Why It Matters Who Invented Bitcoin?
Dec 10 2015 · 08:24 UTC | Updated Dec 16 2017 · 12:53
by Tatsiana Yablonskaya · 3 min read
Photo: Mattia Notari/Flickr
Recent disclosure of Craig Wright may have impact on the whole bitcoin future.
The bitcoin society hasn't witnessed such a shakeup for quite a long. Two reliable sources have concurrently published their investigations revealing a real name of bitcoin's creator. It was believed that bitcoin was invented by some mysterious person who had preferred to hide under the mask of Satoshi Nakamoto.
We won't mention how much bitcoin enthusiasts wanted to know the personality of Satoshi – it just goes without saying. Wired Magazine and Gizmodo (AU) have surprised the community by presenting the results of their research and now the whole world knows bitcoin's father as Australian entrepreneur Craig Steven Wright.
Soon after the exposure, the house of Wright was searched by the Australian Federal police. The officials denied the assumption that the raids were related to the bitcoin claims. "The AFP can confirm it has conducted search warrants to assist the Australian Taxation Office at a residence in Gordon and a business premises in Ryde, Sydney. This matter is unrelated to recent media reporting regarding the digital currency bitcoin."
When the investigations of Wired and Gizmodo went public, Wright in his turn went into hiding. His digital existence has almost completely disappeared. Several of his public accounts, including Facebook, YouTube and Google+, have been completely deleted.
Notably, bitcoin price has risen recently. According to Winklevoss Index it makes up $412 now while the daily peak is $422. Market analysts tend to connect the price movement with Wright's disclosure. Nevertheless it's hard to say now how long the excitement will long.
Knowing the real name of bitcoin's creator is not a simple curiosity. It has much deeper economic basis. According to Time, the current situation in bitcoin world looks as follows: the destiny of a supposedly decentralized currency may now rest in the hands of one person — exactly the fate it was created to avoid.
Absorbing in the history of bitcoin's appearance, we know that it was easier to mine large amounts of bitcoin in the currency's early days. Thus a person, who was the first to get access to bitcoin, must have stored quite a handsome sum of money. Indeed, there's a mysterious cache of 1.1 million Bitcoin, worth about half a billion American dollars, visible on Bitcoin's public ledger and controlled by bitcoin's inventor.
Wired informs that the 1.1 million bitcoin could be tied up in a kind of digital trust fund that Wright only can fully access in 2020. Thus the whole bitcoin idea with a public ledger of transactions and no central control seems to fail as bitcoin's creator, whoever he is, possesses a half-billion dollar stockpile.
If Wright decided to cash out and make off with a more widely-accepted currency like dollars, Bitcoin would never recover from the price shock triggered by the sudden glut in supply.
Author Tatsiana Yablonskaya
Taking strong interest in blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and IoT, Tatsiana Yablonskaya got deep understanding of the emerging techs believing in their potential to drive the future.
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