In 2019, Bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto returned - at least a handful of times. Most of the claims have been dismissed with skepticism or downright derision, but some of the claimants won’t give up. Here are the most dramatic claims made in the past year.
Craig S. Wright: perhaps the most notorious, long-running candidate for Bitcoin fame. In 2019, the case of Wright against the estate of Dave Kleiman veered into outlandish claims. Wright never managed to produce a private key belonging to early BTC blocks and wallets.
Wright has been dismissed as the real Nakamoto, though he is decided on affecting the future of BTC. This time, he plans “something big” for 2020, to be achieved through the Bitcoin SV (BSV) project. It remains to be seen what Wright manages to achieve, beyond entertaining the crypto community.
Satoshi Nakamoto, @RealSatoshiN: A Twitter personality, with some philosophical musings on decentralization. This claimant has actually worked toward debunking some of the claims of Craig Wright.
https://twitter.com/realSatoshiN/status/1181235316709036033
The @RealSatoshiN Twitter account is rather courteous, unlike Wright’s spilling of vitrion and subsequent capitulation from the social media.
The Big Reveal that Wasn’t: The real Satoshi Nakamoto is actually a British employee of the NHS, who had to return to work after losing his wallet.dat file in a glitching laptop. But fear not, Mr. Bilal Khalid was ready with another project, Tabula Rasa, based on a free-for-all bank. Khalid was quickly dismissed from the crypto space, though he continues to try to build new blockchain fame.
https://twitter.com/SatoshiNRH/status/1188851199530979330
It is most probable that the reveal was a publicity stunt to plug in for a new attempt at a crypto project.
Jorg Molt: If nothing else, Mr. Nakamoto should be flamboyant. Molt styled himself Bitcoin co-founder, and usually revealed his identity in person, most recently during a Las Vegas conference show. The abundance of Satoshis has made the community call for gathering all of them to talk out which is the real one.
https://twitter.com/moonfluencer/status/1209047480568078336
BTC, however, remains unfazed, whoever is the founder. The network is still decentralized, despite the significant influence of Chinese miners. As the new decade approaches, there is no consensus on what the best blockchain should be - though most projects still use BTC as a baseline.
