A report in Newsweek, published earlier this week, claimed the elusive man behind the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, known only by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, is actually called Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, and is living with his mom in California. Now, the man in the focus of Newsweek's story told the Associated Press he has absolutely nothing to do with the cryptocurrency, and his short exchange with Newsweek's reporter was misunderstood.
Claiming he never even heard of Bitcoin until Newsweek contacted him, Dorian Nakamoto makes it very clear he is not the person the report claims he is. "I got nothing to do with it," he told AP.
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Perhaps even more tellingly, Satoshi Nakamoto's account on P2P Foundation forums, posted for the first time in 4 years, simply stating: "I am not Dorian Nakamoto." The person behind the account gave no further clues to what his real identity is.
In his two-hour interview with the AP, Dorian Nakamoto seems more puzzled by the media attention than anything else. He did work secretive stuff for the government, he admits, and he is a capable programmer, once working on a project for Citibank, but that had nothing to do with Bitcoin. Plus, he's not in that line of work any more, he claims.
"I'm saying I'm no longer in engineering ... It sounded like I was involved before with bitcoin and looked like I'm not involved now. That's not what I meant. I want to clarify that," he said.
Dorian Nakamoto's birth name is Satoshi Nakamoto; he added the two additional names himself, but not to protect his identity — he did it to sound more Western.
The man (or a group) who did create Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that lets anyone easily transfer funds to another person, probably has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins. And his identity is likely to stay a mystery — at least for a little while longer.
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