Who's Satoshi Nakamoto? The question of the decade!
On one side there's Craig Wright, the man behind Bitcoin Satoshi Vision. Wright has long claimed that he's Satoshi and that he can prove it. Last week, he took his efforts to confirm his identity to the next level, filing formal libel claims against podcast producer Peter McCormack, Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, Hodlnaut, an anonymous crypto twitter user, and others who called him a "fraud."
Crypto Twitter was quick to jump to their defense, igniting a viral campaign against Wright and his Satoshi claims.
Then, an unlikely threat came from an island in the Caribbean. John McAfee, entrepreneur and Bitcoin investor, joined the "Who is Satoshi?" debate, tweeting,
"I protected the identity of Satoshi. It's time, though, that this be put to bed. Imposters claim to be him, we are spending time and energy in search of him - It's a waste. Every day I will narrow down the identity of Satoshi until he reveals himself, or I reveal him."
His tweet storm (grab a bag of popcorn and read here) was met with mixed reviews. Some applauded him, "This is going to be great!" Others disagreed, "Isn't staying anonymous his right?", "Sometimes the mystery in a game makes it beautiful."
The Power of Anonymity
The comments on both sides bring to light an important question. Do we even want to know who Satoshi is? The anonymity of Satoshi is part of what allowed a community to grow across the globe. Free of a centralized leader or group of leaders Bitcoin became one of the top performing asset classes of the decade. Bitcoin isn't his, hers, or theirs. It's all of ours.
Whether or not McAfee releases a name, that won't change, and that's what's why Bitcoin is so resilient.
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