- A new lawsuit is the latest twist in effort to identify Bitcoin's creator.
- A meeting with Satoshi took place before 2019, suit claims.
- Satoshi has a stash worth $85 billion.
Wait... The US government knows the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto?
When it comes to unmasking the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, a Virginia lawyer may have just come up with the wildest theory yet.
Federal agents, he said, not only know Satoshi, they met with a quartet of people who collectively developed the digital money system that is worth $1.5 trillion.
This is the assertion made by James Murphy, an attorney who posts regularly on X for his 45,000 followers about crypto and the law.
An interview with Satoshi
On Monday, Murphy filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, alleging that sometime before 2019 agents interviewed individuals who claimed to be the architects behind Bitcoin.
His suit is predicated on supposed public remarks made by DHS agent Rana Saoud at a conference in 2019.
There are videos on YouTube featuring purported audio of a presentation Saoud made in which she talked about Satoshi.
“One of our agents, he was a really smart, forward-leaning agent, and he goes, ‘I want to go interview Satoshi Nakamoto,‘” Saoud is said to have recounted at the conference, according to Murphy’s lawsuit.
“So, it came to be, the agents flew out to California, and they realised that he wasn’t alone in creating this, there were three other people.”
DL News could not confirm the authenticity of the audio. The DHS press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and has not responded to the lawsuit in court papers.
Bitcoin hoard
Unmasking Satoshi goes beyond mere curiosity. Uncovering the Bitcoin creator’s identity would have seismic implications for the crypto market.
Satoshi is believed to hold 1.1 million Bitcoin, worth about $85 billion at the asset’s current price. With a hard cap of 21 million units, Satoshi’s Bitcoin hoard could upend the market if the holder decides to sell.
Indeed, Coinbase has regularly issued a boilerplate warning in its financial filings that the emergence of Satoshi is a risk.
Yet the quest has also become a talisman in crypto culture, at times litigious, at other times eccentric.
But one thing the search most definitely is is constant.
Last October, it was filmmaker Cullen Hoback who asserted the unknown inventor of Bitcoin was Peter Todd, a well known dev. Then a few weeks ago an analyst at Van Eck, the asset management firm, said he was sure Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was Satoshi.
Todd denied the claims and called them “ludicrous.” Dorsey has long denied he invented Bitcoin.
Now Murphy is taking his turn.
He filed the lawsuit to spur the DHS to act on a Freedom of Information Act he submitted seeking details of the agency’s purported interview with Nakamoto.
While the outcome of his case may not be known for some time, his suit is the latest chapter in the ever lengthening story of Satoshi Nakamoto.
Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. Got a tip? please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.
