Trying to uncover: Identity of Bitcoin creator remains mystery

Newsweek had identified 64-year-old Japanese-American engineer Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto as the creator of Bitcoin. PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE

WASHINGTON: 

The world was a little closer to knowing for sure who invented Bitcoin on Friday, despite Newsweek’s claim to have unmasked the enigmatic ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ behind the computer-coded currency.

The magazine relaunched its print version with an ostensibly huge scoop, identifying the 64-year-old Japanese-American engineer Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto as the creator.

But the mystery remained after the apparently retired model train enthusiast from suburban Los Angeles asked a reporter to buy him lunch and then denied he was the Nakamoto of legend.

“I’m not involved in Bitcoin,” he told the AP reporter.

Hours later, raising more doubts about the Newsweek report, a web forum where ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ used to share his ideas for the virtual currency and the computing structure behind it unexpectedly received a curt message on the same Nakamoto account.

“I am not Dorian Nakamoto,” the message on the P2P Foundation members discussion board said.

But neither denial quite settled the matter. There is still some mystery about Dorian S Nakamoto himself.

And Joseph Davies-Coates, who established the P2P discussion board, said that while the source of the second denial could easily be the original Satoshi Nakamoto, there was no way to prove that.

Critics bashed Newsweek for making a compelling but not definitive link between Bitcoin and Dorian Nakamoto, and still publishing his picture and one of his home, while writing that he is worth at least $400 million in unspent Bitcoin.