In December, Gizmodo and Wired published articles identifying Australian academic Craig Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin. Now, Wright has released new evidence in a bid to prove that he is in fact Satoshi.
At the time, skepticism emerged about the evidence used to tie Wright to the Satoshi identity. The situation grew more complex amid police raids connected to an ongoing investigation by Australian tax authorities into bitcoin holdings said to constitute the results of the earliest mining activity conducted by Satoshi.
Today, the BBC, The Economist and GQ published reports on Wright and how he seeks to prove his identity by way of the bitcoin private keys for the first and ninth transaction blocks – data from the earliest days of bitcoin, the latter of which included a transaction from Satoshi to cryptographer Hal Finney, who passed away in 2014.
The publications follow rumors that Wright was working with the media on some form of evidence release.
In conjunction with those releases, Wright published an article of his own, which included a digital signature shown to the media and tied to the ninth bitcoin block.
Further, additional blog posts were penned by former Bitcoin Core maintainer Gavin Andresen and Bitcoin Foundation founding director Jon Matonis in defense of Wright. In his post, Andresen wrote “I believe Craig Steven Wright is the person who invented Bitcoin”, while Matonis attested that he had “no doubt that Craig Steven Wright is the person behind the Bitcoin technology”.
Yet, mirroring the December reports, the latest news sparked skepticism about the proof offered by Wright.
Observers quickly took to social media to repudiate the offered proof, and in its report, The Economist wrote that “questions remain” about whether Wright is truly Satoshi.
Bitcoin markets also reacted to the news, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin USD Price Index. After days of trending above the $450 line, bitcoin markets fell below $440 before recovering later. At press time, the price of bitcoin is $443.34.
What comes next is not immediately clear, though rigorous debate about the veracity of Wright’s claims is virtually assured. In a press release provided to media Monday morning, Wright suggested in a statement that he intends to pursue some degree of involvement with bitcoin.
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This article has been updated.