On October 31, another attempt was made in London to reveal the identity of the creator of the blockchain and the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. A man previously unknown to the public gathered many journalists to publicly prove his authorship and provide evidence that he — Satoshi Nakamoto — created the Genesis Block — the first block on the Bitcoin network. If authenticated, this would be one of the biggest sensations in the cryptocurrency world.
For more than 10 years, there have been attempts to find the person (or persons) hiding behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. The latest one was made during the filming of the HBO documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, after which the 39-year-old Canadian software developer Peter Todd quarrels with the film’s director Cullen Hoback and Wired. In the first case, because the developer was named Satoshi Nakamoto, and in the second case, because an online magazine wrote that Todd went underground because of the movie’s release.
So, at a Halloween conference, a businessman named Stephen Molla, dressed in a checkered jacket, camouflage pants, and hiking shoes, made a statement: «I am Satoshi Nakamoto. There is no other person who invented Bitcoin».
Molla claimed that he had adopted this pseudonym back in 2007, and now he decided to show his real face. However, the demonstration of the evidence never took place: the laptop on which the «evidence» was stored did not work, and Stephen and his promoter Charles Anderson were unable to connect to the Internet. All they could show were screenshots of old Bitcoin forum posts from 2008-2009 of dubious quality.
Molla also claimed that the keys to his BTC were distributed among eight computers around the world, and that mysterious hackers were constantly trying to prevent him from accessing this treasure.
When journalists asked Molla to define bitcoin, he replied: «It is electronic money. Digital currency».
However, the previously unknown Mr. Stephen Molla has achieved his goal. But he is now better known on the Internet as Faketoshi.