today, the Bitcoin wallet believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto holds around 1 million BTC.
What Are Satoshi Nakamoto’s Important Achievements?
Invented and developed by Nakamoto, Bitcoin is used as a peer-to-peer network that creates a solution to the problem of double-spending with the paper "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". Despite previous failures to create digital assets, Bitcoin has been a success.
Unlike physical assets, digital assets can be replicated through multiple transactions. Because they exist in digital form, they can be used multiple times and transacted without the need for a third-party intermediary. Through cryptography and consensus mechanisms, third-party interference with digital assets has been eliminated.
Satoshi Nakamoto has proposed a decentralized approach to transactions through ledgers, networks, timestamps, cryptography and consensus mechanisms.
In the blockchain network, timestamps are added to transaction data. Through these timestamps, the data is encrypted with cryptographic techniques. It is not possible to make any changes to the cryptographically encrypted data. Transactions that take place within the network are verified through consensus mechanisms. Records of transaction data are stored in distributed ledgers. This stored data is distributed to all nodes in the network at the same time and recorded again. The higher the number of nodes, the more secure the network is and the lower the risk of a 51% attack.
Satoshi Nakamoto's system, which integrates the work of previous cryptographers, has created a technology that goes beyond traditional data storage techniques.
Why Satoshi Nakamoto Decided to Hide His Identity?
Before Bitcoin was created, there were several attempts to create digital assets. However, many of these attempts were blocked by the authorities or abandoned due to insufficient means. According to a popular theory, Nakamoto chose to hide his identity in order to avoid being prosecuted for terrorism financing and similar criminal offenses. Although these and similar theories are found in the sources, the real reason behind this decision to conceal his identity has still not been found.
In addition, the creation of Bitcoin paved the way for decentralized economic systems. One of the most important innovations of Bitcoin was the possibility of peer-to-peer transactions without any intermediaries. In line with this philosophy, Satoshi Nakamoto handed over the Bitcoin source code to other developers and disappeared. Since then, Bitcoin has been developed as an open-source project without a central authority or leader.
What Is Satoshi Nakamoto's Ethnic Origin?
Researchers have a number of theories and assumptions about Satoshi Nakamoto's identity, such as where he is from, his age and gender. But all this research is still not conclusive. Although the names Satoshi and Nakamoto are epistemologically of Japanese origin, they may be a deception of the person or persons who want to hide their identity. In addition, the handwriting style used by Satoshi Nakamoto has been analyzed by researchers through various linguistic analyzes. Bitcoin's Whitepaper analyzed Satoshi's forum posts and emails, and while it cannot be conclusive, it appears that he has perfect English. Therefore, although the origin of the name Nakamoto is Japanese, most of the claims put forward are of US or European origin.
In addition, Satoshi Nakamoto is said to be a single person, based on the email records that researchers have analyzed so far. Developers who claim to be in contact with Satoshi Nakamoto claim that he has a paranoid and suspicious personality. According to them, Nakamoto would occasionally be nowhere to be found for days at a time, but then suddenly start sending dozens of emails on Fridays. It was also popularly claimed that Nakamoto was worried about the security of Bitcoin and that the project would go in a negative direction. For this reason, Satoshi Nakamoto is also thought to be characterized as a code developer trying to see how the Bitcoin project would develop.
Are There Theories About Who Satoshi Could Be?
Despite many theories, the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains unclear. Claims linking programming developers such as Hal Finney and Nick Szabo to Nakamoto have been unequivocally denied.
In 2014, a media claim claimed that a person whose full name was Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto was the real Satoshi. However, Dorian, a physicist and systems engineer living in California, has stated unequivocally that he has nothing to do with Bitcoin and that he is not Satoshi.
On the other hand, a man named Craig Steven Wright also claimed to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto for a long time, but failed to provide concrete evidence.
Although it is unclear who he is, it can be said that Satoshi Nakamoto brought forward the first digital asset based on blockchain technology and inadvertently changed the course of history. Satoshi Nakamoto is not the only shareholder in this groundbreaking technology he developed, but the technology we use today has developed with the work of many important names in the history of cryptography and continues to develop every day.
