Is this the man who invented Bitcoin? Man claimed to be founder of digital currency sitting on $657m claims he's never heard of it

Newsweek magazine identified Temple City, California resident Satoshi Nakamoto as the elusive founder of Bitcoin in a cover story published today

But the 64-year-old model train enthusiast denies having anything to do with the digital currency

He led a pack of reporters on a car chase to the Associated Press headquarters in Los Angeles today where he told his side of the story

Nakamoto says he never heard of Bitcoin until three weeks ago when his son called to say that he had been contacted by reporters



The man Newsweek claims is the founder of Bitcoin led reporters on a car chase today after denying he had anything to do with the digital currency.



Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, 64, was described as 'the face behind Bitcoin' in a Newsweek cover story published today, but when reporters showed up at his home, a confused-looking Nakamoto dodged their questions before speeding off to the Associated Press offices in Los Angeles to tell his side of the story.



Nakamoto spoke with reporters at the AP for two hours, telling them that he had never heard of Bitcoin until three weeks ago when his son called to say he had been contacted by a reporter.

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The wrong man? The alleged founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, led reporters on a car chase today after denying he had anything to do with the digital currency

Reclusive inventor: This man is believed to be Satoshi Nakamoto - the man who is thought to have created Bitcoin - the world's most recognized digital currency forum Not the founder? In a conversation at the Associated Press' Los Angeles offices Thursday, Nakamoto said he had been misidentified

Nakamoto acknowledged that many of the details in Newsweek's report are correct, including that he once worked for a defense contractor. But he strongly disputes the magazine's assertion that he is 'the face behind Bitcoin.'

Since Bitcoin's birth in 2009, the currency's creator has remained a mystery. The person —or people— behind its founding have been known only as 'Satoshi Nakamoto,' which many observers believed to be a pseudonym.

But Newsweek's story alleged that Nakamoto was not a pseudonym but instead a real man.



They tracked Nakamoto down to his modest home in Temple City, California, after a two-month investigation in which they unearthed shadowy dealings with US military technology contractors, his mysterious work for the FAA in the aftermath of 9/11 and claimed that he could be potentially sitting on a $657 million fortune from his invention that he mysteriously refuses to touch.

The reclusive and secretive Nakamoto, whose own brother described as 'an a**hole', was interviewed on his doorstep - as Newsweek appeared to solve one of the largest mysteries of the digital age.



'I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it,' he said to the magazine's reporter about his connection to the now troubled online currency.



Revealed: The man widely believed to be Bitcoin currency founder Satoshi Nakamoto is surrounded by reporters as he leaves his home in Temple City, California on Thursday

'It's been turned over to other people,' he said without specifying who.

'They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection.'



In a later AP interview, Nakamoto said he was misunderstood in a key portion of the Newsweek story, where he tells the reporter on his doorstep, 'I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it.'



Asked by the AP if he had said that, Nakamoto said, 'No.'

'I'm saying I'm no longer in engineering. That's it,' he told the AP.



'And even if I was, when we get hired, you have to sign this document, contract saying you will not reveal anything we divulge during and after employment. So that's what I implied.'



'It sounded like I was involved before with Bitcoin and looked like I'm not involved now. That's not what I meant. I want to clarify that,' the AP reported him as saying.

The Bitcoin Foundation, an advocacy group promoting the adoption of the digital currency, said '...We have seen zero conclusive evidence that the identified person is the designer of Bitcoin.'

'Those closest to the Bitcoin project, the informal team of core developers, have always been unaware of Nakamoto's true identity, as Nakamoto communicated purely through electronic means,' it said in a post on its website.

Describing his appearance as he answered the door, the Newsweek reporter said that anyone would have trouble believing this was the man whose creation could potentially revolutionize the financial system and could be a multi-millionaire.



'He’s wearing a rumpled T-shirt, old blue jeans and white gym socks, without shoes, like he has left the house in a hurry.



His hair is unkempt, and he has the thousand-mile stare of someone who has gone weeks without sleep,' wrote investigative reporter Leah McGrath Goodman.



Startled by his apparent discovery, Nakamoto called the police to intervene - claiming that he would be in danger if he spoke to the reporter.

'So, what is it you want to ask this man about? one of the officers asked the Newsweek reporter.



'He thinks if he talks to you, he’s going to get into trouble.'



'I would like to ask him about Bitcoin. This man is Satoshi Nakamoto,' said reporter Leah McGrath Goodman.

HOW NEWSWEEK CAME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT DORIAN SATOSHI NAKAMOTO IS THE FOUNDER OF BITCOIN

Were they right? Nakamoto affirms he was not the founder of Bitcoin, but Newsweek magazine was confident enough to out him after two months of research Newsweek reporter Leah McGrath Goodman spend two months searching for the elusive founder of Bitcoin, which she identified in a cover story Thursday as 64-year-old Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto.

The founder of the digital currency has never come forward, but a proposal for the project published online in 2008 is signed by a Satoshi Nakamoto, with a corresponding email address.

Goodman used the name as a basis for search, and found a man she believed matched the founder's profile while looking through registration card of naturalized U.S. citizens.

Goodman's firmest evidence that the Temple City, California resident known as Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto is the real Bitcoin father was when she showed up to his house after corresponding with him via email.

She says when she showed up outside the modest home, Nakamoto refused to come to the door but he did peak out of the blinds.

Eventually the police showed up after he called them to say he was scared he would 'get into trouble' for talking to her.

Nakamoto came out when police arrived and Goodman was able to get him to comment once.

'I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it,' he said before returning inside. 'It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection.'

In addition to Nakamoto's subtle acknowledgement to Goodman, she also interviewed his family and Bitcoin developers to learn more about the mysterious founder.

While family members, including two of Nakamoto's children and his estranged wife, Goodman interviewed were unaware that he created Bitcoin, they also said they wouldn't be surprised it he had and was just keeping it a secret.

' You're not going to be able to get to him. He'll deny everything. He'll never admit to starting Bitcoin,' Nakamoto's youngest brother said.

Goodman also spoke with programmers like Gavin Andresen (Bitcoin's current Chief Scientist) who corresponded with the person 'or entity' known as Nakamoto in the early years of Bitcoin, but he seemed to cease communication in early 2011.

'Back then, it was not clear that creating Bitcoin might be a legal thing to do. He went to great lengths to protect his anonymity,' Andresen said, adding that he never heard Nakamoto's voice since he refused to communicate over phone.

Unprecedented: A Newsweek article claimed to have discovered the real identity of the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto - the long rumored inventor of bitcoin

'What?' the officer responded. 'This is the guy who created Bitcoin? It looks like he’s living a pretty humble life.'

Nakamoto is a Japanese-American descended from Samurai who born in July 1949 in the city of Beppu, Japan, where he was brought up poor and as a Buddhist by his mother.

She migrated to California in 1959 bringing Satoshi with him and he graduated from California State Polytechnic University at the age 0f 23.



For the past 40-years he has not used his birth name and in 1973 changed his name to Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto. He signs his name Dorian S. Nakamoto.



The name Nakamoto appeared in the 2008 whitepaper introducing bitcoin, but the moniker was widely believed to be an alias for a person or group.

Limelight: Nakamoto shuns attention as he leaves his Temple City, California home on Thursday

After he graduated, Nakamoto began work at Hughes Aircraft in southern California where he settled down and got married - having a son named Eric Nakamoto, who now works as an animation and 3-D graphics designer in Philadelphia.

He divorced his first wife, remarried and had a further five children with his second wife Grace Mitchell, 56, who lives in Aubodon, New Jersey.



She said that he came to the East Coast after leaving Hughes Aircraft, which is now part of defense contractor Raytheon when he was in his late 20s and then worked for Radio Corporation of America in Camden, as a systems engineer.



'We were doing defensive electronics and communications for the military, government aircraft and warships, but it was classified and I can't really talk about it,' confirmed David Micha, president of the company now called L-3 Communications to Newsweek.

Unmasked: Bitcoin was launched in 2009 by a person or group of people operating under the name Satoshi Nakamoto - and now Newsweek magazine claim this man is him

Nakamoto and Grace separated in 2000, but have never divorced. She said he worked as a software engineer for the Federal Aviation Administration in New Jersey after 9/11 in security and communications work.



'It was very secret,' she said to Newsweek. 'He left that job sometime in 2001 and I don't think he's had a steady job since.'

Since bitcoin was launched in 2009, the hunt has been on for the real Satoshi Nakamoto.



Theories about him have abounded online. Was the creation solely his or was he working for some kind of sinister New World Order global conspiracy?



Bitcoin has been associated with the shadier aspects of the National Security Agency and the International Monetary Fund.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be delivered like email anywhere on Earth without bank or exchange fees and is stored on cellphones or hard drives until it is used again.



However, the money can be lost if the hard drive simply malfunctions or if the bitcoin is stolen by hackers.



According to Newsweek, they tracked Nakamoto down after finding he had posted onto website forums for model train enthusiasts.



He corresponded with the reporter about his love of trains until she asked about his involvement in bitcoin.



'He has been buying train parts from Japan and England since he was a teenager, saying, ‘I do machining myself, manual lathe, mill, surface grinders,’ Goodman wrote about the mystery man.

Media scrum: If this man is Satoshi Nakamoto - he could be worth upwards of $657 million in bitcoins he has failed to cash in since the launch of the digital currency

Amazingly, Newsweek claims that no one in Nakamoto's family even knew that their relative could have written the code for bitcoin.



They spoke to his brother Arthut Nakamoto, an engineer at a California firm that makes radio parts.



'You want to know about my amazing physicist brother? He’s a brilliant man. I’m just a humble engineer. He’s very focused and eclectic in his way of thinking. Smart, intelligent, mathematics, engineering, computers. You name it, he can do it,' he told the magazine, adding a warning.



'My brother is an a–hole. What you don’t know about him is that he’s worked on classified stuff. His life was a complete blank for a while. You’re not going to be able to get to him. He’ll deny everything. He’ll never admit to starting Bitcoin,' he said before hanging up.



New-found fame: Nakamoto brushes off reporters outside his home today

Shy guy: Family members say they are unaware Nakamoto started Bitcoin, but wouldn't be surprised if he did and simply kept it a secret

Bitcoin is now in the hands of a nonprofit trust called the Bitcoin Foundation, which includes their chief scientist and code writer, Gavin Andresen, 47.



'The whole reason geeks get excited about Bitcoin is that it is the most efficient way to do financial transactions,' said Andresen to Newsweek.



Nakamoto's relatives did allude to his motivations for creating the currency when they said he may have written the code because of his frustration with bankruptcies in the past and paying high fees online when buying model train parts from England.



Andresen began work with bitcoin in 2010 and admits to corresponding with the founder of the currency, who he knew as a man named Satoshi Nakamoto, a few times a week only on email.



Their interactions, he says, always took place by 'email or private message'.

The public eye: The bitcoin community are not convinced of the claim. Bitcoin's lead developer, Gavin Andresen, who is quoted extensively in the Newsweek piece, claimed he is 'disappointed Newsweek decided to dox the Nakamoto family', and that he 'regret talking to Leah'.

'He was the kind of person who, if you made an honest mistake, he might call you an idiot and never speak to you again,' Andresen said to Newsweek.



'Back then, it was not clear that creating Bitcoin might be a legal thing to do. He went to great lengths to protect his anonymity.'



According to Newsweek, the Nakamoto that Andresen spoke to never answered any questions on where he was from, his professional background or any other projects that he had worked on.



He never even divulged if his name was real of a pseudonym.



Andresen said working with Nakamoto could be difficult.



'He was the kind of person who, if you made an honest mistake, he might call you an idiot and never speak to you again,' he said.



Mobbed: Nakamoto was overwhelmed by the pack of reporters who showed up outside his home following the publication of the Newsweek article

'He doesn’t like the system we have today and wanted a different one that would be more equal. He did not like the notion of banks and bankers getting wealthy just because they hold the keys,' Andresen said.



Over the course of the interview, Nakamoto's family described him as 'extremely intelligent, moody and obsessively private, a man of few words who screens his phone calls, anonymizes his emails and, for most of his life, has been preoccupied with the two things for which Bitcoin has now become known: money and secrecy.'

Neither family nor any colleagues could or would say why Nakamoto has remained so secretive about his work — and the millions he has made from Bitcoin.



Andresen speculated that he simply wanted to keep flying under the radar.



'If you come out as the leader of Bitcoin, now you have to make appearances and presentations and comments to the press and that didn’t really fit with Satoshi’s personality,' he told the magazine.



Whoever, the real Satoshi Nakamoto is, that individual sitting on a fortune.



A Bitcoin wallet under his name contains 1 million Bitcoins—$657 million USD at current exchange rates—that haven't been touched since Bitcoin's inception.



Newsweek speculates the reason he hasn't spent it is because doing so could have compromised his anonymity.



Another reason is that he doesn't want to attract the attention of the IRS.