The mystery surrounding Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of the world’s number one digital currency by market cap (bitcoin), has just gotten a whole lot weirder.
What Did Nakamoto Do Before BTC?
The latest prediction surrounding Nakamoto’s identity suggests that the infamous bitcoin developer potentially had ties to some very shady individuals. Escobar Inc. – a company associated with Pablo Escobar, a Latin American drug lord – is claiming that Nakamoto may have done some work for the organization in the past.
Representatives of the company are now saying that Satoshi may be a made-up name, but that Nakamoto is the person’s real surname. They say that the individual who worked for the company – and who developed bitcoin – is known as Yasutaka Nakamoto.
Olof Gustaffson – the CEO of Escobar Inc. – says that Nakamoto was one of the individuals smuggling drugs for the late crime boss into the United States. Following an assassination attempt, Nakamoto went into hiding and hasn’t been seen or heard of since, though his development of bitcoin has seemingly brought a whole new wave of attention to his presence and operations.
In addition, Gustaffson says that Yasutaka’s brother is Dorian Nakamoto, who at one time was suggested by Newsweek as the true creator of bitcoin.
The conspiracy theories in this neck of the crypto woods just don’t seem to end. Last week, a YouTube video suggested that Adam Back – a U.K.-based cryptographer and computer scientist – was the alleged creator of the digital currency, though Back has come forward to deny any involvement in its development.
Other figures in the space – such as John McAfee – haven’t really added much clarification considering the antivirus mogul has stated that while he’s 99 percent sure who’s responsible for his creation, he’s not going to tell.
They mystery gets even weirder, as Gustaffson also went into detail about Nakamoto’s technical background. He says that Nakamoto was a head engineer for Pacific West Airlines and worked in both semiconductors and microprocessors, which ultimately gave him the knowledge he needed to develop the digital currency.
Things Get Even More Complicated
Gustaffson also says that Nakamoto died in 2010 shortly after he developed bitcoin. Coincidentally, the last time Nakamoto posted anything in bitcoin-related forums was in mid-December of that year. While he potentially reappeared four years later for one final post, this message was later proven to be false and listed by an entirely different person.
Many analysts say that while they’re intrigued by the prospects of Nakamoto’s true identity, there is a part of them that doesn’t really want to know and feel that it would probably be better if the world didn’t find out. Back, in denying any association with bitcoin’s early creation, was among the first to utter this argument, stating that gold doesn’t have a creator, and that knowing who bitcoin’s inventor was could potentially harm its image.