Who is hiding under the name "Satoshi Nakamoto", who invented bitcoin: a lone genius or a team of the best cryptographers

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Bitcoin itself is not such a mysterious thing: there is nothing out of the ordinary in its idea, or in the way it is implemented. But individual traits - the personality of the inventor, the incredibly successful source code written at an exceptionally high level, the rapid growth of the rate in relation to "real" currencies and the ambiguous prospects - all this gives the new means of payment some mystery. How did bitcoin come about and thanks to whom?

What is the essence of bitcoins and why their appearance was predictable

Bitcoin was the name given to a new payment system invented in 2008. It did not appear suddenly and out of nowhere - by that time programmers had been looking for a way to create a settlement method for quite some time, devoid of the drawbacks typical of money transfers. The main disadvantage was the need to resort to the services of an intermediary who would ensure that the payment was sent by one party and received by the other without any abuse by them or by third parties.

But the intermediary (usually a bank) is not completely independent - it can be influenced, for example, by the decisions of the authorities. Then the funds may be blocked - this also happens sometimes. And the currency itself, its value tend to be dependent on many biased factors.

Therefore, since the eighties of the last century, the possibilities of the so-called cryptocurrency have been explored - that is, payment systems protected by electronic encryption methods and carried out by the parties without the participation of an intermediary bank. The prototypes of the scheme that formed the basis of bitcoins were developed by different specialists independently of each other.

The Bitcoin system is based on the principle of equality of participants. There is no "center", it is distributed across all client programs. Payments are made without intermediaries, directly, and can be made without commission. The secret key, which is known only to the owner of the bitcoin account, helps to carry out the transaction. If such a key is forgotten or lost, it will be impossible to do anything to recover the funds, the account becomes inaccessible to the owner, and all valuables are actually lost.

All information about bitcoin transactions is publicly available. The most interesting thing here is that any participant in the system can track the movement of bitcoins from the very moment of their creation: the history of such operations is a continuous chain of records - blocks. The transaction, or bitcoin transfer, is completed from the moment the block was created, but it is quite difficult to do this, because it requires complex calculations - from millions of combinations, choose a code that is suitable for all new transactions. The activity of creating blocks was called mining (in translation - "mining"), it is carried out for a fee in the form of all the same bitcoins to the account of the miner. Now every new block is created approximately every ten minutes.

Interestingly, now, twelve years after the start of mining, this task requires much more power than in the early days of bitcoin. This is no longer possible for a single computer, special structures are created - mining farms, which spend a huge amount of electricity to search for the very hash code. As for the verification of the found solution, it is much faster and easier in the Bitcoin system.

A similar method of encrypting information was used in 1610 by Galileo Galilei, who discovered the rings of Saturn and wanted to secure his primacy by publishing a special code. The anagram message read:, and after the scientist checked his observations, he published the original phrase: that is, "I watched the Highest Planet in triplets" in Latin. Thus, if the attempt to decipher the code was rather laborious, then the solution was verified much faster.

And another important difference of the bitcoin system is the complete confidentiality of the data of its participants: no personal information is required or requested to carry out transactions. This, however, also causes a number of undesirable side effects: if funds are stolen from an account (for example, when a secret key fell into the hands of an attacker), it will no longer be possible to return its rightful owner. Completed transactions cannot be canceled.

Creation of a payment system and the incognito of its developer

The latest news about the price of bitcoin is amazing and attracts the interest of both investors and hunters for easy money (and after them - and scammers), and twelve years ago, the cost of one unit of this new currency - "cryptocurrency" - was negligible. The history of bitcoins began with the publication in the fall of 2008 of an article by Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of a new cryptocurrency. The article contained a description of the principles of the payment system. A few months later, the client program code was released. Nakamoto created the first block and generated the first fifty bitcoins.

He also conducted the first transaction, sending ten "coins" to another system developer - Hal Finney. It was still far from reaching the level of any serious financial values, but in the fall of 2009 the first bitcoins were exchanged for dollars, and the rate was pegged to the cost of electricity spent on generating new blocks. And in 2010, ten thousand bitcoins were accepted as payment for the first real product - two pizzas, ordered by another developer of the new system, Laszlo Heinitz.

Bitcoin quotes are not regulated by anything other than the natural laws of supply and demand, the movement of these means of payment is not influenced by decisions of the authorities, speculation in the stock markets; they cannot be controlled or limited, which, by the way, also presupposes the widespread use of bitcoin settlements in relation to illegal goods.

Now the cost of one bitcoin is about 46 thousand dollars, or three and a half million rubles. Satoshi Nakamoto has more than a million bitcoins on his account, that is, he can be considered a dollar billionaire. The only problem is that the identity of this ingenious inventor remains a mystery.

There is a version that an anonymous developer (or hiding from fame under a pseudonym) is an important reason for the popularity of the new currency. Indeed, practically nothing is known about Satoshi Nakamoto, except that he became the author of a computer code of exceptionally high quality. That is, either a genius or a team of the world's best specialists worked under the name of Nakamoto.

In the part of the Internet space where bitcoins were discussed, Satoshi Nakamoto was active until 2011, after which he stepped back from participating in further work for the sake of a new project. The first and simplest direction in the search for the true inventor of the system was to appeal to a person with the same name, he was Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, a California resident, Japanese by birth and - by a strange coincidence - a former engineer.

But he himself categorically denied his involvement in bitcoins, and in general he was extremely unhappy with the fame that fell on him. Another candidate for the role of "Nakamoto" was the cryptographer Nick Szabo, who developed means of payment before the creation of bitcoins. American and not only programmers and entrepreneurs were proposed as other candidates - none of the versions received reinforcement.

How important is the identity of the Bitcoin creator?

It is quite possible that Satoshi Nakamoto is not one person at all, but is a pseudonym for a group of specialists, and even parts of his name are given in support of this version. Separate syllables contain the names of brands of manufacturers of various equipment - "Samsung", "Toshiba", "Nakamichi" and "Motorola" - a hypothesis, albeit far-fetched, but has the right to exist on a par with others.

Conspiracy theorists suggest the participation of American intelligence agencies in the creation of the bitcoin system, and there are versions that the authorship belongs to artificial intelligence. The mysterious creator himself, although he once introduced himself as a Japanese name, betrayed himself more like an Englishman - this is evidenced by the texts of his posts and emails, where he noted an exceptionally good knowledge of the language and the use of words like "color" written in the British version. Nakamoto's messages did not reveal any references to Japanese culture, possibly due to the fact that he has nothing to do with the Land of the Rising Sun (or it was a deliberate attempt to confuse readers, which also cannot be ruled out).

Since the product developed by Nakamoto turned out to be an innovative and extremely valuable solution for the world, moreover, devoid of serious flaws, it should only be admitted that the founder of the Bitcoin system was an extraordinary person, or perhaps a unique group. calculations and its coexistence with others, familiar and less mysterious. At the moment, the status of bitcoin in different countries ranges from absolute non-recognition to inclusion in the national financial reality.

And here is a success story from another Japanese man: How to accumulate 20 million and become famous without doing anything.