Meet Satoshi Nakamoto: The Creator of Bitcoin

Who created Bitcoin?

Great question – if you find out, please let us know, we’d love to meet him!

In all seriousness, we don’t actually know who invented Bitcoin. The original cryptocurrency was introduced to the world by an anonymous poster to the Cryptography mailing list on October 31st, 2008. That user went by the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto,” but his (or her, or their) identity was never fully revealed – we don’t even know if they’re Japanese, as their name might suggest!

Although we don’t know who Satoshi Nakamoto was, since he chose to associate with a male name, we will refer to him with male pronouns in this article.

After releasing the Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi began working on an open source software implementation of his ideas. Within just two months, it was ready for release. Satoshi mined the first block of Bitcoin on January 3rd, 2009. This block became the first block of the blockchain and is celebrated as “The Genesis Block.”

In addition to creating the first 50 Bitcoin (typically denominated as BTC), the first block also includes a hard-coded message:

“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”

This message is a reference to the newspaper headline of the same day in the Times of London. As a bit of technical accounting, the inclusion of the newspaper headline proves that the Genesis Block could not have been created prior to January 3rd 2009.

However, the specific news also indicates a possible motivation for creating Bitcoin.

Many Bitcoiners advocate for Sound Money principles and see the technology as an opportunity to move away from central banks controlling the monetary supply and bailing out insolvent financial institutions.

(The Times - Source for image)

For several years, Satoshi communicated on the Cryptography mailing list, and coordinated development of the open source technology on the official Bitcoin Talk forum. However, sometime in April 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared and has never been seen since.

His last public post on Bitcoin Talk was on December 12th, 2010. His last private email was to Mike Hearn, one of the lead software developers working on Bitcoin, on April 23rd, 2011.

In that email, Satoshi made an unforgettable claim: “I've moved on to other things. [Bitcoin is] in good hands with Gavin [Andreson] and everyone.” Gavin Andreson became the lead developer on the open source engineering efforts of Bitcoin.

After launching the Bitcoin network, Satoshi mined Bitcoin on his own in order to keep the network running. Prior to leaving the project, Satoshi mined somewhere around 1 million BTC (estimates range from 900,000 to 1.2mm BTC). That amount would be worth over $30 Billion dollars in May 2022.

As crazy as that sounds, that amount is only enough to just barely crack the top 50 of the richest people in the world! However, given that Satoshi has not been seen or heard from in over ten years, most people believe his Bitcoin stash will never actually be spent. 

So, Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity has never been revealed. But who are the best guesses as to who it could be? There have been several attempts to unmask Satoshi over the years, but that’s an article for another day.

Alright, we know that was a lot.

If you have any questions about Bitcoin's origin or Satoshi Nakamoto, we invite you to email us at contact@thecryptochristian.com and we'll do our best to answer you as soon as possible!