Last week, the internet lit up with speculation that Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) founder Steve Jobs may be Bitcoin’s inventor Satoshi Nakamoto.
The rumor was started by the discovery of a copy of the Bitcoin white paper on technology writer Andy Baio’s Mac. Baio wrote that Bitcoin’s foundational document appeared on every Mac since Mojave in 2018.
Digital currency Twitter influencers shared Baio’s tweets about the discovery and ran polls asking whether the late Steve Jobs was really Satoshi Nakamoto. While the majority said he either was not or that it didn’t matter, a substantial number of people believed he was.
Was Steve Jobs actually Satoshi Nakamoto the creator of #bitcoin?
Revelations that all Macs come with the BTC whitepaper are fueling speculation.
Plus Satoshi disappear in December 2010, and then Jobs passed in October 2011. The timelines fit…
— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) April 7, 2023
If you’re of the option that Jobs was or could have been the inventor of the world’s first peer-to-peer electronic cash system, sorry to burst your bubble, but he wasn’t. Despite all of the media headlines about Bitcoin’s ‘mysterious’ inventor, it’s not much of a mystery, and those paying attention already know who Nakamoto is.
Satoshi Nakamoto was Dr. Craig Wright, and there’s plenty of proof
There’s overwhelming evidence that Dr. Craig Wright was Bitcoin’s inventor, and much of it has been presented where it counts: under oath in court.
Dr. Wright is not a popular figure within ‘crypto’ because he calls out the rampant speculation, schemes, and fraud that typify it, and he has refused to bend or break when it comes to his intentions for his life’s work. He’s determined to create a scalable peer-to-peer electronic cash system that makes the world a better place, and he refuses to buy into the flawed logic that signing with Nakamoto’s private keys publicly would somehow prove he is him.
So, in the absence of a public key signing, what’s the evidence that Dr. Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto? Let’s dive in.
First, Dr. Wright is not the ‘self-proclaimed’ inventor of Bitcoin, as many news publications call him. He was outed by Wired and Gizmodo magazines back in 2015, and he left Australia in a hurry to avoid the attention. There are emails from within Dr. Wright’s organization which showed that, when questioned by journalists at the time, he instructed his colleagues to “add them to the list of people who know.”
Next, Dr. Wright has sworn under oath that he is Bitcoin’s inventor. This would be insanely risky if he was lying, given that it would be a crime and the ‘real Satoshi’ could expose him at any moment. Yet, the silence from the ‘real Satoshi’ is deafening, even though Dr. Wright has successfully won copyright over the Bitcoin white paper and database, subsequently using it to force Bitcoin.org to remove it from its website in the United Kingdom.
Dr. Wright is one of the few people on earth with the breadth and depth of knowledge to create a system like Bitcoin. As well as being one of the world’s most qualified digital forensics practitioners, he holds PhDs in economics and computer science, among other disciplines. He has consistently been able to explain peculiar elements of Bitcoin, such as the double hash, 256k1, how Bitcoin script works, the 1Return Bug (which is not a bug), and more. These questions left other experts in the field stumped.
When Satoshi Nakamoto left the project in the early days of Bitcoin, he handed the reins over to a developer called Gavin Andresen. The two had engaged in both public and private conversations about Bitcoin, and when Andresen met Dr. Wright in 2016, he publicly stated that the Australian polymath had signed early blocks of his choosing with Nakamoto’s keys and that he fits the type of person he remembered Nakamoto as being.
Stefan Matthews, a former colleague of Dr. Wright, has stated that he has first-hand knowledge that he is Nakamoto. Matthews recalls Dr. Wright talked to him about Bitcoin before it was publicly released and claims to have seen an early copy of the white paper. Matthews has since staked his reputation and career by working closely with Dr. Wright at nChain and in other endeavors.
Matthews is not the only former colleague of Dr. Wright’s to say such things. Neville Sinclair, a former BDO director, testified under oath that Dr. Wright presented a project to the company outlining a digital currency secured by cryptography and nodes. This was merely a year or so before Bitcoin was released. Why are people who are in a position to know better so willing to take such risks with their reputations and careers to vouch for Dr. Wright?
That’s not all. In the Trial of the Century in Florida in 2021, Dr. Wright won a court case for 1.1 million bitcoins after being sued by his late friend David Kleimans’ brother, who claimed his brother was one half of the duo that invented Bitcoin. At no point did Ira Kleiman protest against the notion that Dr. Wright was involved, and the jury found no fraud related to him.
In 2022, Dr. Wright won a defamation suit against podcaster Peter McCormack. The podcaster had publicly claimed that Dr. Wright was fraudulently claiming to be Bitcoin’s inventor, but he withdrew his statements when presented with Dr. Wright’s evidence in discovery. Tether, backing McCormack in the case, withdrew financial support when they saw the same evidence.
No, Satoshi Nakamoto was not Steve Jobs
While some eyeballs and brains will no doubt be exploding by this stage of the article, the evidence makes it abundantly clear to anyone who bases their beliefs on reason and logic; Dr. Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, and that means Steve Jobs is not.
If you’re curious to know what Bitcoin’s inventor thinks about the digital currency industry, how Bitcoin should work and what it really is, and more, check out his blog at CraigWright.net. Who better to learn from than Satoshi himself?
See more: Why I Believe Craig Wright is Most Likely Satoshi; and The myth of ‘Selfless Satoshi’.
Dr. Craig Wright on CoinGeek Conversations: On the start of Bitcoin
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