BBC unmasks the man behind bitcoin
Print Edition
AUSTRALIAN tech entrepreneur Craig Wright has told the UK’s state TV broadcaster that he is the creator of controversial digital currency bitcoin, but some skepticism remains about the identity of a person who until now has gone by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto.
The BBC reported yesterday that Wright gave some technical proof he had access to blocks of bitcoins known to have been produced by the digital currency’s creator.
Unmasking Nakamoto could be significant for the future of the bitcoin, which has attracted the interest of banks, speculators, criminals and regulators.
Researchers believe Nakamoto might be holding up to 1 million bitcoins, worth about US$440 million, and that the price of the cryptocurrency could plunge if that was to be unloaded.
Wright declined requests from The Economist to provide further proof he was Nakamoto.
“Our conclusion is that Mr Wright could well be Mr Nakamoto, but that important questions remain,” the magazine said, adding “it may never be possible to establish beyond reasonable doubt who created bitcoin.”
The BBC said members of the bitcoin community had confirmed Wright’s claim.
“I was the main part of it, but other people helped me,” it quoted him as saying.
Hopes that bitcoin would become broadly used helped buoy its price to more than US$1,000 in December 2013, when its market capitalization was US$13 billion.
But the market cap has retreated since then, to about US$7 billion currently. Bitcoin fell more than 3 percent after news of Wright’s claims, from US$454.89 to below US$440, before recovering slightly.
Wright told The Economist he would exchange bitcoin slowly to avoid pushing down its price.
“If Mr Wright is in possession of Satoshi’s original nearly 1 million bitcoins, he will be for sure closely watched by investors trying to guess his future moves,” said Tomas Forgac, who runs bitcoin startup Coin of Sale.
In December, police raided Wright’s Sydney home and office after Wired magazine named him as the probable creator of bitcoin.
The treatment of bitcoins for tax purposes in Australia has been the subject of considerable debate. The Australian Tax Office ruled in December 2014 that cryptocurrency should be considered an asset, rather than a currency, for capital gains tax purposes.
In a blog post dated yesterday, Wright appeared to out himself as bitcoin founder by posting a technical explanation of the process he used to create the currency.
“This incredible community’s passion and intellect and perseverance have taken my small contribution and nurtured it, enhanced it, breathed life into it,” he wrote.
“You have given the world a great gift.”
However Wright did not make a clear admission that he was Nakamoto.
“Satoshi is dead,” he said. “But this is only the beginning.”
Unlike traditional currency, bitcoins are not distributed by a central bank or backed by physical assets like gold, but are “mined” by users who use computers to calculate increasingly complex algorithmic formulas.
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