Satoshi Nakamoto's real identity was revealed this week, or at least that's what the New York Times is claiming.

Satoshi Nakamoto's real identity was revealed this week, or at least that's what the New York Times is claiming. Nakamoto is the founder of Bitcoin and emerged in 2008-2009 with a white paper on decentralized crypto. No one knows the true identity or whether or not it's even a single person. But this week, the same person who broke the Theranos case, Pulitzer Prize-winning John Carryrou, claims that with 99% confidence, he believes that Nakamoto is British cryptographer and CEO of Blockstream, Adam Beck. In 1997, Beck invented Hashcash, which used a proof-of-work system to combat email fraud, the same technical foundation that's used in Bitcoin mining today. So there's no concrete proof linking Beck and Nakamoto, but the investigation uses some forensic science to prove their point. First was comparing writing styles using AI and finding linguistic markers to connect the two. Second is this like behavioral component. Back went silent when Nakamoto emerged in 2008 and then became active again when Nakamoto disappeared in 2011. And then finally, just suspicious body language. To me, this feels really anticlimactic and I've never understood why people care so much, especially since if you reveal this person's identity, it puts them at risk of extortion and potentially state pressure. But Carryrou and others say that it's important for a few reasons. The first is market impact. Satoshi owns 1.1 million Bitcoin, which is $73 billion worth. This has been a dormant supply, but if it's ever moved or liquidated, it would completely crash the market. Second is understanding motivations and whether or not Bitcoin is truly neutral. Third is that Bitcoin is inherently decentralized, which means that one person has a disproportionate impact on the community. Mostly, I think people just like a mystery.