Australian claims to be bitcoin creator – update 2

Australian Craig Wright claims to be the creator of bitcoin. The man was identified last year as the inventor of the cryptocurrency and is now alleged to have presented evidence against the BBC. Experts question his claims.

Prominent members of the bitcoin community and members of the core developer team have endorsed Wright’s claim, the BBC reports. Wright made his confession to the BBC, The Economist and GQ.

To back up his claim, the Australian signed messages with digital keys used for messages from Satoshi Nakamoto in the early days of bitcoin. Under that pseudonym, the first bitcoin client was released on January 9, 2009 and the white paper bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was published the year before.

Wright also demonstrated that he has the keys used for the first bitcoin transactions. According to the inventor, crypto expert Hal Finney helped him in the early days. Wright said he will release more information to confirm his claims. He hopes this will bring speculation about the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto to an end. In the past, the media has regularly designated the wrong person.

In late 2015, Wired and Gizmodo concluded that Wright was the creator of bitcoin, after tips about it. At the same time, Australian police raided Wright over tax matters that, however, allegedly had nothing to do with bitcoin. There are more than one million bitcoins in the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, which represent a value of around 400 million euros.

Update 11.30: Reddit has raised doubts about Wright’s claim over the use of a signature on his blog that appears to have been copied verbatim from a transaction from the blockchain. It is not clear whether Wright used that digital key as evidence to the BBC and the other media. Gavin Andresen, chief scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation, believes based on his meeting with Wright that it is indeed the inventor.

Update 2, 12.50: The Bitcoin Core Project confirms that there is currently no public cryptographic evidence that Wright, or anyone else, actually invented bitcoin. Jouke Hofman of Bitonic, who revealed the copy of the signature on Reddit, is also skeptical: “Matonis and Gavin indicate in their blog posts that they have seen several messages and signatures. Unfortunately, they are not public and we have to go off. at their word. Matonis is not a tech guy and could be easily fooled. However, Gavin is, so that makes the story difficult. But at least there is no public evidence now that the story is true and the The story is now only speculation.” Hofman points out that the earlier rumors about Wright revealed flaws and that the man can easily prove his claim by signing a specific message.