Bitcoin is a digital currency that was created in 2008 by "Satoshi Nakamoto." It's exchanged electronically, it's tied to no banks, and no central authority controls it. That's strange enough. But one of the strangest things about the currency is that Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity has never been confirmed. And "Nakamoto" — whether that's an individual or a group of people — is estimated to own up to 5 percent of the total supply of the currency. That's not just a lot of money; it's a potentially dangerous amount of power
A few months prior to bitcoin's launch in January 2009, Nakamoto wrote a white paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." The paper included citations from collaborators, but Nakamoto never revealed their identity while communicating with them over email. On their P2P Foundation profile, Nakamoto claimed to be a Japanese man born on April 5, 1975. But searches for that identity came up with nothing, and the birthdate was fishy: April 5 was the date President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed executive order 6102 forbidding the hoarding of gold by U.S. citizens (in 1933), and 1975 was the year gold ownership once again became legal for U.S. citizens. Coincidence? Perhaps not, as this is just one of many easter eggs allegedly hidden by Nakamoto in their correspondence with others.
Nakamoto's Japanese origins were questioned when Swiss coder Stefan Thomas graphed the time stamps from Nakamoto's 500-plus posts in a bitcoin forum. Thomas identified virtually no posts between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time — even on Saturdays and Sundays — suggesting the lull occurred when Nakamoto was asleep rather than at work. And since all of their writing was in perfect English, Nakamoto must be American, right? Not so fast: comments in the bitcoin source code used British spelling variants such as "optimise" and "colour." Red herrings or cultural giveaways?