Sixteen years of ‘Satoshi’ suspects and endless speculation

Since Bitcoin’s launch, a rotating cast of “Satoshi Nakamoto” suspects has reflected more about the culture around Bitcoin than about the truth. Early on, attention focused on Hal Finney, the first known recipient of a Bitcoin transaction and a leading cypherpunk. Finney denied being Satoshi, and timelines and email records now strongly suggest he was not the author of the white paper. 

Next came Nick Szabo, whose “bit gold” proposal and stylometric similarities to the Bitcoin white paper made him a serious candidate in the eyes of some journalists and researchers. Szabo has repeatedly denied the claim, and no decisive evidence has emerged. 

In 2014, Newsweek put Dorian Nakamoto on its cover as “the face behind Bitcoin”, prompting a media circus and a firm public denial from Dorian himself. The episode became a cautionary tale about doxxing and guess-work.

Later, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright claimed he was Satoshi. After years of litigation, the UK High Court ruled in 2024 that Wright is not Satoshi and had submitted forged documents, a significant legal finding that closed off one of the most high-profile claims. 

Speculation then shifted to builders like Adam Back, who has denied being Satoshi despite recurring theories, and to public Bitcoin advocates such as Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey. Analysts and commentators have recently revived the “Dorsey is Satoshi” idea, but even they acknowledge the case remains circumstantial at best. 

In 2024, an HBO documentary named Bitcoin developer Peter Todd as Satoshi, triggering fierce pushback from the technical community and further underlining how commercially valuable the “big reveal” narrative has become. 

The latest twist, viral posts claiming that Epstein was Satoshi, sits firmly in the realm of hoax and conspiracy content. Multiple fact-checks have shown the supposed “unsealed email” to be fabricated, with obvious formatting errors and no corroborating records. 

Meanwhile, on-chain analysts continue to map early mining patterns and dormant coins, with some studies attributing around 1.1 million BTC to the original Satoshi-linked wallets. Yet the identity behind those keys remains unknown, and Bitcoin keeps producing blocks on a fixed schedule. For sound-money advocates, that is precisely the point: Bitcoin’s credibility comes from code, consensus and scarcity, not from unmasking a founder.