It happened again. But this time the man was going to appear in person, with proof.
On Thursday, journalists gathered at a private club in London to meet Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin and holder of some $69 billion worth of the cryptocurrency. The legend was finally going to reveal his true identity.
Even better, he was expected to produce evidence that he had composed the Genesis Block, the code that propelled what is now a $2.5 trillion industry in digital assets.
But there was a problem — “Satoshi” and his promoter, Charles Anderson, couldn’t get the laptop holding all their evidence to work.
“You don’t have one of those three-pronged plugs, do you?” Anderson asked as a dozen reporters from the BBC, The Financial Times, and assorted crypto pubs waited.
“I’ve lost the internet now,” Anderson grumbled.
At last, the man of the hour stepped forward. He was wearing a plaid sport jacket, camo trousers, hiking shoes, and sported the long, grey beard of a mountaintop sage.
He said his name was Stephen Mollah.
Strange hour
“I am here to tell the world there is no one else in the Bitcoin community who invented this technology,” Mollah declared.
“Satoshi is a pseudonym I started using on April 5, 2007. I am the inventor of Bitcoin and blockchain technology.”
So began one of the stranger hours in a period when the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has, once again, become a hot topic in crypto.
Just a few weeks ago, a filmmaker identified Peter Todd, a 39-year-old Canadian dev, as Bitcoin’s creator in a documentary aired on HBO. Todd laughed off the notion, and the film receded into the ever growing archive of failed Satoshi reveals.
Now Mollah, 58, said the time had finally come to unmask himself.
“I wrote the white paper,” he said, referring to the nine-page blueprint for Bitcoin that Satoshi published 16 years ago to the day.
Asked to describe who he was and what he did, he said, “I am a businessman.”
Asked to define Bitcoin, he said, “It’s electronic. It’s digital.”
And asked why he doesn’t access the trove of Bitcoin at his disposal, Mollah cited “technical issues.”
He said he doesn’t have the alphanumeric key needed to unlock those original Bitcoins but he could get it if he put his mind to it.
He then said that the key had been split into eight pieces which are located on eight computers “around the world,” which sounded suspiciously similar to the premise of Christopher Nolan’s 2020 thriller “Tenet.”
There was more: mysterious groups were constantly hacking his computers for his Bitcoin and data. “They are chasing me all around the world, and London,” Mollah said.
As for proof, well, Mollah presented in rapid fashion images of the original posts Satoshi published on Bitcoin forum back in 2008 and 2009. He and Anderson told us reporters that they were “timestamped.”
‘It is me, I am here.’
— Stephen Mollah
But they were impossible to read, and besides, they were screenshots. Mollah said he had paper copies of the posts that would be “proof” he was Satoshi.
The only actual proof that emerged from this “show,” as Anderson described the event, was our undying fascination with Satoshi Nakamoto. It’s the greatest mystery in finance, of course, and it also exemplifies the irresistible idea that a mad genius can change the world.
165,000 Bitcoin
Until Satoshi is identified, Bitcoin remains a story without an ending. It’s little wonder that claimants such as Mollah or Craig Wright, the Australian dev who was exposed as a pretender by a UK court, rush into the void.
As it happens, Mollah and Anderson have been accused of running a scheme to lay claim to 165,000 Bitcoin — worth $11.7 billion — in Singapore by a person named Dalmit Dohil, according to published reports.
The two men denied the allegations on Thursday. And Mollah vowed to soon liberate Bitcoin from the Genesis Block to prove his claims.
“It is me, I am here,” he said. “There is no other Satoshi Nakamoto.”
Edward Robinson is the story editor for DL News. The opinions expressed in this op-ed column are his own. Contact the author at ed@dlnews.com.
