Some people have alleged that Paul Leroux, who is sitting in prison right now, is Satoshi.
That would explain why Satoshi hasn't moved any coins or sought fame.
I invested a lot of time on his identity, not for anything just because I was bored and curious. I highly suspect it’s Adam Back and he currently sits in a tax haven, Malta.
Very unlikely. Hal Finney is the more likely candidate.
Adam is/was not a good programmer like Satoshi was.
Satoshi was in favor of alt coins in Adam is notoriously against them.
"Adam put enough effort into proclaiming that Bitcoin was based on the concept of HashCash that, if he was Satoshi, Satoshi would have given HashCash more credit." - Another HN User.
Satoshi had a positive attitude and Adam is notoriously unpleasant.
Hal is a great programmer, worked for Phil Zimmerman on PGP.
Hal is the first person Satoshi contacted, first person to mine outside Satoshi (op sec).
Hal was aware of all the prior works that failed, b-money, bit gold, hashcash, etc.
Linguistic analysis of the Bitcoin whitepaper and Satoshi's forum posts most closely match Hal's writings.
Hal lived in the same town for 10 years as did Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto.
Hal died of ALS shortly after Satoshi disappeared (he knew it was coming and that he couldn't continue).
I also think living somewhere he could have seen Dorian Nakamoto's name is a very, very strong pointer towards Finney.
It may seem like a dumb opsec mistake to pick a name from your town, but lets remember, at that point we're talking about launching a cool experiment about digital money worth $0, not about picking a pseudonym as the figurehead of a project worth a trillion dollars.
After reading an article about it, I do wonder about Len Sassaman, who apparently fits Satoshi's timezone and "accent" better. It could even have been both of them collaborating...
However, there are some valid counter arguments in this thread, such as Satoshi coming out of retirement in March 2014 to state that he was not Dorian Nakamoto, in the wake of a Newsweek article that falsely fingered the latter as Satoshi.
The Len Sassaman theory really does it for me. It's been a while since I read up on it, but the similarity of Bitcoin and his remailer tech was the main thing that I found pretty convincing. Plus of course the timeline of his death.
That would be highly interesting. Not like you can get easy access to the internet inside a prison so he would have to either convince a guard to bring him a phone to access it or possible use his lawyer. Anyone who visits they would likely record his conversation with the exception of his lawyer. But what good will the money do him, he isn't set to be out until he is like 72 years old and looking at him he is not in prime shape and may not even last that long. Maybe he could wait until enough is at stake like other countries adopting bitcoin as a currency and when the time is right find a way to put all his coins on the table causing a crash in price. I can't imagine what end game he would choose if he truly is the creator and how he has had so much will power he has had up until now to not move any of his coins. One thing is for sure I really do hope I come to HN one day and see the top story with 2000 plus points saying Satoshi's coins have just been moved.
