Bitcoin Institute

On October 31, 2008, he posted a nine-page paper to a cryptography mailing list. On January 3, 2009, he launched Bitcoin by embedding "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" into the genesis block. He mined roughly 1.1 million BTC and never spent a single one. In April 2011, after a final email to Gavin, he vanished. Identity unknown. The name may not even be real.

“I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone.” — Email to Mike Hearn, 2011-04-23

Inventor of RPOW (Reusable Proofs of Work). On January 11, 2009, he tweeted just "Running bitcoin" — becoming the first person besides Satoshi to run the software. The next day, he received the world's first Bitcoin transaction (10 BTC from Satoshi). After his ALS diagnosis, he kept writing code using eye-tracking software. He died in 2014. His body is cryogenically preserved at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.

“Running bitcoin” — Twitter, 2009-01-11

A Helsinki undergraduate who emailed Satoshi in 2009 — and proceeded to exchange 260 emails, launch bitcoin.org, and run the forum that became Bitcointalk. He kept the Satoshi correspondence private for thirteen years. In 2024, he released all of it as evidence in COPA v. Wright.

“I would like to help with Bitcoin, if there's something I can do.” — First email to Satoshi, 2009-05-02

A pragmatist who said he wanted to be remembered as "a good person," not "a great person." In 2011 he gave a talk at CIA headquarters. That same year, just before vanishing, Satoshi handed him the keys to the project. In 2016, Gavin publicly vouched for Craig Wright as Satoshi, and lost the community's trust overnight.

“My talk at the CIA went well today. The hallways there are REALLY wide, and full of interesting stuff.” — After his CIA talk, 2011

On May 22, 2010, he bought two Papa John's pizzas for 10,000 BTC — the first real-world purchase ever made with Bitcoin. Over that summer he reportedly spent some 79,000 BTC on pizza. He was also a pioneer of GPU mining. The world remembers him only as the pizza guy.

“No. I don't regret it. I got to be part of Bitcoin's early history. That's pretty cool.” — Later interview

Inventor of Hashcash (1997), the proof-of-work scheme that Bitcoin mining is built on, and the first person Satoshi ever emailed. He didn't bother reading the attached paper at the time. He would not actively engage with Bitcoin until 2013 — five years after the inventor reached out to him personally.

“Probably my biggest mistake.” — Cointelegraph interview

Posted the b-money proposal to the cypherpunks mailing list in 1998 — cited as reference [1] in the Bitcoin whitepaper. Worked at Microsoft. Ethereum's smallest unit, the "wei," is named after him. He almost never appears in public.

“I'm actually more interested in Satoshi's creation... It appears to be the author wasn't aware of my ideas at the time.” — LessWrong, 2013

Designed "bit gold" in 1998 and coined the term "smart contract." His work is the closest conceptual predecessor to Bitcoin — but he never shipped any code for it. The "Satoshi is Szabo" theory refuses to die, despite his consistent denials.

“Nearly everybody who heard the general idea thought it was a very bad idea.” — On bit gold, Unenumerated blog, 2011

He left a senior engineering job at Google to work on Bitcoin full time. On April 23, 2011, he was one of the last people to receive a private email from Satoshi: "I've moved on to other things." In January 2016, after the block size wars, he declared Bitcoin had failed, sold every coin he owned, and walked away.

“Bitcoin has failed.” — "The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment," 2016-01-14

A longtime regular on the cryptography mailing list and a self-described pessimist. In 2008, at Satoshi's request, he reviewed the Bitcoin code. He was horrified to find floating-point arithmetic in monetary logic — then verified it and discovered the rounding error was exactly zero.

“I freaked out when I discovered the code used a floating-point type rather than an integer type for accounting.” — Interview, 2018

Two days after the whitepaper was posted, he became the first person to reply to Satoshi on the mailing list. His pattern was unmistakable: "We very much need such a system — but it does not seem to scale." Fifteen years on, many of the concerns he raised remain unresolved.

“We very, very much need such a system, but the way I understand your proposal, it does not seem to scale to the required size.” — Cryptography Mailing List, 2008-11-02

He joined the project in December 2010, days after replying to one of Satoshi's BitcoinTalk posts. His fingerprints are on RBF, OP_RETURN, and OpenTimestamps. In October 2024, the HBO documentary "Money Electric" identified him as Satoshi. He replied with sarcasm.

“Of course I'm Satoshi, and I'm Craig Wright.” — Responding to HBO "Money Electric," 2024

The man who announced "I am Satoshi" in 2016. On March 14, 2024, Justice Mellor of the UK High Court ruled in COPA v. Wright that Wright is not the author of the whitepaper, is not the person who used the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym, and did not create Bitcoin. The judge found "deliberate and extensive forgery of documents."

“Dr Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin White Paper. Dr Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto.” — Justice Mellor, COPA v. Wright ruling, 2024-03-14

The anonymous custodian of bitcoin.org, who inherited it from Martti Malmi. Real name, nationality, and age all unknown. In 2021, when Craig Wright sued him over the whitepaper's hosting, Cøbra chose to lose by default rather than appear in court and reveal his identity. The takedown order was issued; the whitepaper is still up.

“A system where 'justice' depends on who's got the bigger wallet.” — Tweeted after the takedown order, 2021-06-28