Satoshi Nakamoto

Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the person or group who published the Bitcoin paper on 31 October 2008 and released the first Bitcoin software in January 2009. Who that is remains unknown. No year of birth, no nationality, not even whether it was one person or several, survives as an established fact. What survives is the writing and the code published under the name.

The workings and history of Bitcoin itself are covered on the event page. This page sets out only what the record shows about the name "Satoshi Nakamoto".

About two years on the record

The name first appears in a post to a cryptography mailing list at 18:10 UTC on 31 October 2008. The subject line was "Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper", and the message opened: "I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party." It pointed readers to the paper on bitcoin.org.

The main entries that followed are these (times in UTC, as the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute records them):

The v0.1 announcement already fixed the supply: "Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins." It explained that the amount distributed to nodes that make blocks would be cut in half every four years. The 21 million cap and the halving schedule were settled in that first release note.

The forum posts continue through December 2010 and then stop. When the English High Court set out the issues before it, it used the phrase "Satoshi withdrew from the project". No explanation from whoever held the name, of when or why, appears in the public record.

"I am Satoshi" — and the 2024 judgment

Claims about Satoshi's identity, made in press reports and by people naming themselves, have surfaced repeatedly, and none has been established. One of them has been tested head-on in court.

According to the judgment, Craig Wright publicly asserted on 2 May 2016 that he was Satoshi. On 9 April 2021 the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) began proceedings in England seeking, among other things, a declaration that Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper.

On 14 March 2024, at the conclusion of closing submissions, Mr Justice Mellor of the High Court of England and Wales announced his conclusion in open court and made four declarations:

1. Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper.
2. Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period between 2008 and 2011.
3. Wright is not the person who created the Bitcoin system.
4. Wright is not the author of the initial versions of the Bitcoin software.

The written judgment with his reasons, [2024] EWHC 1198 (Ch), followed on 20 May 2024; in it the judge describes the evidence as "overwhelming". What the court decided, though, is only that Wright is not Satoshi. On who Satoshi is, the judgment says nothing.

Only a name remains

Most of the important inventions in computing history are tied to a person with a name and a career — the author of a paper, the applicant on a patent, the founder of a company. Bitcoin has none. The holder of the name left a paper, code and forum posts, and was gone within about two years. Everything that came after — Bitcoin's spread, its regulation, the swings in its price — happened without its creator ever appearing in public.