The Creator of bitcoin
On March 6, Newsweek magazine published a lengthy article investigating the identity of the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, get close to the solution the closest. Because of the excessive detail other journalists were able to extract home address Nakamoto and a few hours showed up at his door with cameras, and when he tried to escape, continued the chase on the cars. Later Newsweek made a change in the material wgaw photos and cutting out part of the text that details the life of Nakamoto.
And this is only the beginning of change in the world of cryptocurrency and life Satoshi Nakamoto, who brought a Newsweek article. TJournal publishes the full translation of the original article.
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Satoshi Nakamoto stands at the driveway near his house and looks nervous. And annoyed.
It wrinkled shirt, old blue jeans and white socks, without shoes, like he ran out of the house in a hurry. His hair disheveled, and eyes, like a man who had not slept for several weeks.
His attitude there is no challenge, only the powerlessness of a man who led a long fight, and now suffers a heavy defeat.
Two police officers from the Sheriff's Department, temple city, CA, standing next to him and wonder. "So what are you going to ask this person?" — asked me one of them. "He believes that a conversation with you will turn to him with problems."
"I doubt that he has a problem," I say. "I want to ask him about bitcoin. This man is Satoshi Nakamoto".
"What?" — surprised the police. "He's the guy who created bitcoin? Looks like he leads a modest life."
That's why I came here to find out more about Nakamoto and his humble life. It seemed ludicrous that the man credited with inventing bitcoin — the electronic currency that has won the highest international recognition, with a transaction volume of 500 million dollars in better days — will be in San Bernardino near Los Angeles, in the family home, and will leave his fortune, earned in bitcoins, which is estimated at $ 400 million.
Equally absurd seemed that the first reaction Nakamoto to my knock at his door was a call to the police. And now, in person, witnesses were two police officers, Nakamoto's responses to my questions were being careful, but honest.
A tacit acknowledgement of its role in the Bitcoin project was it lowered to the ground look and a categorical refusal to answer questions.
"I can't do this anymore and can't discuss," he says, dismissing all further queries with a wave of his left hand. "The project has been shared with others. And now they are responsible for it. I no longer have any relation to it".
Nakamoto refused to say more, and police have made it clear that the conversation was over.
But a two-month investigation and interviews with people closest to Nakamoto and the developers who have worked with him over the global phenomenon of Bitcoin, appeared as if from nowhere, debunking the myths surrounding the world famous cryptocurrency, and prove that it is — is just a myth, but the facts are even more strange than high quality fiction.
A Newsweek investigation led not to the Prodigy from Tokyo with the alias "Satoshi Nakamoto" (this story repeats every fan of bitcoin for The New Yorker), and to 64-year-old Japanese-American whose real name is Satoshi Nakamoto. This is a model train collector, whose work is shrouded in mystery — he conducted secret operations in large corporations and the U.S. army.
The man in front of me, staring at his feet, apparently, and is the founder of Bitcoin.
Even his family knew nothing about it.
Satoshi Nakamoto
In North America and beyond, there were several Satoshi Nakamoto is, both living and dead — including the designer men's clothing by Ralph Lauren and another who died in Honolulu in 2008, according to Index, died of the Ministry of social insurance. There is even a profile on LinkedIn, the owner of which says that it was he who founded Bitcoin, and lives in Japan. But none of these descriptions does not match other known details, and the investigation yielded no evidence. Of course, "Satoshi Nakamoto" may be a pseudonym, but the question arises — why would someone who wants to remain anonymous, chose this sonorous name. And only in the study of a database of naturalized U.S. citizens managed to find Satoshi Nakamoto, which revealed certain patterns. But the picture cleared only after he had been ordered reference about it in the National Archives and conducted many interviews.
Two weeks before our meeting in temple city, I started email correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto, mostly discussing his interest models of steam locomotives and their modification through computer design technologies. I received an e-mail address Nakamoto in the company he buys model trains.
He bought spare parts for the trains in Japan and England since he was a teenager, he said: "I'm processing machinery — hand press, rolling, surface grinding".
This process involves a fair amount of mathematics, but this Nakamoto, and his family, are very successful. Being the eldest of three brothers who work in the field of engineering and technology, Nakamoto received the degree in physics at the Polytechnic California state University in Pomona. But unlike brothers, to trace the tangled path of his career is not easy.
Nakamoto stopped responding to my messages as soon as I started to ask about bitcoin. It was at the end of February. I also asked questions about his professional experience, about which very little data in the public domain. His answers were evasive. When he asked about my experience, I offered to talk on the phone. He didn't answer. Then I asked his eldest son, 31-year-old Eric Nakamoto, ask the father if he is to talk about bitcoin. I refused. Attempts to establish contact through other family members also failed.
After that Nakamoto ignored my requests to speak by phone and did not call back. In the day when I arrived at his modest family home in southern California, his silver Toyota Corolla CE was parked in the driveway, but the door no one answered.
For a moment he thought, raising the blinds on the front door, and we locked eyes. He then closed them. It was the only time I saw him without the presence of police officers.
"You want to know about my awesome brother-physics?", — asks Arthur Nakamoto, his younger brother Satoshi Nakamoto, Director of quality at Wavestream Corp., manufacturer of radio frequency amplifiers in San Dimas, California.
"He is a remarkable man. And I'm just an ordinary engineer. He's very focused and multi-faceted in their knowledge. Smart, intelligent, mathematician, engineer, geek. Whatever you call it."
But, he warned me.
"My brother is one. You hardly know he's worked with all sorts of secret things. For some time his life was completely hidden. You will hardly be able to get to him. He will deny everything. He never recognizes that was founded by bitcoin".
And having said that, Nakamoto's brother hung up.
His words gave reason to believe that I am on the right track, but it wasn't enough. Although his brother suggested that Nakamoto was quite able to establish a bitcoin, I wasn't absolutely sure that he knows it for sure. He said that they had issues and not too often talked.
Clearly I needed to talk to Satoshi Nakamoto in person.
Why everyone is excited about bitcoin
Bitcoins — the currency that exists in the world of computer code and can be sent anywhere in the world, without a Bank and exchange commissions, and then stored in the mobile phone or on your hard drive as long as it will not use again. As the currency exists in the form of code, it can be lost during a failure of the hard disk or be stolen if someone else finds the key to the code.
"The main reason why people are in awe of bitcoin: is the most effective way of conducting financial transactions," — said the head of development of the Bitcoin Protocol, 47-year-old Gavin Andresen. He recognizes that ease of use can lead to simplification of the theft, and believes the secure storage in the hotel safe or on your hard drive that is not connected to the Internet. "Anyone who is faced with the need to transfer money abroad, understand how much easier an international bitcoin transaction. It's as easy as sending an email".
However, bitcoin suffered from a massive theft, fraud and scandals that have already led to a reduction in the cost of bitcoins from $ 1,200 last year to a modest 130 dollars per bitcoin in late February.
The currency has attracted the attention of the us Senate, the Department of homeland security, the Federal reserve system, the Federal tax service of the Treasury Department for combating financial crimes Commission securities and exchange Commission and the Federal Bureau of investigation, which in October shut down online black market silk road and arrested the bitcoins in the amount of $ 3.5 million. "The FBI now one of the largest owners of bitcoin in the world," says Andresen.
Over the past few weeks, the new version of SilkRoad, and also one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, Mt.Gox in Tokyo, has closed and filed for bankruptcy protection after hacker attacks that cost them millions of dollars.
Andresen, escaped from Silicon Valley in Amherst, Massachusetts, says he worked closely in the development of bitcoin with the person "or entity" known as Satoshi Nakamoto between June 2010 and April 2011. This was before the rise of the multibillion-dollar bitcoin economy, triggered by unexpected, albeit cautious, endorsement of the outgoing head of the Federal Reserve system, Ben Bernanke, who said that digital currencies "could hold long-term promise".
Since then, bitcoin ATMs began to appear throughout North America (one of the first in Vancouver, British Columbia; Boston; and Albuquerque, new Mexico). The acceptance of bitcoins began in the companies from completely different industries — Tesla, OkCupid, Reddit, Overstock.com and Virgin Galactic, the airline of Richard Branson, who said that they would send into space anyone who can fork over a sufficient amount of bitcoins.
"Work on the core code of bitcoin really scary, because if you do something wrong — you can destroy all this 8-billion project," says Andresen. "And this has already happened. We already destroyed".
As disappeared Nakamoto
About a year, Andresen corresponded with the founder of bitcoin a few times a week, often working on improving the bitcoin code for 40 hours a week. Andresen says that evasiveness was typical for Nakamoto in all their messaging.
In fact, he never even heard Nakamoto's voice, because the founder of Bitcoin prefer not to communicate by telephone. Their interaction, he says, has always been through e-mail or private message on the Bitcointalk forum dedicated to bitcoin.
"He was the kind of person that would cost you to admit a simple mistake, he would have called you an idiot and never speak to you again," says Andresen. "At that time it was not clear whether bitcoin legal occupation. And he did much to ensure his anonymity."
Nakamoto also ignored all questions Andresen about where he was from, what his professional experience, what other projects he has worked and now does he have a name or a pseudonym (many of bitcoin fans use pseudonyms). "He was never talkative," says Andresen, "we spoke only about the code".
Andresen, an Australian who received a bachelor's degree in computer science from Princeton University, and eventually became the contact person for Nakamoto in a growing international team of developers and programmers who voluntarily worked on improving the bitcoin code after its launch in January 2009.
Andresen first heard about bitcoin for the next year of the blog, which has been signed. He wrote Nakamoto the email address that it is impossible to track and offered his assistance. His first message to the founder of bitcoin was this: "Bitcoin is a brilliant idea, and I want to help. What do you want?"
Andresen says that is not given much thought to what works on an anonymous inventor. "I'm a geek," he says. "I don't care who the author of the idea — it's a good or a bad person. Ideas by themselves."
Other developers had their enlightened self-benefit or personal beliefs, he said. But almost all were intrigued by the promise of digital currency, which will be available to everyone in the world, bypassing the Central banks — and this at a time when the global financial system was not in the best condition. In this regard, a more appropriate time to launch a bitcoin is simply not present.
In 2008, shortly before the official launch of bitcoins, the Internet appeared written in the dry language of a 9-page proposal, and it had the name and email address of Satoshi Nakamoto.
The paper proposed "electronic cash" that "would allow online payments directly between the parties without the participation of financial institutions," at the same time, the transaction is noted and is in the public domain.
Smart move was the replacement of the role of banks as trusted intermediaries users of bitcoins must maintain the integrity of the system, testing transactions using the computing power in exchange for bitcoins.
Emission of bitcoins is designed to happen in a strictly predetermined rate to maintain the cost and the deficit, and to provide protection against inflation, the number is reduced by half every four years, and when it reaches 21 million bitcoins by the year 2140 the emission should be terminated. (Bitcoins can be divided down to the eighth digit after the decimal point, with the smallest units called "satoshis").
"I was under the impression that Satoshi was really doing it for political reasons," says Andresen, receiving a salary of bitcoin (along with a half dozen other key developers of bitcoin, working everywhere from Silicon Valley to Switzerland) from the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on the standardization of currency. "He doesn't like the system we have today, and he wanted to do another, with more uniform distribution. He didn't like the notion of banks and bankers, making the condition only that they keep the keys," says Andresen.
This "holding the key" took the first owners of the bitcoin super-rich. "I made a small investment in bitcoin, and now it's enough that I could quit if I wanted," says Andresen. "Overall, I earned about $ 800 each invested cent. It's something incredible."
One of the first who began to work with the bitcoin's founder in 2009 was Martti Malmi, 25-year-old programmer from Helsinki, who has made an investment in bitcoin. "I sold them in 2011 and bought a nice apartment," he says. "Today I would have been able to buy good 100 apartments."
Communication with the founder of bitcoins has become increasingly rare in early 2011. Nakamoto ceased to make changes to the bitcoin code and ignored the discussion on the bitcoin forum.
However, Andresen was not ready for the reaction of Satoshi Nakamoto in their correspondence of 26 April 2011.
"I wouldn't want you kept talking about me as mysterious dark person," Nakamoto wrote to Andresen. "The press uses this as another sign of a pirate currency. Perhaps, is rather to make the project open source and have more trust in the developers, it will help to motivate them".
Andresen responded: "Yeah, I don't like this tone "wacky pirate money"".
He then wrote Nakamoto, he had accepted an invitation to a meeting at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. "I hope that by talking to them directly and, more importantly, listening to their questions and concerns, will manage to convince them what I think about bitcoin — it's just-more-good, more effective, less-prone-influence-policy currency," he said. "Not a powerful weapon of a black market, which will be used by anarchists to overthrow the system."
Since that time, Satoshi Nakamoto stopped responding to emails and disappeared.