Читать книгу Bitcoin For Dummies - Peter Kent - Страница 14

So who is this Satoshi Nakamoto? Nobody knows. Well, somebody must know, but either they’re not saying or they’ve been unable to convince anybody. In fact, it’s not even clear what Satoshi Nakamoto is. A man? A woman? A group of collaborators? An organization or firm? We don’t know for sure, though most assumptions seem to be that it’s a man or a group of two or three people. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most cited targets are generally cryptographers and mathematicians.

There’s the actual Satoshi Nakamoto, of course — that was an obvious choice. A Japanese-American resident of California who was born Satoshi Nakamoto, and now goes by the name Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, seems to have some of the skills needed to be the Nakamoto, but he denies being the founder of Bitcoin.

Then there’s Nick Szabo, a digital-currency enthusiast who has been tagged as Nakamoto but denies it. Elon Musk has been “accused,” too, but he denies it (and we personally think he was probably too busy to find the time!). There’s Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki (he denies it), Finnish economic sociologist Dr. Vili Lehdonvirta (denies it), and Irish cryptography student Michael Clear (yep, denies it).

One of the loudest candidates is Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist. He certainly claims he is Nakamoto, though he’s accused by many of carrying out an elaborate fraud. As we write these words, a jury found Wright liable to pay the estate of David Kleiman, a deceased friend and colleague, $100 million for misuse of funds in a joint venture they worked on. But separately, the jury also found that David Kleiman was not a partner in the creation of Bitcoin.

The jury didn’t find that Craig Wright is Nakamoto, though — only that if he is, he doesn’t have to share his $50 billion with Kleiman’s estate. Not a bad deal. In fact, it’s such a good deal that Wright stated that he was relieved that all he has to pay is $100 million! Still, the case is not over. Whether Kleiman’s estate actually has ownership in the joint-venture company is unclear, and Wright might owe $100 million to his ex-wife. It doesn’t settle the question of whether or not Wright actually is Nakamoto. (Wright says that the jury found that he is Nakamoto; they didn’t.) That won’t be settled until Wright — or the real Satoshi Nakamoto — moves some of the Bitcoin out of the blockchain addresses owned by Nakamoto.

Regardless, the Bitcoin network has continued to function as designed long after Satoshi Nakamoto mysteriously stopped participating in the network, shortly after claiming Julian Assange and Wikileaks had “kicked the hornets’ nest” once they began accepting Bitcoin for donations for their controversial reporting in 2010.