Nakamoto ResearchSatoshi Nakamoto: The persona behind Bitcoin |
Version | v0.3.0 | |
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| Author | obxium | License | BY-NC-ND |
“Satoshi Nakamoto” (中本聡)
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.
— Phil Karlton
The family name is a common one, and literally middle of the road in recognition. After all, it’s smart to choose a name with the goal of being most common to stand out less. Still, one can’t help to imagine the generation of people who made Bitcoin and their influences from the different eras. What kinds of subconscious sound patterns could have been going through the mind of the Bitcoin creator when choosing the name.
Then again, the name could be randomly chosen by an ad-hoc script for generating convincing but common names for different nationalities.
Was this name chosen as a ruse to suggest an actor of Asian origin?
Is some kind of pseudonym with an underlying meaning?
Is it a brand name?
Most folks researching these topics tend to agree that this is likely not the true name of anyone involved with the creation of Bitcoin.
Satoshi Nakamoto is a common Japanese male given name paired with a family name that currently ranks 489 in the top 1000 most common Japanese surnames list. Taking the name at face value, and exploring details from the perspective of an actual Japanese person is at least a useful learning exercise, but could also lead to other interesting avenues of research.
Japanese family names are often composed of two characters which reflect the family’s ancestry, occupation, or geographic location. The meanings of these characters can vary depending on the regional dialects and writing styles used. The Nakamoto family name most commonly originates from the Ryūkyū islands region of Japan, and there are many notable people who carry the name.
In Japan, it’s common for people to write their full name with the family name first, followed by the given name:
Nakamoto Satoshi
This is an important detail to keep in mind when researching elements of the name from the perspective of Japanese naming tradition.
Nakamoto (中本)
The Japanese surname Nakamoto is a combination of two kanji characters:
naka: This character means “middle” or “between”.
moto: This character has different meanings depending on the context. It’s most likely to have an English meaning like “origin”, “root”, or “source” when used as a name.
In this way Nakamoto as a family name can be roughly translated to mean “middle origin” or “central source”, or even or “(one who lives) in the middle”. Keep in mind that it’s also difficult to arrive at a specific interpretation without more information about the family history and background.
Satoshi (聡 or 智) is a popular masculine given name in Japan that typically means “wise” or “intelligent.”
While not strictly mandatory, Japanese names do use middle name conventions (naka-iru namae and otomei namae), and the convention for their use can vary among families and regions.
To this researcher’s knowledge, Satoshi Nakamoto never publicly indicated a middle name.
Other approaches reveal themselves for consideration after first examining the name in the context of an ordinary Japanese individual name. Interesting, anecdotal, coincidental, or otherwise curious ways to look at the name.
By an interesting coincidence, NAKAMOTO and SASSAMAN both have 8 letters.
NAKAMOTO
SASSAMANSome speculate that Nakamoto, Satoshi used in the traditional ordering, matches the initials ‘NS’ (for Nick Szabo).
The main character in the Pokémon television series (whom Americans know as ‘Ash Ketchum’) goes by ‘Satoshi’ in Japan.
Some folks speculating on the name origin have gone as far as suggesting that the name meanings (intelligent, middle origin) and reverse order usage can imply that the true underlying meaning is “central intelligence” as a hint that Bitcoin was actually created by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
These are usernames attributed to Nakamoto, each using a version of the family and given name:
| Username | Pattern | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| satoshin | family name + given name initial | used for email addresses like satoshin@gmx.com in the Bitcoin whitepaper |
| s_nakamoto | given name initial + family name | used for SourceForge; compromised September, 2014 |
According to publicly available information, Satoshi Nakamoto used a few different email addresses:
(German based free email provider)
This email appears on the original whitepaper.
TODO: research / was this real?
(German based free email provider)
TODO: is this really a legit email? a no ‘n’ version?
Used in 2008 to email people like Adam Back
(<adam@cypherspace.org>) and Wei Dai
(<weidai@ibiblio.org>).
Nakamoto emailed Back from this address on 08-20-2008 about citing him in a paper:
From: "satoshi@anonymousspeech.com" <satoshi@anonymousspeech.com>
Sent: Wed 8/20/2008 6:30:39 PM (UTC+01:00)
To: adam@cypherspace.org
Subject: Citation of your Hashcash paper
I'm getting ready to release a paper that references your Hashcash paper and I wanted to make sure Ihave the citation right. Here's what I have:
[5] A. Back, "Hashcash - a denial of service counter-measure,"http://www.hashcash.org/papers/hashcash.pdf, 2002.
I think you would find it interesting, since it finds a new use for hash-based proof-of-work as a way tomake e-cash work. You can download a pre-release draft at http://www.upload.ae/file/6157/ecash-pdf.html Feel free to forward it to anyone else you think would be interested. I'm also nearly finishedwith a C++ implementation to release as open source.
Title: Electronic Cash Without a Trusted Third PartyAbstract: A purely peer-to-peer version of electroniccash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without the burdens ofgoing through a financial institution. Digital signatures offer part of the solution, but the main benefits arelost if a trusted party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing theminto an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed withoutredoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of eventswitnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as honest nodes controlthe most CPU power on the network, they can generate the longest chain and outpace any attackers.The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcasted on a best effort basis, andnodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of whathappened while they were gone.
satoshi@anonymousspeech.comNakamoto emailed Dai from this on 08-220-2008 from this address about citing him in a paper:
From: Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshi@anonymousspeech.com>
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 4:38 PM
To: Wei Dai <weidai@ibiblio.org>
Cc: Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshi@anonymousspeech.com>
Subject: Citation of your b-money page
I was very interested to read your b-money page. I'm getting ready to
release a paper that expands on your ideas into a complete working system.
Adam Back (hashcash.org) noticed the similarities and pointed me to your
site.
I need to find out the year of publication of your b-money page for the
citation in my paper. It'll look like:
[1] W. Dai, "b-money," http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt, (2006?).
You can download a pre-release draft at
http://www.upload.ae/file/6157/ecash-pdf.html Feel free to forward it to
anyone else you think would be interested.
Title: Electronic Cash Without a Trusted Third Party
Abstract: A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow
online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without the
burdens of going through a financial institution. Digital signatures
offer part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted
party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution
to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network
timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of
hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without
redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of
the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest
pool of CPU power. As long as honest nodes control the most CPU power on
the network, they can generate the longest chain and outpace any
attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are
broadcasted on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the
network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of
what happened while they were gone.
SatoshiNakamoto used this address to inform Hal Finney about the Bitcoin v0.1 release.
The full email content follows:
From: Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshi@vistomail.com>
To: hal@finney.org
Date: Thursday, January 8, 2009, 20:54:55 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Bitcoin v0.1
Thought you’d like to know, the Bitcoin v0.1 release with EXE and full source code is up on Sourceforge;
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/bitcoin/bitcoin-0.1.0.rar
www.bitcoin.org has release notes and screenshots.
Satoshi
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│ ⚠ THIS CONTENT MAKES NO CLAIMS ABOUT THE IDENTITY OF SATOSHI NAKAMOTO │
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