Industry Heavy Hitters Reveal the ‘Real Satoshi’

2016. May. 02. 14:23

Well, it’s never a dull day in Bitcoin-land, to say the least. Hours ago John Matonis tweeted to the public and revealed a blog called drcraigwright.net revealing a PGP signature from Dr. Craig Wright claiming to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto. Mainstream media publications such as BBC and GQ also pushed out stories assessing that Wright was most likely Nakamoto. Following this Gavin Andresen confirmed that he believes Dr. Wright is the creator of Bitcoin. Now the community is in an uproar investigating the story once again.

Also read: Gavin Andresen Resumes Work on Bitcoin Core

Dr. Craig Wright Blog

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Could It Be Dr. Wright?

Dr. Craig Wright

A few weeks ago the story of Craig Wright’s reveal was leaked to the media to prep them for this event. The narrative was that Wright would use some sort of cryptographic proof to prove to the public he was really Satoshi Nakamoto. This was backed up by former Bitcoin Foundation Director Jon Matonis who said: “I have been contacted by a private group, and I am under a strict NDA [non-disclosure agreement] and press embargo during due diligence phase.” Though no one had heard anything about the story since.

Fast forward to May 1st, 2016. Matonis along with a few mainstream media publications drop the big news bombs saying they had contacted Wright, spoke with him and seen his blog before it was publicly revealed.

Matonis has written a blog post called “How I Met Satoshi” where he describes how he felt Wright met every criteria to make him believe that he is indeed Bitcoin’s creator. Matonis tells his account of the proof within his blog The Monetary Future stating:

During the London proof sessions, I had the opportunity to review the relevant data along three distinct lines: cryptographic, social, and technical. Based on what I witnessed, it is my firm belief that Craig Steven Wright satisfies all three categories. For cryptographic proof in my presence, Craig signed and verified a message using the private key from block #1 newly-generated coins and from block #9 newly-generated coins (the first transaction to Hal Finney). The social evidence, including his unique personality, early emails that I received, and early drafts of the Bitcoin white paper, points to Craig as the creator. I also received satisfactory explanations to my questions about registering the bitcoin.org domain and the various time-of-day postings to the BitcoinTalk forum. Additionally, Craig’s technical working knowledge of public key cryptography, Bitcoin’s addressing system, and proof-of-work consensus in a distributed peer-to-peer environment is very strong. According to me, the proof is conclusive, and I have no doubt that Craig Steven Wright is the person behind the Bitcoin technology, Nakamoto consensus, and the Satoshi Nakamoto name.

Gavin Andresen Believes Wright May Be Satoshi

Alongside Matonis, another prominent Bitcoin member of the industry, lead scientist and Core developer, Gavin Andresen confirmed that he believed the account coming from Wright as well.

“I believe Craig Steven Wright is the person who invented Bitcoin,” Andresen wrote in his own blog.

He then explained how he flew to London a few weeks ago and met Wright in person. The Core developer says he was pleased to shake his hand and was convinced that this person was most likely the creator of Bitcoin based on his experience communicating with Satoshi. Andresen explained:

During our meeting, I saw the brilliant, opinionated, focused, generous – and privacy-seeking – person that matches the Satoshi I worked with six years ago. And he cleared up a lot of mysteries, including why he disappeared when he did and what he’s been busy with since 2011. But I’m going to respect Dr. Wright’s privacy, and let him decide how much of that story he shares with the world.

Many Believe This is a ‘Scammers’ Second Attempt

Despite this, many people don’t believe the current narrative throughout Reddit and many forums. Commentary and threads like “Craig Wright ‘reveal’ could be the first stage of a new governance attack on bitcoin,” can be seen across various social media.

One particular post says Craigs Wright’s signature is “worthless” and details an explanation saying:

“JoukeH discovered that the signature on Craig Wright’s blog post is not a signature of any ‘Sartre’ message, but just the signature inside of Satoshi’s 2009 Bitcoin transaction. It absolutely doesn’t show that Wright is Satoshi, and it does very strongly imply that the purpose of the blog post was to deceive people. So Craig Wright is once again shown to be a likely scammer. When will the media learn?”

Other well-known heavy hitters within the industry had a lot to say against this big reveal as well. Bitcoin developer Peter Todd has announced that members of Core believe that Andresen accounts have been compromised and commit removed.

FYI, @gavinandresen's commit access just got removed – Core team members are concerned that he may have been hacked. https://t.co/7re7z16TeR

— Peter Todd (@petertoddbtc) May 2, 2016

Core developer Jonas Schnelli also believe the event is a farce and tweets his own evidence. “Craig Wright once again fooled us,” he said. “Today’s prove signature is just a signature from a tx back in 2009. Scammer!”

With all this said, the story is still developing. Bitcoin.com will be following closely to bring you the latest updates. Until then keep calm and Bitcoin on…..