It was way back in 2008, that Satoshi Nakamoto published a research paper called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”
Nakamoto then implemented Bitcoin as open source code and released it in January 2009.
The real identity of Nakamoto has been the subject of endless speculations among the people in the tech world, and among hardcore cryptocurrency community in particular. As the person who was the most responsible for the technology regarded as the biggest most influential invention since the internet, people wanted to know who the person really is.
The hunt for Satoshi Nakamoto has led to numerous false leads. A number of people have claimed to be the creator of Bitcoin, but little they did to prove themselves.
Hal Finney is one of the more likely candidates because he was involved in cryptography research in the 1990s, and claimed to have direct contact with Satoshi Nakamoto due to being members of the same mailing lists.
Finney was some of the earliest people who saw potential in Nakamoto’s work, when most other cryptographers were at the time skeptical.
As seen in early emails, it was Finney who also helped Nakamoto with troubleshooting.
Hal Finney's claim to have had direct contact with Satoshi Nakamoto while Bitcoin was still under development led to at least one journalist to conclude that Hal Finney was actually the creator of Bitcoin.
As a cypherpunk, Finney expressed many libertarian and anarchic views regarding individual freedom. And this stance was shared with Satoshi.
For example, when talking about Laszlo Hanecz, the person who spent 10,000 Bitcoins to buy pizzas, Satoshi Nakamoto expressed hesitancy about GPU mining outcompeting CPU users.
"GPUs would prematurely limit the incentive to only those with high end GPU hardware … I don’t mean to sound like a socialist, I don’t care if wealth is concentrated, but for now, we get more growth by giving that money to 100% of the people than giving it to 20%," he said, as written by BitcoinCash on a report.
Then there was the fact that Finney was famously living just a few blocks away from the real life Satoshi Nakamoto in small town Temple City, in California.
This Nakamoto has since issued a statement emphasizing his denial of the news media coverage that said he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
“I did not create, invent or otherwise work on Bitcoin. I unconditionally deny the Newsweek report.”
While some theorized that Finney may have used Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto as the pseudonym to disguise himself as the creator of Bitcoin, journalist Leah McGrath Goodman who identified Dorian, did managed to make a lot of people to believe he is the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
In a high-profile 6 March 2014 article from Newsweek, Goodman showed one of the seemingly biggest piece of evidence pointing Dorian as the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
In the article, Goodman wrote that when she asked Dorian about Bitcoin during an in-person interview, the Japanese-American man said that: "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
With the many journalists and reporters going after his, Dorian said in a subsequent full-length interview, that he denied all connection to Bitcoin, saying he had never heard of the currency before, and that he had misinterpreted Goodman's question as being about his previous work, much of which was classified.
This was discussed in a Reddit "ask-me-anything" interview, where Dorian claimed that he had misinterpreted Goodman's question.
"Ms. Goodman replaced my conditional: 'Even if I was involved ...' and, I further explained that I cannot disclose my work due to the engineer creed not to discuss employers sensitive information which we signed before we are employed. At the time, without knowing Bitcoin, I thought she was asking about my work at Citibank."
If ever Finney could prove this wrong or right, the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto as the founder of Bitcoin remains a mystery at this time.
Finney died and kept at least some of the secrets with him. At this time, Finney's body remains cryogenically frozen by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.