The Satoshi Nakamoto Mystery: Why the FBI Won't Reveal Bitcoin's Creator

Twelve years later, we still don’t know who created Bitcoin.

In 2014, Newsweek reporter Leah Goodman thought she’d cracked the case. She identified Dorian Nakamoto, a 65-year-old Japanese-American physicist living in San Bernardino, as Bitcoin’s founder. His birth name was actually Satoshi Nakamoto—he’d changed it to Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto back in 1973. The connection seemed almost too perfect.

But here’s where it got weird: Three years of silence later, the real Satoshi suddenly posted on P2P Foundation: “I am not Dorian Nakamoto.” Dorian himself denied it too, claiming he’d only heard about Bitcoin from his son.

The Dead Ends

Over the years, the internet has thrown around names—cryptographer Nick Szabo, mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki, early Bitcoin contributor Hal Finney. None stuck. Hal Finney actually lived just a few blocks away from Dorian and had direct contact with Satoshi in Bitcoin’s early days. In fact, Satoshi sent him the first-ever Bitcoin transaction in history. When Finney died in 2014, his body was sent to cryogenic storage per his wishes, taking any secrets with him.

The FBI’s Silence

Here’s the kicker: Journalist Dave Troy filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI asking what they knew about Satoshi’s identity. The Bureau’s response? A “Glomar response”—bureaucratic speak for “we neither confirm nor deny having any records.” That’s the response you give when you’re sitting on something classified.

Troy suspects this means the FBI knows exactly who Satoshi is but won’t say. He’s planning to appeal the decision.

The Timeline That Matters

Satoshi vanished right after a specific moment. On December 5, 2010, when Bitcoin forums started discussing WikiLeaks donations, Satoshi suddenly appeared—uncharacteristically passionate—begging the community not to let WikiLeaks accept Bitcoin. “This project needs to grow gradually,” he wrote. “If this is not handled right at this stage, it will only destroy Bitcoin.”

Seven days later, on December 12, 2010 at 6:22 AM, he posted his final message—something mundane about software code. Then: silence. His emails became erratic, then stopped completely.

Why It Matters

Satoshi’s anonymity wasn’t an accident—it was by design. Bitcoin was built on decentralization and privacy. The irony is killer: Bitcoin was supposed to eliminate the need to trust institutions, yet we’re all desperately trying to unmask its creator, as if revealing Satoshi would somehow legitimize the whole thing.

Maybe we never will know. Maybe we don’t need to. As Satoshi himself wrote in that final forum post: Bitcoin is the real legacy. The creator’s identity? That’s just trivia.