Global ho-hum greets Bitcoin mystery

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES

Who is Bitcoin’s real creator? The Bitcoin community is reacting to that burning question with a collective ho-hum.

Developers and Bitcoin enthusiasts from Finland to Texas are downplaying the media frenzy that occurred Thursday after Newsweek identified the digital currency’s creator as a Japanese-American living in Southern California, only to have the man vehemently deny it to The Associated Press.

The furor, they say, means little to Bitcoin’s future as a viable form of money.

The computer code that underpins Bitcoin has changed dramatically since its inception in 2009, spawning a generation of entrepreneurs seeking to ride its growing popularity to newfound wealth, outside of government controls.

And though most Bitcoin users and investors maintain a healthy interest in learning the true identity of the person known for years only as Satoshi Nakamoto, they say the financial platform’s maintenance and growth depends on the many creators who are working on it now.

“From an engineering perspective, Satoshi gave up control on Jan. 5, 2009 when he birthed the first Bitcoin transaction,” said Jeff Garzik, a member of the seven-member Bitcoin Core Development Team that controls what happens to the currency’s central code today. “He created an organism, and he gave it life, and he released it into the wild for it to do as it does.”

Garzik says he doesn’t believe Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto — the man who denied the Newsweek story — is the same Satoshi Nakamoto who posted the original written Bitcoin proposal in 2008 and followed it up with computer code that made it possible the following year.

Gregory Maxwell, another Bitcoin core developer based in Mountain View, Calif., said he has “immense respect” for the Bitcoin creator, but doesn’t care who it is, or what the person’s motivation was. The genius of Bitcoin is it doesn’t require trusting anyone at all, he said.

“If the creator of Bitcoin mattered to our ability to use it, then Bitcoin has failed in its technological goals,” he said.

At the Texas Bitcoin Conference in Austin, Texas, with about 1,000 attendees, almost no panelists were talking about the founding father of the currency Thursday, despite the disputed story breaking that morning.

“Everybody was talking about what’s next, not what was or who’s behind it,” said Bruce Fenton, a founding member of the Bitcoin Financial Association, an advocacy group that promotes its spread.

Ultimately, die-hard Bitcoin developers won’t be convinced of the creator’s identity until the proof is embedded in code. That can be done by transferring Bitcoins from an account linked to the Satoshi Nakamoto who uploaded the original code. Another way would be to send an encrypted message using the so-called “PGP” key that is publicly listed on The Bitcoin Foundation website and is linked to a private key that only the real Satoshi Nakamoto knows.

“If he wanted to identify himself, he would do so in a manner that would end speculation,” Garzik said.

Still, some people in the Bitcoin community jumped into action at the prospect that the father (or mother) of the currency might finally come out of hiding.

After Dorian Nakamoto’s denial, and hours after he left the AP’s downtown Los Angeles headquarters, an attention-grabbing post was sent from a Satoshi Nakamoto account that had been dormant for three years, stating “I am not Dorian Nakamoto.”