Craig Wright, an Australian IT consultant, has been named by Wired and Gizmodo, two online tech blogs, as the most likely creator of the currency following a raid on his house in Sydney on tax-related matters. Now it looks like according the latest reports coming from Reuters Australian police have raided Sydney home of the possible bitcoin creator.
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Their investigations were based on leaked emails, documents and web archives, including what was said to be a transcript of a meeting between Wright and Australian tax officials.
The article will be updated later today.
In the investigation, Gizmodo referred to an email dating January 8, 2014, that seems to show Wright writing to three colleagues from the address [email protected], and the signature is ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’.
“If Wright is bitcoin’s creator, the revelation of his work carries more importance than merely sating the curiosity of a few million geeks”.
This is not the first time the search for the real Satoshi Nakamoto has been in the news, with investigations from the New York Times, Fast Company, and the New Yorker.
In March previous year, American Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto denied he was the inventor after Newsweek published a 4,500-word cover story linking the currency to him.
The police search of the man’s home in the wealthy northern Sydney suburb of Gordon lasted several hours and drew a steady trickle of perplexed neighbors into the quiet, tree-lined street.
Some of the leaked documents do not cite Wright straight out as the founder, but do suggest his involvement in the development of bitcoin.
One of Dr Wright’s most recent public appearances was at the Bitcoin Investor Conference in October, where he Skyped in to a so-called all star panel on the digital currency. Interestingly, Wright had publicly announced plans to set up the world’s first bitcoin bank. Though, according to a bio, Wright started “mining” bitcoin in 2009, when it was created, so he could have just been an early miner. While their value has diminished an industry of wallets and exchanges has grown up around bitcoin that gives them a vestige of legitimacy and numbers of users and enthusiasts is understood to number around 5m.
The treatment of bitcoin for tax purposes in Australia has been the subject of considerable debate.
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The Internal Revenue Service ruled a year ago to treat virtual currencies as property, meaning profits get taxed at the capital-gains rate.
