Chasing the Bitcoin God: A reporter's 15-year investigation into Satoshi Nakamoto
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Has Satoshi Nakamoto been found? This article is excerpted from Benjamin Wallace's "The Mysterious Mr. Satoshi Nakamoto: Fifteen Years of Uncovering the Genius Behind the Crypto World" Benjamin Wallace, one of the earliest journalists to report on Bitcoin, spent fifteen years conducting in-depth investigations, from technical analysis, stylistic identification to cross-border tracking, trying to uncover the true face of Satoshi Nakamoto. In the end, the clues pointed to a programmer in his seventies, James A. Donald. However, after meeting and talking with Donald, Wallace chose to put down his pen and gave up investigating Satoshi Nakamoto.
TL, DR:
The author first reported on Satoshi Nakamoto in 2011. After 15 years of investigation and searching, the author now believes that he has solved the mystery.
Sahil Gupta sent an email to the author, speculating that Musk is "very likely" to be Satoshi Nakamoto. Sahil believes that the public is ready to accept that Satoshi Nakamoto and Musk are the same person. He claims to be "99% sure" and attributes the outside world's doubts to "prejudice against Musk."
The author describes the details of Satoshi Nakamoto's creation of Bitcoin. After Gavin Andresen informed him that he would go to the CIA to explain Bitcoin but received no response, Satoshi Nakamoto completely retired in 2011, leaving only a suspected forum post and never appeared again.
The author found that Satoshi Nakamoto's idiomatic word "hosed" only appeared four times in the early Bitcoin mailing list, two of which came from the first questioner James Donald, becoming the key language fingerprint to lock his identity.
The author locked James Donald through multiple clues, but when faced with questioning, the top suspect of Satoshi Nakamoto simply ended the conversation with "cannot disclose".
Perhaps one day, artificial intelligence can help us confirm Satoshi Nakamoto's identity. But unless the government decrypts some unpredictable secrets, we may never know his true identity beyond reasonable doubt.
If Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous inventor of Bitcoin, is really who I guessed, he would never admit it. He might not even want to talk to me. To meet him, I need to take a 20-hour flight and drive for another 8 hours. But I must try to talk to him face to face.
In the spring of 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared. I first heard about him that summer, when I wrote one of the first in-depth stories about Bitcoin for a magazine. The currency is independent of governments and banks. Twelve years later, Bitcoin's creator remains a mystery, and his multi-billion-dollar fortune remains intact. Never before in the history of science has anyone created a revolutionary technology and taken no credit for it, or earned a cent from it.
Unable to worship a flesh and blood body, believers have added a legendary aura to this pseudonym. In 2022, Kanye West stepped out of a luxury car in Beverly Hills wearing a baseball cap with "Satoshi Nakamoto" printed on it; Budapest erected the first bronze statue of Satoshi Nakamoto - a hooded ghost; a group of libertarians bought the retired cruise ship "Satoshi Nakamoto" and recruited residents to establish the first Bitcoin sovereign society; more than one technical expert called for him to be awarded the Nobel Prize.
When I first reported on Satoshi Nakamoto in 2011, I never expected that his identity would still be an unsolved mystery more than a decade later. Since then, countless attempts to "reveal the secrets" have failed, and some have even become farces. In 2014, Newsweek confidently identified California system engineer Dorian Nakamoto, triggering a media blockade of his residence for several days. Even "60 Minutes", which has top resources, was helpless and called the task "impossible." But at this moment, I am sure that I have solved the mystery.
I was a little nervous. This man had gone to great lengths to hide his tracks, and what I discovered was disturbing—he was nothing like the Satoshi people imagined. He repeatedly called himself a “dangerous person” and had guns hidden in his home.
He also owned at least four properties on two continents. I had thought he was hiding somewhere on the Big Island of Hawaii, but in the summer of 2023, clues pointed to a seaside town on the east coast of Australia.
As I was anxious about this, I had dinner with my sister. She had been a TV news producer for 20 years and had witnessed the FBI raid on the home of the “University Unabomber” with the “48 Hours” crew. She suggested that I bring professional security personnel, wear a bulletproof vest, and notify the local police in advance. “Thanks,” I muttered.
That night she sent a text message: “Can’t sleep, don’t know why.” The time was 4:09 in the morning. "Two suggestions: If the target goes out, try to block him in a public place; it's best to arrange for someone to record the video remotely for evidence."
Could it be Elon Musk?
On New Year's Eve 2021, I received an email in my mailbox with the title "New Clues about Satoshi Nakamoto".
Since writing the early reports on Bitcoin, such emails have appeared from time to time.
The sender, Sahil Gupta, posted a blog four years ago, speculating that Musk was "very likely" to be Satoshi Nakamoto. This time he provided new "evidence": a conversation with Musk's chief of staff Sam Taylor. The content was vague, and I did not respond.
Two days later, Gupta's detailed argument was sent to the same email. The arguments ranged from vague to technical. I decided to reply. Sahil told me that when he was an undergraduate at Yale in 2015, he had interned at the SpaceX rocket factory. Musk came to the office three days a week, and the two often met in the corridor. Sahil majored in computer science, and his graduation thesis proposed a central bank digital currency called "Federal Coin", thanking "Satoshi Nakamoto, a true legend" in the article.
While researching the thesis, he read in-depth cryptocurrency literature, including Satoshi Nakamoto's nine-page white paper. He noticed that Satoshi's wording style was strikingly similar to Musk's: both of them liked to use expressions such as "order of magnitude" and "bloody". Satoshi talked about currency in an abstract way, just as Musk did when he was working at PayPal. In addition, both of them are proficient in C++ language and cryptography. Sahil began to wonder: Has the father of Bitcoin been hiding in the spotlight?
After graduation, Sahil tried to work for Musk. After several emails to recommend himself, he got a phone interview with Chief of Staff Taylor.
At the end of the interview, he plucked up the courage to ask: "Is Elon Satoshi Nakamoto?"
Sahil recalled: "Taylor was silent for 15 seconds, then said: 'What can I say?'" This was regarded by him as a key clue. In the same year, he wrote an article "Elon Musk May Have Invented Bitcoin", arguing that the Bitcoin community needs the return of the founder. Although Musk tweeted to deny ("False news. A few years ago, a friend gave me some Bitcoin, but I don't know where it was lost"), Sahil still believed in his theory.
He listed more "evidence": PayPal co-founder Luke Nosek once said that the company's original intention was to create a currency that was independent of banks; Satoshi Nakamoto and Musk were used to leaving two spaces after the period; Musk often went in and out of Van Nuys Airport, and the IP address accidentally exposed in an early Bitcoin email was located in northern Los Angeles; early developers commented that Satoshi Nakamoto was "tyrannical", and so was Musk.
At the end of 2021, Musk had just been elected Time's Person of the Year, SpaceX successfully docked with the International Space Station, and he even joked about Dogecoin on Twitter (the coin subsequently soared and plummeted). Sahil believes that the public is ready to accept that Satoshi Nakamoto and Musk are the same person.
He claimed to be "99% sure" and attributed the outside world's doubts to "prejudice against Musk."
"But Musk is not humble, why deny it?"
Sahil explained: "Businesses need marketing, but Bitcoin is different. The mystery of the early anonymous founder makes it stronger and faster-this is where Musk is smart."
I dare not assert whether Sahil is right, but I can understand his obsession. At that time, the price of Bitcoin soared to nearly $70,000, and the total market value exceeded $1 trillion. El Salvador made it a legal tender. In 2011, the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto's identity seemed insignificant, but it is still an unsolved mystery today.
Half a year later, I quit my job and devoted myself to this mystery that has entangled me for more than ten years.
The disappeared founder
In this paper, Satoshi Nakamoto described a new type of currency-it runs on a network of volunteer computers, relying on a transparent public ledger maintained by the entire network, rather than a bank or government loan record system. Nakamoto included a link to a more detailed formal description, which became known as the Bitcoin white paper.
Several members of the mailing list offered feedback on the software Nakamoto had written, and he gladly accepted it. “Thanks for your questions,” he wrote in one email. “My approach is actually a bit backwards: I have to write all the code first, make sure all the problems are solved, and then go back to write the paper.” In early January 2009, Nakamoto released the initial version of Bitcoin on the open source platform SourceForge. According to early participants, there were only 127 downloads on the first day.
Many of the first users were programmers who believed that “currency urgently needs to be upgraded.” Paper money fades, wrinkles, tears, and is contaminated with germs; it has a fixed face value, is easy to counterfeit, and is difficult to transfer large amounts. Bitcoin is durable, uncounterfeitable, and nearly infinitely divisible, which is expected to realize the ideal of small payments on the Internet—any amount can be instantly transferred globally.
As a digital currency maintained by ordinary individuals, Bitcoin is not subject to interference from central power. Gold can be confiscated, bank accounts can be frozen, fiat currencies can be devalued by central bank decisions or subject to capital controls by dictators, but Bitcoin does not rely on these traditional systems.
At the heart of Satoshi Nakamoto's creation is the blockchain - an ever-expanding system of transaction records (buys and sells, etc.). About every ten minutes, the latest transaction records are packaged into "blocks" and linked to the previous blocks through sophisticated mathematical algorithms, making it almost impossible to tamper with the content. In traditional finance, such ledgers are maintained by banks or government agencies; in the Bitcoin network, the ledgers are stored and updated by computers of volunteers around the world, and each device runs Bitcoin software.
Although Bitcoin is an open source project (a "many hands on" collaboration), someone still needs to coordinate it. For the first 20 months, Satoshi Nakamoto assumed this role. He published the code, other developers proposed changes, and he integrated the approved parts.
Four months after software developer Gavin Andresen joined the Bitcoin project, his commitment and computer science skills won Satoshi Nakamoto's trust. Satoshi first gave him direct access to the source code, and then around September 2010, he told Gavin that he would be busy with other projects and would hand over control of the SourceForge code base and the project's "alert key" in the coming months, which broadcasts emergency messages to all devices running Bitcoin software. For open source projects, these two are almost "leader's scepters"; Gavin officially became the chief developer of Bitcoin, leading a team of five volunteer programmers.
In the following months, Satoshi Nakamoto still occasionally participated in technical discussions, but Gavin's high-profile interactions with the outside world gradually rubbed against his hermit style. When PayPal and Visa froze WikiLeaks' accounts, some Bitcoin supporters advocated using cryptocurrency to support the controversial organization. Someone shouted on the BitcoinTalk forum: "Let them come!" Satoshi objected sharply: "No! Don't let them come. The project needs to grow gradually, and the software can be improved synchronously. I implore WikiLeaks not to use Bitcoin... The attention at this moment will destroy us."
For reporters reporting on Bitcoin, Gavin became the first choice for interviews. He is gentle and rational, willing to show his real name, filling the role of "Bitcoin ambassador" that Satoshi never played. But this seems to make Satoshi uneasy. In late April 2011, he sent an email to remind Gavin: "I hope you will stop describing me as a mysterious shadow-the media will only hype Bitcoin as a label of "black market currency."
This became the last email Gavin received. When I first contacted Gavin in July of the same year, he said that "I have not communicated with Satoshi for several months." On April 26, Gavin emailed Satoshi to inform him that he would go to the CIA headquarters (located in Langley, Virginia) to explain Bitcoin to intelligence personnel, but received no response. On the same day, Satoshi sent an email to at least one programmer who cooperated with the project.
After that, he was completely silent. Except for a forum post from a suspected account many years later (it’s hard to tell whether it’s real or fake), Nakamoto has never appeared again.
Gavin and other early Bitcoin developers have reached a few consensus on Nakamoto’s identity. The second channel for Nakamoto to publish the white paper was the P2P Foundation website, an idealistic nonprofit dedicated to promoting various peer-to-peer networks. He filled in his personal profile on the website as living in Japan, but no one believed he was really Japanese. His English is flawless and his vocabulary has a British style: in the Bitcoin source code and BitcoinTalk forum posts, he prefers British spellings such as "colour" and "optimise".
Nakamoto guarded his identity very carefully. When registering the domain name bitcoin.org, he hid the information through the anonymous service anonymousspeech.com, which was itself registered by a short-term apartment agency in Tokyo. The service provided him with an email address at vistomail.com (which could fake the time of sending emails), and he also used the free email address gmx.com. In the correspondence, he showed a carefully trained ambiguity: he only answered technical questions and avoided personal topics.
His programming style was slightly outdated, suggesting that he might be older. For example, he used "Hungarian notation" - a variable naming convention popular among Windows programmers in the 1990s.
Gavin believes that the Bitcoin code may have been completed by a small team or even a single person. When programmers collaborate, they usually add comments to the code to explain the function of the instructions, but there are very few such comments in the Bitcoin software. However, some people questioned that Bitcoin ran too smoothly in the early days of its launch, and it did not seem like an individual had done it independently. In addition, the white paper used "we" many times, suggesting that "Satoshi Nakamoto" might be a nickname for a team or organization.
Satoshi Nakamoto began to be deified before he retired. On April 16, 2011, BitcoinTalk user Wobber pointed out the complexity of his knowledge system and the abnormality of his behavior - he created such a disruptive technology but did not take credit or seek profit, and quietly withdrew. Some compare him to Zorro, or the masked David who aimed his slingshot at the banks and government Goliaths.
Is there a clue in the name? "Satoshi Nakamoto" can be literally translated as "central intelligence", which may imply that spy agencies were involved in the birth of Bitcoin. For example, the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States may have a long-term plan: to create an unregulated financial network that is used for global agent fund dispatch and acts as a "honeypot" - allowing opponents to expose their whereabouts in transactions that they think are safe and allow the NSA to monitor them.
This is not entirely absurd. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory once developed the anonymous software "Onion Router" (TOR), which gave birth to the dark web; the FBI secretly launched the encrypted mobile phone and communication service ANOM, which was misused by criminal groups and eventually led to the arrest of more than 800 people; in the summer of 1996, the NSA's cryptography department even published an internal paper "How to Forge Anonymous Electronic Cash" (later made public), detailing the principles of cryptocurrency.
Another interpretation breaks down “Satoshi Nakamoto” into a combination of the names of tech giants—SAmsung, TOSHIba, NAKAmichi, MOTOrola—implying that a corporate cabal is manipulating everything. Reddit users have come up with absurd sentences such as “Ma, I took NSA’s oath” or “So a man took a shit.”
Dan Kaminsky, a programmer who rose to prominence in 2008 for discovering a technical vulnerability that could destroy the Internet, believes that Nakamoto may be an internal team of banks. “I suspect he is a small team of financial institutions,” Dan told me. “That’s my intuition.”
But he added that Nakamoto’s identity “is not important to the essence of Bitcoin. Bitcoin has long surpassed Nakamoto.” This echoes a mainstream view: Nakamoto’s design as an anonymous entity quietly exiting the stage is the foundation of Bitcoin’s decentralized spirit—his disappearance makes this technology truly a global experiment without a leader.
“We don’t know who Satoshi Nakamoto is”
At the 2022 Miami Bitcoin Conference, Satoshi Nakamoto did not show up, but he was everywhere. The main stage was named “Satoshi Nakamoto Hall”, and screens on both sides rotated his text fragments, like Scientology’s “Dianetics” - outsiders read it plainly, but believers take it as a motto.
“Imagine gold being stolen and turned into lead.”
“Twenty years later, Bitcoin trading volume will be either extremely large or zero.”
“The robustness of the network lies in its simple decentralization.”
PayPal founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel appeared from the right side of the stage and threw a stack of $100 bills to the front row: “This thing still works, isn’t it crazy?” He declared that Bitcoin is the ultimate warning to the legal currency system, and named “enemies of the crypto revolution”-Warren Buffett, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, and BlackRock Group CEO Larry Fink. Thiel called these people "extensions of state power," and Bitcoin "has no board of directors, and we don't even know who Satoshi Nakamoto is" - the last sentence was deliberately emphasized by him.
"We don't know who Satoshi Nakamoto is." In 2011, he was an anonymous programmer followed by a fringe geek circle; ten years later, he became the "myth maker" of a trillion-dollar project, and Bitcoin became the ninth largest asset in the world, second only to Tesla in market value and surpassing Meta. Whoever he is, he has a huge fortune. Computer scientist Sergio Demian Lerner speculated through analysis of early blockchains that the bitcoins held by Satoshi Nakamoto at the time were worth about $40 billion (now higher), firmly ranking as the richest person in Bitcoin.
In the spring of 2021, when the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase went public, its prospectus submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission listed "Satoshi Nakamoto's identity exposure" as a risk factor. It is not difficult to imagine the potential crisis: if Satoshi Nakamoto is proven to be a spy, extremist or financial criminal of a certain country, the legitimacy of Bitcoin may collapse. But the Bitcoin community gradually sees this mystery as a necessary design - decentralization requires a "pure birth". Without a specific persona, it is possible to avoid divisions caused by disputes over the identity of the founder, thereby maximizing universal acceptance.
Thus, the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" was sanctified. Although some people believe that he hides to avoid taxes or protect himself, the mainstream view portrays him as a "selfless martyr". The most fanatical believers regard exploring his identity as blasphemy, just like asking Scientologists about the existence of Xenu.
But what if the father of Bitcoin is a villain?
In the summer of 2022, I posted a spreadsheet on the wall of my office, listing more than a hundred candidates who have been proposed as Satoshi Nakamoto. Most of the main candidates belong to the field of cypherpunks, and their names have been proposed as candidates for Satoshi Nakamoto many times over the years. There are also some obscure names from neighboring fields such as mathematics, cryptography, and economics. Some are programmers who participated in the Bitcoin software project in the early days. Others are creators of new cryptocurrencies. Many are just famous smart people: Bill Gates Steve Jobs Musk.
For years, Nick Szabo, Adam Back, and Hal Finney were widely considered the leading candidates. Szabo was a programmer who advocated for decentralized currencies years before Bitcoin, and conceived a Bitcoin precursor called "Bit Gold" in the late 1990s. He had the necessary technical skills, and his writing style also had superficial similarities to Satoshi Nakamoto. But he has always denied being Satoshi Nakamoto, and there is no definitive evidence that he was involved with Satoshi or the early development of Bitcoin. Separately, Adam Back is mentioned in the Bitcoin white paper as the creator of another cryptocurrency precursor, Hashcash, and his email address was one of the first people Satoshi contacted. He also denied being Satoshi, and his writing style didn't match up as well as Szabo's. Hal Finney was a legendary programmer and cryptographer who received the first Bitcoin transaction ever from Satoshi Nakamoto. But Finney, who also denies being Satoshi, was diagnosed with ALS in 2009, and his condition rapidly worsened, eventually rendering him incapable of working. If Nakamoto is unmasked, Finney is the candidate Bitcoin enthusiasts would most like to see because of his tragic hero story and his aura of kindness and benevolence — and because he is dead (he died in 2014), he can’t make shady news with shady behavior or connections.
There has always been opposition to the Satoshi investigation in the Bitcoin community. Last fall, when an HBO documentary identified libertarian, Canadian computer programmer and cryptography enthusiast Peter Todd as the most likely candidate, the Bitcoin community reacted not only with strong skepticism about the documentary’s conclusions, but also with anger at the idea of taking on such a project. He made valuable contributions, so his wish for anonymity should be respected. It’s not the person that matters, it’s the idea and the code.
But Satoshi has already put his invention in the public square, so I think it’s reasonable to explore who put it there and why.
I combed through the 60,000 words left by Satoshi. His writing was plain and simple, rarely revealing personal opinions or personality. Whenever I caught a hint of a unique style, I added it to the "Satoshi language library" - a list that eventually accumulated more than 200 distinctive words and phrases. "Wet blanket", "sweet", "clobbering".
I wrote a computer program called "Satoshitizer" that can browse the archived articles of various suspected "Satoshis", scan them for Satoshi terms, and generate statistical tables. I can instantly rank the archives using a dozen criteria, including users of Satoshi terms, users of electronic cash terms, and discussers of software tools used by Satoshi.
One day in late April 2023, I found myself thinking about a word I saw in Satoshi's article: hosed.
Given Satoshi’s writing style’s tendency to dispense with personality or connection to any particular context, the word “hosed” stood out. I hadn’t heard of the word recently, and it means to tighten or break, and I vaguely associate it with 1990s surf or frat jargon.
I combed through my archived data, carefully annotating every instance where the word was used. In the Metzdowd mailing list, the word “hosed” was used a total of four times in the three years before October 31, 2008, when Satoshi first published the Bitcoin white paper. Two of those times were by the same person: James A. Donald.
Although Donald wasn’t active in public discussions about Bitcoin, he made a brief appearance in its early history as the first person on the mailing list to respond to Satoshi. He raised technical questions about Bitcoin’s scalability and withdrew from the discussion after a few exchanges with Satoshi. He was just another one of the many cypherpunks interested in digital currencies.
Donald was only No. 42 in my suspect spreadsheet, far behind the three most popular candidates, and his reason for being shortlisted was limited to his identity as a cypherpunk and libertarian who is proficient in C++ programming. But attracted by the coincidence of the word "hosed", I re-checked the rare word list generated by the "Nakamoto Fingerprint Analyzer" to try to verify whether Donald had used other rare Satoshi-style expressions.
Sure enough. In the corpus I collected spanning two decades, Donald was the only one who used the word "fencible" (meaning "sellable stolen goods") - this word appeared once in Satoshi's writings as "non-fencible" (non-sellable stolen goods). Even more shocking, Donald's record of using the word can be traced back to his speech on the cypherpunk mailing list in October 1998. My brain began to ring alarm bells. "Fence" as a verb to mean selling stolen goods is a common slang, but the adjective form of "fencible" is rare. Google results turned up few results, and even when I searched The New York Times' historical database of 13 million articles dating back to 1857, the word appeared zero times in related contexts.
Unlike conventional digital currency or cryptography terms like "trusted third party" or "zero-knowledge proof," "fencible" and "hosed" are not computer science or cryptography terms; they are more like fingerprints of a person's language style.
I began to dig deeper into Donald. His online presence was erratic: various websites claimed he was Canadian, said he was dead, and pointed out that "James A. Donald" was not his real name. Although he rarely revealed personal information in his posts, details were still scattered. He was from Australia but lived in Silicon Valley, and like Satoshi Nakamoto, his writing sometimes used American spelling and sometimes used Commonwealth spelling.
On an ideological level, Donald combined extreme libertarianism (essentially anarcho-capitalism) with a fervent belief in the transformative power of cryptography. "Here, folks," he wrote in 1996, "we are going to destroy the state with advanced mathematics. The way to do this is to replace the current corporate institutional structure with cryptographic mechanisms, giving more people the opportunity to evade and resist taxes."
He showed a special interest in digital currencies. In 1995, he predicted that "people will eventually bypass banks and transfer funds directly." Between 2006 and 2009, Donald used more Satoshi-style electronic cash terms on the Metzdowd mailing list than other participants.
When examining his programming style, it was found that Donald promoted a communication encryption software called "Crypto Kong" in the late 1990s. The software is written in the same C++ language as Bitcoin. The source code obtained from the Internet Archive shows that Crypto Kong and Bitcoin have multiple similarities: both support Windows systems; both use the Hungarian naming method preferred by Satoshi Nakamoto; the code partitions use eye-catching slash separators; and both use elliptic curve cryptography to generate public and private key pairs.
Digging deep into personal information, it was found that Donald was born in 1952 and is now over 70 years old, which is consistent with the feature pointed out by early Bitcoin developers that "Satoshi Nakamoto's code style suggests his old age." He is not active on mainstream social platforms under his real name. His $2.8 million Palo Alto home and $400,000 Austin property are blurred in Google Street View (this feature requires formal application to Google, or internal permissions like one of Donald's sons who works at Google). It is difficult to find his photos in public channels. Similar to Satoshi Nakamoto, he uses Swiss privacy email Proton Mail and runs an anonymous blog "Jim's Diary". He said he had "lived in seclusion for a long time." Clues click like gears.
At this moment, re-examining the significance of Donald as the first responder, Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 comes to mind: he threw a stunning work to the world but no one cared, so he directed and acted to raise technical doubts, which both promoted discussion and created misleading information.
And his blog revealed more clues: on the eve of October 31, 2008, Donald was paying close attention to the financial crisis. His October 11 blog post "The Roots of the Crisis" begins with the assertion that "the rescue will fail", while the headline of the Times sealed in the Bitcoin Genesis Block is "The Chancellor is about to implement a second round of rescue plan."
More clues surfaced: Donald owns multiple properties in Hawaii. On June 19, 2008 (a few months before Satoshi Nakamoto announced his invention to the world), the Honolulu Star published an obituary for a World War II veteran named "Satoshi Nakamoto" who died at the age of 84. Is this identity theft to find an alias?
Although "James" rarely reveals his identity information, his ideological trajectory is clearly discernible in his blog posts: he was a radical leftist in his early years, joined the Trotskyist organization Spartacus League at the age of 15, and later left because he was "disillusioned with participatory democracy and had no good feelings about representative democracy." At the age of 17, he joined anarcho-socialist and Maoist organizations, "just because these two factions were most hated by the Trotskyists." Eventually, he decided that property rights are freedom and transformed into an anarcho-capitalist.
To verify his academic background, I contacted an insider at the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. Bob Hewitt, a professor who participated in the interview, recalled that the applicant from Melbourne was "quite bohemian" - when asked about accommodation arrangements, Donald declared that he was "prepared to sleep under the bridge." Although he gave people the impression of being "friendly but weird", his doctoral thesis "Assumptions of the Singularity Theorems and the Rejuvenation of Universes" was rejected because "no one could understand it", and he eventually dropped out of school.
Career trajectory shows that Donald first wrote software for Apple computers, then went to the United States to develop video games for Epyx, and then switched to the database field. His blog reveals a deep insight into the nature of Bitcoin: "This is just a prototype system, but it was used as the final solution too early." He always looks at Bitcoin from a historical perspective and sees it as a stepping stone to an ideal future.
I have never subscribed to the prevalent assumption in the Bitcoin community that Satoshi must be a benevolent figure. I have always felt that the Bitcoin believers who deify Satoshi as a demigod are merely projecting wishful thinking: imagining him to be selfless, humble, and a prophet who has traveled from the future to save humanity. Hal Finney is an attractive candidate for Satoshi precisely because he fits this idealized image perfectly.
Donald is very different. In his blog, he promotes a dark ideology called "neo-reactionary" - a trend that has fascinated some people in Silicon Valley. Neo-reactionaries believe that society has been hijacked by what they call the "Temple" (a group of academic, media and bureaucratic elites). They disdain efforts to pursue social justice and advocate abandoning democracy and restoring monarchy as the best path forward for humanity. Donald's variant of neo-reactionaryism is mixed with naked Christian fundamentalism and an overdose of paranoia: he blames the coronavirus pandemic on a Jesuit conspiracy.
In addition to his elaborate political statements, Donald continues to output racist, homophobic, misogynistic and offensive language. His sharp words were banned in 2014 by Slate Star Code, a heavyweight Silicon Valley blog known for its tolerance of taboo topics such as IQ science. But under a relatively uncensored domain in Laos, he openly advocates "whipping women into submission by whipping their buttocks or upper backs" and claims that "most rape allegations are false." Donald has a large number of fans in the "woke" and alt-right blogosphere.
If Donald is Satoshi Nakamoto, isn't his motivation for choosing to release Bitcoin under a pseudonym obvious? He hopes that the world will accept this genius invention purely on its own merits, rather than stifle it because of his identity prejudice. He is anonymous not because Bitcoin may endanger himself, but because he is afraid that his existence will endanger the future of Bitcoin.
I doubt whether anyone in the circle knows or suspects that Donald is Satoshi Nakamoto. If Satoshi Nakamoto is a harmless ordinary citizen like "Dorian Nakamoto", "respecting Satoshi Nakamoto's privacy" is at least a tenable position; if he is a dissident living under an authoritarian regime, I am willing to protect this secret. But if Satoshi Nakamoto is really Donald? This will completely undermine the narrative of the inventor of Bitcoin as a "crypto messiah" - the sacred image of giving up fame and fortune for lofty ideals. Among those who shouted "respect Nakamoto's privacy", did anyone already know that if the creator of Bitcoin is proven to be a far-right lunatic, it will inevitably cause a public relations disaster. What they really want to protect is actually the reputation of this belief system and the value of their own investment portfolio? In June 2020, Adam Back, the founder of Hashcash (long suspected to be Satoshi Nakamoto), hinted on Twitter: "Perhaps we should be mentally prepared to cut ties with Satoshi Nakamoto. To be on the safe side, it is best to completely erase this pseudonym." "Satoshi Nakamoto's identity is irrelevant," said Ray Dearing, who once conducted code reviews for Bitcoin with Hal Finney. Jay wrote, "The protocol itself exists. Whether the creator is a third world dictator, a homeless person under a bridge in Belize, a Bedouin riding a camel through the Bir Tawil Desert working on his phone, or a pushcart vendor in Nairobi, the protocol is no different from one created by an NSA cryptanalyst, a GRU-funded 'troll', a well-known security researcher, or a cypherpunk. 'Satoshi' does not exist outside the protocol. He is just a hat worn by someone during the development process. As for who wears the hat - it doesn't matter at all."
"I know who Satoshi is"
I wrote to James Donald to request an interview. A few days later, I received his unexpected reply. "Email communication is more convenient," Donald wrote, but also said that he might be willing to communicate by phone or video. He needs a few days to confirm the arrangement.
Two months have passed, and Donald has not agreed to a real-time conversation. Should I go to Australia to meet him in person? What makes me doubt the hypothesis that Donald is Satoshi is that Satoshi has shown a rich emotional spectrum in past communications. He would express gratitude (“thank you a lot”), sympathy (“poor guy”), humility (“I’m so sorry”), and self-effacement (“I’m better at programming than writing”). As I searched through Donald’s long archive of writing, searching for a hint of empathy, gratitude, or enthusiasm—even an exclamation point, an apology, a moment of empathy or camaraderie—all I saw was an emotional desert.
But of all the crypto-currency-obsessed cypherpunks, only one claimed to know who Satoshi Nakamoto really was. “I know who Satoshi is,” James Donald once wrote in the comments section of a post on his blog, “and his political and social aspirations.” If that were true, he would be the only credible insider in existence. I was determined to meet this man.
Although Donald has spent much of his career in California, he apparently owns or has owned property in Australia. By checking the real estate appraisal records of his many properties in the United States, I found that at some point in the early 2000s, the registered address of a property in Austin under his name pointed to a street on the northeast coast of Australia. In recent appraisals, his American properties are still registered in the same Australian town, but the address has been changed to a post office box. It is known that his wife passed away in 2016. Through the "grave search website", I found a photo of a plaque commemorating her in the town's cemetery. Five years later, he posted a photo on his blog that seemed to be from the terrace: in the foreground were glasses and pottery jars filled with homemade moonshine, and in the distance, the blue sea was dotted with several small islands on the horizon. Comparing this scene with other seascape photos in the same town, the geographical features are exactly the same.
I contacted private investigator Daniel Quinn, who lives in an area within driving distance of the seaside town where Donald is suspected to be. I provided Quinn with the house address and an old photo from 20 years ago - this photo taken on Donald's son's abandoned university blog is the most recent image of Donald that can be found.
A few days later, Daniel sent a surveillance report. "The yard is overgrown with weeds and bushes. This person is definitely not a flower lover." The photo of the house attached to the letter shows that in front of the house that shares the driveway with two other houses, there is a lone palm tree and an elevated bungalow on the hillside. Through the overgrown vegetation, you can see the wooden terrace facing the Coral Sea.
Although I didn't see James in person that day, I received good news a few weeks later in the morning: Daniel successfully captured the man standing in front of the house. Compared with the photo taken 20 years ago, although his hair and beard are completely white, his thick beard, metal-framed glasses and plump nose are perfectly matched. Three days later, I was on a flight to Australia.
"I have a problem, that is, I talk too much"
There is no doorbell on the screen door, so I knocked on the door frame of James's house. Nervousness made my throat dry. Although I am not sure whether James himself is Satoshi Nakamoto, I suspect that he may be part of the collective identity of "Satoshi Nakamoto". In any case, he is the only person I know who publicly claims to know the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.
I worried about how he would receive me. James had obviously gone to great lengths to make himself hard to find.
As I walked through the hallway toward the front door, I saw Donald sitting in front of his computer in the living room, wearing headphones. His latest blog post, published just hours ago, was a tirade about how “Georgians (referring to the country of Georgia) don’t want their churches to be destroyed or turned into shrines of Gaia worship and homosexuality, or to see ancient, beautiful buildings bulldozed and replaced with demonic, postmodern monsters.”
Western NGOs were trying to “gayify Georgia and throw it into the meat grinder against Russia.”
When my knocks on the door frame didn’t respond, I knocked on the front door. A moment later, James opened the door and walked out, wearing a red camouflage long-sleeved shirt and black thermal underwear.
I immediately began to explain. I had emailed him—“Oh, I rarely check email,” James said. I reminded him of our correspondence over the past year, and of the book I was writing. And I told him that I would be remiss if I didn’t make every effort to talk to him.
"In short, I can't tell you anything I can't reveal," James said. His tone was gentle, with a bemused sense of humor.
I pointed out that he had publicly insisted that he knew the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto and his sociopolitical goals. Could you elaborate? "No, sorry."
"Well... do you really know? Or do you just have a strong suspicion?" "I have a good guess as to who it might be, but I can't really say for sure."
"Do you think it could be Hal Finney?" "That's a question I can't answer."
"Is it because I want to respect his privacy?" "I'm prohibited from revealing anything to anyone, including what's already been said."
I offered to buy him a beer. James declined. "How about lunch?" I continued. James laughed. "Look," he said, "I have a problem with talking too much, and after a few drinks, I can't stop talking, so let's forget it."
I tried to continue the conversation—handing over my contact information and my previous book—but his responses became brief and perfunctory. "It's really amazing to live here," I said, pointing to the magnificent ocean view. "Yeah," James said, bowing his head. I thanked him and turned to walk down the hill.
There is no DNA test for Bitcoin
I have spent fifteen years chasing Satoshi Nakamoto. I learned to code, hired machine learning experts, literary analysis experts, and private investigators, and traveled 37 hours for a three-minute meeting. I am sure no one is as obsessed with solving this mystery as I am. I am beginning to understand why Sahil Gupta is convinced that Elon Musk is Satoshi Nakamoto. It is time to stop.
Maybe one day artificial intelligence can help us confirm Satoshi Nakamoto's identity. But at this moment, I am sure that unless the government declassifies some unpredictable secrets, we will probably never know his true identity beyond a reasonable doubt. Memories fade, witnesses die. There is no paternity test for Bitcoin. To prove who is Satoshi Nakamoto, you must show up and show the relevant private keys, or at least provide unforged contemporary documents. As the years go by, even if there were clues, the traces will become increasingly blurred.
Accepting this fact is a relief. I remain dazzled by what Satoshi created—but almost as dazzled by how perfectly he died. Bitcoin had no chance of success as a utopian idea, but as a nascent asset class, it has shown resilience. Prices have risen and fallen, reaching new highs, topping $109,000 in January (down to $85,000 at press time). Fidelity Investments now recommends that retail investors have a small amount of cryptocurrency in their portfolios. The spread of blockchain technology is unstoppable.
Satoshi has become something that the man behind him could never be—an idea that, unencumbered by flesh and history, will live forever.
