Bitcoin is a form of digital currency, created and held electronically. Bitcoins aren’t printed, like rupee or dollars– they’re produced by people, and increasingly businesses, running computers all around the world, using software that solves mathematical problems. The origin of Bitcoin is still a suspense, however.

What makes it different from normal currencies?

There is no government, company, or bank in charge of Bitcoin. As such, it is more resistant to wild inflation and corrupt banks. With Bitcoin, you can be your own bank. However, Bitcoin can be used to buy things electronically similar to any other currency.

How does Bitcoin work?

A user can use Bitcoin without understanding the technical details. Once user installed a Bitcoin wallet on computer or mobile phone, it will generate Bitcoin address. User then disclose address to his friends so that they can pay him or vice versa. In fact, this is pretty similar to how email works, except that Bitcoin addresses should only be used once.

Satoshi Nakamoto- the Creator of Bitcoin

Someone using the name Satoshi Nakamoto released the software for Bitcoin in early 2009 and communicated with the initial currency’s users via email — but never by phone or in person. After bitcoin gained popularity in 2011, the emails stopped.

Since Satoshi stopped contributing to the project in 2011, most of the open-source code has been rewritten by a group of programmers whose identities are known.

It is still a mystery who the Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto actually is. You think he is Japenese by name, no?

There is a popular proverb, “do not judge a book by its cover”. Same is the story here.

“Satoshi” means “clear thinking, quick witted; wise”. “Naka” can mean “medium, inside, or relationship”. “Moto” can mean “origin”, or “foundation”.

Combining all it means the person who founded a movement by designing a clever algorithm.

Criminal or a Genius

Bitcoin is not Nakamoto’s, nor what Nakamoto wants it to be. That’s the nature of what Jeff Garzik calls the world’s first “decentralized autonomous organism.”

It is believed that Nakamoto was motivated by politics, not crime. He had introduced the currency just a few months after the collapse of the global banking sector, and published a five-hundred-word essay about traditional fiat, or government-backed, currencies.

“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work,” he wrote.

“The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve.”

Investigations to reveal the Identity of Satoshi

It is one of the great mysteries of the digital age. In the numerous attempts to lift the veil of bitcoin’s mysterious inventor, people have gotten hurt. Homes have been raided. Journalists have been ostracized.

The New Yorker’s Joshua Davis believed that Satoshi Nakamoto was Michael Clear, a graduate cryptography student at Dublin’s Trinity College.

In May 2013, Internet pioneer Ted Nelson threw another hat into the ring: Japanese mathematician Professor Shinichi Mochizuki, although he admits that the evidence is circumstantial at best.

In February 2014, Newsweek’s Leah McGrath Goodman claimed to have tracked down the real Satoshi Nakamoto. Within hours of her Newsweek cover story identifying the creator of Bitcoin, McGrath Goodman has become the target of countless nasty tweets and an object of hate on Reddit’s well-trafficked r/bitcoin forum.

Dorian S Nakamoto has since denied he knows anything about bitcoin, eventually hiring a lawyer and releasing an official statement to that effect.

[Image Source: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times / MCT]

Nathaniel Popper, in his book ‘Digitial Gold’ claimed Nick Szabo to be Satoshi Nakamoto. The reason might be the software “Bitgold” created by Szabo. It was the predecessor software of Bitcoin and achieved many of the same goals using similar tools of advanced math and cryptography.

Then in early December 2015, reports by Wired claimed to have identified Nakamoto as Australian entrepreneur Craig S Wright. It cited “an anonymous source close to Wright” who provided a cache of emails, transcripts and other documents that point to Wright’s role in the creation of bitcoin.

Australian Craig Wright claims to be Bitcoin creator

In a recent move, Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright confirmed the Wired and Gizmodo story, and has publicly identified himself as Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. His admission follows years of speculation about who came up with the original ideas underlying the digital cash system.

Not everyone has been convinced by Mr Wright’s claims and the technical proof he put in his blog. Some cryptographers and developers who worked through the information provided said they had trouble getting verifiable information out of it. Within 90 minutes the post had been debunked on Reddit, an online forum.

Many people have called on Mr Wright to go further in proving his identify.

He then said that he would present “extraordinary proof” that he is indeed Mr Nakamoto by moving some bitcoin from accounts thought to be under control of the currency’s creator.

But Story is not yet ended..

A day later, he has decided not to prove his claims after all. Wright says that he “broke” as he was about to publish proof of access to the earliest keys. “I do not have the courage,” he wrote in a note on his website. “I cannot.”

Are Governments Afraid?

All bitcoin in circulation are now worth about $7 billion. Mr Nakamoto is thought to hold more than 1m bitcoin, worth about $450m at current rates.

Bitcoin claims that “It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen.” That lack of central authority is the primary reason governments are afraid of the cryptocurrency.

Whatever will be the findings of Satoshi Nakamoto hunt, there is no doubt that it is one of the most genius innovation of recent times.