There has been many attempts to unmask Satoshi but none was verified. On December 8, 2015, Dr. Craig S. Wright , an Australian computer scientist and businessman caught the crypto community’s attention after appearing with late supposed partner David Kleiman,a computer forensics expert, an author/coauthor of multiple books and a noted speaker at security related events on various articles pointing him to be most likely a potential candidate.

‘Leaked’ Emails

Private emails linking Wright to the cryptocurrency was leaked on December 9, 2015 by an anonymous hacker that contains persuasive conversation supporting the theory that Craig Wright is indeed Satoshi.

Below is an email from March 28, 2008 first accounted by Gizmodo, which appears Wright opening the idea of this new form of currency to Kleiman months before the bitcoin white paper was published. “I need your help and I need a version of me to make this work that is better than me,” the sender wrote, seemingly coming up to use a pseudonym.

After Bitcoin’s value had exploded and became mainstream several years later, Wright wrote to Kleiman “I cannot do the Satoshi bit anymore,” he wrote. “They no longer listen. I am better as a myth.

Another message dated January 8th, 2014 shows Wright emailing three colleagues from satoshi@vistomail.com, the email address that Nakomoto used to communicate with early Bitcoin users and developers. The email also includes a signature with the name Satoshi Nakamoto and a phone number that belongs to Craig Wright.

After the leakage went viral, Wright then disappeared and his online presence became rarely visible. However, It was later found out that the domain information-defense.com from which the first email supposedly originates (craig.wright@information-defense.com ) was only registered by Wright on January 23, 2009, when he registered the Australian company “Information Defense PTY” and the contained PGP keys are supposedly backdated.

Wright’s Admission and His Proofs

Eventually, In 2016, Wright reappeared as Satoshi Nakamoto. With his return, two major respected personalities within the cryptocurrency community Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis vouched for his claim.

On April 7, Andresen went to London and met Wright and two associates in a conference room where wright performed the private demonstrations to him and to non-technical staff of the BBC and the Economist wherein Wright signed a message provided by himself and then verified its signature, again by himself.

In his blog Andresen says:

‘’I witnessed the keys signed and then verified on a clean computer that could not have been tampered with’’.

Only a person with a private key can ‘sign’ a message. Once signed, it can then be checked using a software if the signature is genuine and was created by the owner of the private key.

On a post in reddit he also accounted:

“Craig signed a message that I chose (“Gavin’s favorite number is eleven. CSW” if I recall correctly) using the private key from block number 1. That signature was copied on to a clean usb stick I brought with me to London, and then validated on a brand-new laptop with a freshly downloaded copy of electrum. I was not allowed to keep the message or laptop (fear it would leak before Official Announcement). I don’t have an explanation for the funky OpenSSL procedure in his blog post.”

Wright also published a blog post featuring what appeared to be a cryptographically signed statement from the writer Jean-Paul Sartre. It seemed intended to show that Wright possessed one of Nakamoto’s private keys as in Andresen’s demonstration.

These pieces of evidence, however, were refuted by researchers and cryptography professionals.

Gregory Maxwell, chief technology officer of Bitcoin startup Blockstream, wrote in an email,

“The digital signature in it is copied out of an old Bitcoin transaction. It’s like pasting a photocopy of a famous person’s signature in a book– it isn’t evidence of authorship”

As it turns out,Wright simply reused an old signature from a bitcoin transaction performed in 2009 by Satoshi and is easily accessed on the public Bitcoin blockchain. One good demonstration on how Craig might have done the trickery was explained thoroughly here.

Wright refuses proving before the public’s eye — a big why not?

There’s a very simple way for Wright to definitely prove that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, and he could do it right now: sign a message with the key associated with bitcoin’s genesis block —the first block ever made,wasn’t mined publicly and is actually permanently written into bitcoin’s code base,unsuspended.

Even Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Co-founder claimed he doesn’t believe Craight Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, as he could’ve easily proven his identity by making a signature from the very first bitcoin block and putting it out in public. Instead, Vitalik argues, he made a complex blog post, and showed said signature to a few people.

The same was stated by Garzik in an email :

“If you’re trying to prove it, you should obviously just sign a message with block zero and go from there”.

However, According to wright in an interview with BBC:

“Some people will believe, some people won’t, and to tell you the truth, I don’t really care.”

This sounds like either he doesn’t want to or he just can’t. You be the judge.