A report by Doncho Karaivanov, co-founder and creative director of The Chain Bulletin, claims that Satoshi Nakamoto, the enigmatic creator of Bitcoin, lived in London while developing his groundbreaking creation.
Little is known about the enigmatic and controversial character, Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, and who interacted for more than 2 years with those who are now known as the first developers of the network, but nobody knows who he really is.
The name “Satoshi Nakamoto” is just a pseudonym used by a person, or group of people, to hide their true identity or identities, something that has proven to be very effective so far.
Research, studies, analysis and even intelligence have tried to discover by many means, and for several years, who this character is, without any success. However, a new report Posted by Co-Founder and Creative Director of The Chain Bulletin, Doncho Karaivanov, claims that the enigmatic character lived in London from 2008 to 2010, the time when Bitcoin, the decentralized system and the cryptocurrency most popular and important worldwide.
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This is what we know: Nakamoto lived in London
“Analysis of Satoshi’s Bitcointalk posts, SourceForge commits, and emails, along with other available data, points to the most likely place that Bitcoin’s anonymous inventor called home: London.”
It is not known for certain whether this statement is true or not, Karaivanov himself claims it, but the research he conducted suggests that Nakamoto may have been working from this city when developing Bitcoin.
To make these claims, Karaivanov relies on extensive research on the popular forum Bitcointalk, where Satoshi Nakamoto made his appearance to welcome Bitcoin users several months after having published his whitepaper. Karaivanov points out that there are a total of 539 publications available, in addition to 34 emails on the crypto and Bitcoin mailing lists, 169 confirmations On SourceForge, the metadata for the 2008 and 2009 versions of the Bitcoin whitepaper, the Genesis block and various files from Wayback Machine.
Karaivanov based his research on the UTC timestamps of Nakamoto's posts and interactions, which began on October 31, 2008, when he published the Bitcoin whitepaper, and ended on December 13, 2010, when he sent his last email. The sum of all these interactions represents a total of 742 activities carried out on 206 non-consecutive days. This data was used to compile scatter plots across different time zones where Nakamoto was presumed to be located.
Confirmation and Discard
The researcher used the data to estimate Nakamoto's possible locations, discarding those that did not meet the requirements and further investigating those that showed a higher probability of success.
The most likely locations are the UK (GMT), US Eastern (EST) and US Pacific (PST), while Japan (JST) and Australia (AEST) are the least likely locations, according to Karaivanov's research. He also notes that the evidence points to London due to one very particular detail: the genesis block.
Interesting facts about the Bitcoin genesis block
According to the researcher, the genesis block contains very particular evidence, which could prove that Nakamoto was in London for the birth of Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin genesis block was created on January 3, 2009, and contains a rather curious piece of information that reflects the idea of why Nakamoto developed the cryptocurrency. In the coinbase of this block, you can find the headline of the newspaper «The Times» from January 3 of that year: «Chancellor on the brink of a second bailout for banks»This headline is presented as conclusive evidence of the creation date of the first Bitcoin block; but it also shows the reality that society was experiencing at the time: a global crisis resulting from the poor management of the current financial system.
Karaivanov points out that this headline appeared, identically and in the same format, in the London edition of The Times newspaper, «Times of London», on January 3, 2009, and it is an edition that did not circulate throughout the United States, but in a limited manner in areas of New York and Washington, as reported by the same media in 2006.
Source: The Chain Bulletin
And while many may think that Nakamoto got the headline from the online version of the newspaper, Karaivanov rules out this possibility because the headline on The Times of London's website was "slightly different" from the one in print. On the website, the title of this same news item appears as: «Chancellor Alistair Darling on the brink of a second bank bailout», including the name of the chancellor, which does not appear in the printed version entered into the genesis block.
Other data of interest
Finally, the researcher points out that Satoshi Nakamoto's spelling and language in the texts he wrote also suggest that he was a native English speaker, and not Japanese, as his pseudonym might suggest. Of course, none of these data can confirm this theory with certainty.
Still, Karaivanov notes that all the data “blatantly” points to London, England’s capital, being the most likely location that Satoshi Nakamoto called home.
The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains a mystery
Although many have claimed to be the "creator of Bitcoin", no one has been able to prove it, as is the case of Craig Wright, who has not been able to clearly prove that he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
The identity of this enigmatic character remains, and seems to remain, a mystery. Nakamoto was very clever when it came to protecting his identity and guaranteeing his privacy. The investigations carried out by The Chain Bulletin team do not point to any particular person as the author of Bitcoin, nor do they provide certainty about his location at the time of creating this cryptocurrency, but they do give us an idea, and additional information, from where Nakamoto could have been working on his innovative creation.
Likewise, although the crypto community remains ever grateful for Nakamoto's work, the Bitcoin development team is also the one who strives every day to continue improving the initial Bitcoin code, making this technology better and better. On the other hand, the anonymity of the true creator of Bitcoin maintains the guarantee of decentralization that this system offers, since its development is not controlled by one person per se, but by the consensus of its community of users.
About Doncho Karaivanov
Doncho Karaivanov is co-founder and creative director of The Chain Bulletin. He started his career as a software engineer in 2011, and went on to create his own digital marketing company in 2015.
Karaivanov first got involved with blockchain technology in 2013, helping run a small mining operation with a colleague. Then, in 2017, together with 2 colleagues from Sofia University, he co-founded a small blockchain-based startup, focusing on the user interface. During his work at this startup, Karaivanov came up with the idea of The Chain Bulletin, which eventually became the main focus of the startup.
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