It also noted that Clear had worked on currency-trading software for an Irish bank and co-authored a paper on “peer-to-peer” technology similar to that used in bitcoin.
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Australian entrepreneur Craig Steven Wright, who announced Monday that he founded the digital currency, convinced at least one longtime bitcoin contributor that he’s the real deal. Mr. Wright told the BBC, The Economist and GQ that he was the currency’s founder.
“He signed in my presence using the private key from block one, the very first mined Bitcoin block, on a computer that I am convinced had not been tampered with”, he said.
However, he told the BBC he would have preferred to remain unknown: “I don’t want money, I don’t want fame, I don’t want adoration, I just want to be left alone”. He made a decision to step into the light to show who he was to stop people from bothering him and the people he cares about.
Since Bitcoin’s inception, Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to have accumulated more than one million bitcoins.
If Wright really is “Nakamoto” that also means the community can now identify the individual who controls around six percent of the entire cryptocurrency.
However, the Economist has struck a note of caution, writing: “Our conclusion is that Mr Wright could well be Mr Nakamoto, but that important questions remain”.
In a blog post dated Monday, Wright appeared to out himself as bitcoin founder by posting a technical explanation, including examples of code, of the process by which he created the currency.
After the publication of those stories, Wright scrubbed his online presence and Australian authorities raided his home, later announcing that Wright was not the creator of Bitcoin, according to the New York Times.
Jon Matonis, founding director of the Bitcoin Foundation, gave Wright’s demonstration legitimacy and said that he believes that the Australian cryptography guru is truly the man that created Bitcoin.
After a struggling engineer was misidentified in 2014 as Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of worldwide payment platform Bitcoin, another man has stepped forward to claim the name.
Wright told The Economist he would exchange bitcoin he owns slowly to avoid pushing down its price. He also published a blog post at www.drcraigwright.net in which he makes a similar suggestion. He adds that the tax dispute in Australia stems from a basic misunderstanding about how bitcoin works.
On Monday, the ATO said it had no comment while police were not immediately available for comment.
Wright explained to the BBC how he was forced to identify himself since the leak. Instead, its community of users control and regulate it.
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“Some would argue that we are now living in a post-Satoshi world”, he said.
