Only hours after Wired and Gizmodo published reports about the possible true identity of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Australian police raided the home of businessman Craig Steven Wright in Sydney.
Wright was identified as the creator of the cryptocurrency, based on numerous emails, blog posts and leaked transcripts of legal interviews. However, neither Wright nor anyone else has publicly revealed the actual identity of the founder of Bitcoin.
The Guardian reports that the Sydney police’s raid of Wright’s home isn’t related to claims of his being involved in developing Bitcoin, but concerns an Australian Tax Office investigation.
So no, we still can’t be sure who Satoshi Nakamoto is. At present, all leads point to Wright, who is involved in several Australian tech enterprises.
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According to Wired, his blog posts and leaked emails “describe a man so committed to an unproven cryptocurrency idea that he mortgaged three properties and invested more than $1 million in computers, power, and connectivity—even going so far as to lay fiberoptic cables to his remote rural home in eastern Australia to mine the first bitcoins.”
However, Wright’s claims might be entirely false and at this point, it’s hard to be sure.
Confirming the Bitcoin creator’s true identity would have a serious effect on the future of the cryptocurrency. Nakamato supposedly has about 1.1 million BTC to his name in a trust fund, which amounts to roughly $455 million. It’s the largest fortune of Bitcoins present on the blockchain and hasn’t ever been touched.
There’s also a debate about how large the ‘block size‘ of Bitcoin is. This determines how much data about transactions can be stored in Bitcoin’s public ledger. Currently, the size of these batches of transactions is believed to be around 1MB, which is quickly filling up.
If it reaches its limit, it’s possible that future transactions will delayed or rejected, leading to a breakdown of the cryptocurrency’s ability to facilitate payments. People will naturally look to Nakamoto for guidance on solving this problem.
➤ ‘Bitcoin founder’ Craig Wright’s home raided by Australian police [The Guardian]
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