A New York Times reporter named John Carreyrou has reportedly identified British cryptographer Adam Back as the person behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin. After 17 years of speculation and dead ends, the answer may have been hiding in plain sight all along, buried in a pattern of tiny, consistent punctuation mistakes.
Satoshi Nakamoto is not just a mystery; they are also among the richest people in the world. Nakamoto is believed to own around 1.1 million bitcoins, worth approximately $71 billion today, which would place them at number 26 on the Forbes rich list. That holding represents about 5% of all the Bitcoin that will ever exist, since the creator capped the total supply at 21 million coins.
