Satoshi Nakamoto is that mysterious character, the most wanted in the crypto world because of his great invention, the Bitcoin Blockchain.
The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi Nakamoto is just an alias, no one knows his real identity. It is not known whether it is a man, a woman, a set of people or companies.
Many people over the years have been fingered as possible creators of Bitcoin. Finney had a Japanese neighbor named Dorian Nakamoto, an engineer with a background in finance, his birth name was Satoshi, which he changed to become naturalized in the United States.
Other well known people such as Nick Szabo, Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds have also been mentioned, but the reality is that no one knows the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.
The early years of Bitcoin
Satoshi published through a Cypherpunks mailing list in October 2008 the Bitcoin white paper, presenting it as "A User-to-User Electronic Cash System". Thus he kicked off everything we know today.
The first block of any Blockchain is known as the genesis block. The first Bitcoin block was mined on January 3, 2009 with a particular message inside: "Chancellor on the verge of a second bank bailout". At that time, the last major financial crisis was occurring in the world.
On January 9, 2009, the first transaction on the Blockchain took place when Hal Finney, a prestigious programmer, received 10 bitcoins from Satoshi.
In the first months of the Blockchain's operation, there were few people with knowledge and interest to participate. The vast majority of transactions were between a small set of people. It is estimated that Satoshi's wallet has more than 1 million bitcoins, but he has never made any transactions to date.
Researchers and developers from all over the world joined the development team led by Satoshi, optimizing the operation, solving bugs and improving the security of the network.
Nakamoto was the leader in the construction of the Blockchain until mid-2010 when he decided to abandon the project, expressing that he was no longer interested in it. He handed over domains and source code that is still maintained by the large community behind Bitcoin.
Conclusion
Years go by and we will surely never know who it is. What is certain is that this technology has changed the world forever. And what do you think? Do you think Satoshi Nakamoto is one or several people?
Contribution created by: Miguel Angel Huamán (Platzi Contributor).
Article reviewed and edited by: Kevin Fiorentino (Platzi Lead Contributor).
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