Nobody knows who the mysterious inventor of bitcoin really is. The pseudonym Saotshi Nakamoto is all the world has to go on in trying to indentify him/her/them. And it has been like this since the emergence of bitcoin in 2009. Even the original massive wallets with possibly billions of dollars worth of bitcoin in them by now, allegedly owned by the fabled Satoshi, still sit there untouched all this time since the beginning.
So when the bitcoin developer Dr Craig Wright started claiming in 2015 that he was Satoshi, the inventor of bitcoin, most crypto enthusiasts were understandably sceptical. Back then several reputable websites, like Wired and Gizmodo, posted articles saying he might be Satoshi, but most of the evidence presented there was later found to be from anonymous sources and proved false. Wired subsequently even went as far as to say that Dr Wright “was likely pulling an elaborate hoax or con.” He has now humorously become known globally as “Faketoshi”.
Since then Dr Wright has become embroiled in still further controversy when he launched a breakaway hard fork of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), called Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV), while the previous BCH became BCHABC (adjustable blocksize cap). In other words Dr Wright’s new coin, launched just recently in November 2018, is a hard fork of a hard fork. And the original hard fork BCH was by then only 15 months old, having occurred in August 2017. Things are moving really fast at this point in the evolution of the cryptocurrency space, since it’s active 24/7/365, unlike other traditional markets. And it’s a dynamic and constantly unfolding leading edge technological arena.
The further insistence by Dr Wright that he is Satoshi, the inventor of Bitcoin, up until today, four years later, has become a bit of a joke among some members of the crypto community, particularly one anonymous Twitter personality calling himself “Hodlonaut”, who recently began criticizing him in tweets as “a very sad and pathetic scammer. Clearly mentally ill,” as well as creating the #CraigWrightIsAFraud hashtag.
As a result Dr Wright has begun a court case to sue Hodlounaut. First he had to identify him/her so sent out a bounty offering $5000 in BSV to anyone who could positively ID the owner of the Holdonaut Twitter account.
One might say that it was defamation of character and that Dr Wright’s demands for an apology are justified, but the Bitcoin community is a small and tightly knit one, and Hodlonaut also just happens to be the anonymous founder of the popular Lightning Torch Campaign, that sent a bitcoin donation from one person to the next over a period of months, with each person adding 10 000 Sats donation to the amount as it circumambulated the globe. It was an endeavour to show the efficiency of the new Lightning Network in speeding up bitcoin transactions and micropayments.
The total accumulated amount of bitcoin – 0.41 BTC - was then finally donated to Bitcoin Venezuela for their needs during their desperate political and economic situation. Overall 292 people passed on the relay torch of bitcoins, including some of the top names in the industry.
So when Dr Wright launched his legal attack on Hodlonaut it was like he was attacking the entire close-knit and trustworthy global crypto community. And they retaliated. Hodlonaut deleted his Twitter account but immediately the Twittersphere began trending with the hashtag #WeAreAllHoldonaut to show support. Some Twitter users even changed their names or handles to Hodlonaut in solidarity. A website also created a BTC crowdfunding platform to help Hodlonaut raise funds for his legal battle, as he has received a letter from Wright’s lawyers threatening to sue for defamation in the UK.
And amazingly around $28 000 has already been raised and given to him, with any leftover BTC due to be sent to Bitcoin Venezuela.
Curiously Dr Wright has also deleted his Twitter account, not before threatening anyone who defames him with a court case. Another victim of Wright’s wrath is Peter McCormack, host of the podcast “What Bitcoin Did”, who has also been approached by Faketoshi’s lawyers after he tagged Wright’s good friend and millionaire Calvin Ayre’s twitter feed, declaring Wright is a fraud.
He is also being asked to publically apologise on Twitter and in court. Above all of this is Dr Wright who still claims he was the author of the original Bitcoin white paper, and that he was the Satoshi who sent the first ever bitcoin transaction.
Just last week McCormack was served with legal papers and a demand of $130 000, after he formally declined to apologise and asked Dr Faketoshi to provide proof that he is who he thinks he is.
Well this is where it starts to get really interesting, if you thought all of this was just gossip or trivia, because the crypto community are putting on still more pressure now by literally deciding to delist Dr Wright’s coin BSV from certain exchanges. It appears as if his attempt to come out of the closet as Satoshi is backfiring big time.
CZ, the CEO of Binance, the fourth biggest exchange globally, Tweeted:
“Craig Wright is not Satoshi. Anymore of this sh!t, we delist!”
And true to his word, Binance has just days ago officially delisted Wright’s BSV hard fork altogether. Simultaneously another major exchange, Kraken, ran a poll on Twitter among its customers, asking them if they wanted to delist BSV and the response was an overwhelming 71% yes out of over 70 500 votes.
A third exchange, ShapeShift followed suit in solidarity. The immediate reaction was a staggering drop in BSV price, losing an immediate 10% and an overall 26% so far. The delisting has sent ripples through the crypto community as the new #DelistBSV does the rounds. As a consolation, the biggest exchange OKEx, has refrained from delisting BSV, taking a softer and more neutral stance, possibly because it just happens to be a partner with Dr Wright’s recently launched FloatSV exchange launching around now in April 2019.
In a paradoxical move the Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings announced that it will delist the opposing hard fork BCHABC instead, again because the CEO is a close friend of Dr Wright, although it hasn’t had anywhere near the impact on price, with BCHABC still around number four in market cap, while BSV is at 14th. Ultimately Dr Wright has caused his own problems by being so adamant that he is Satoshi, the inventor of Bitcoin. If he was Satoshi, he could easily prove it by moving some of the funds in his long-dormant bitcoin wallet.
That’s all it takes. But he has not been able to do so and as a result the crypto community are tired of his mad ravings, like a crazy scientist who has become drunk on his own power or success.
The head of Kraken exchange put it succinctly when he wrote that Dr Wright has “engaged in behavior completely antithetical to everything we at Kraken and the wider crypto community stands for.” Others, of course take a balanced view and allow for Wright to have his rights protected against slander, but the community has spoken already, and shown that they refuse to have their mystery hero the real Satoshi Nakamoto hijacked by this wannabe usurper. That is the real issue here it seems.
Whoever Satoshi is, it may be more or alluring or attractive for the world for him/her/them to be shrouded in mystery. To have that mystery tarnished by not only a mere mortal but a particularly obnoxious mortal with one of the most despised breakaway coins in BCHSV, is just too much for the collective community to handle. No one can be our Bitcoin Jesus (neither Roger Ver nor Dr Craig Wright), and if he is then let’s see the miracles. Move that bitcoin from your wallet and we will believe you are Satoshi.
It’s as simple as that.