On November 26, 2017, we broke the news that a former SpaceX employee claimed Elon Musk was “probably” Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was founded in 2008 and claimed under the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto”, the rumored holder of over one million Bitcoins.
The mystery of Satoshi has been a hot topic in the cryptocurrency world, with entrepreneurs often claiming and denying responsibility. Many people jumped at the chance to elicit a response from Musk, with little success on the first day.
In less than 48 hours, the news reached Musk, who turned to Twitter to debunk the claims in true Musk fashion:
“Not true. A friend sent me part of a BTC a few years, but I don’t know where it is.”
The rumor originated from this Medium post from Sahil Gupta, a current student at Yale University and previous intern at SpaceX. The original coverage of Gupta’s post was widely covered across both traditional and niche media, bringing together a mix of supportive and skeptical reactions. Naturally, the majority of responses were skeptical:
“Obviously, and on the 7th day Musk rested.” –
“Musk is a serial self-promoter. Had he come up with anything 1/1000 are groundbreaking we’d have known about it.” –
“I will debunk this right now. There is no way Elon Musk is Satoshi. He would never create a currency system that uses so much energy. One bitcoin transaction uses the amount of power an entire home uses in a full week. No way would he impact the environment like this.” –
“Yes and no doubt one of his P.R. companies facilitated this article.” –
The last comment can be reasonably debunked. Musk is capable of many things, but it is safe to say he did not create Bitcoin.
With Musk’s recent response, the mystery of Satoshi lives on and remains to be one of the greatest mysteries in the cryptocurrency world.