Satoshi Nakamoto Was A Londoner, New Analysis Claims

There is a new take on an old investigation that possibly sheds some light on the identity and whereabouts of Satoshi Nakamoto. The new analysis tries to determine where Nakamoto was when working on Bitcoin. Based on this report, London was the most likely place that Satoshi Nakamoto worked on Bitcoin between 2008 and 2010.

Report author Doncho Karaivanov had a look at multiple factors aiming to justify the conclusion. He reviewed the timestamps of Satoshi’s published materials, his use of regional colloquialisms, and word spellings. He also considered the fact that The Times headline that was embedded in the genesis block was particular to England’s print version of the periodical.

The idea that Satoshi Nakamoto was British is not entirely new. Hundreds of sleuths, journalists, and investigators have thoroughly poured over some traces of the Bitcoin creator’s activity and explored the internet for clues and signs leading to his origins.

However, the latest report in The Chain Bulletin features more information available from previous analyses. It highlighted the possibility that Satoshi could have been referring to the print edition of ‘The Times’ when coding the now-famous headline acquired from January 3, 2009, into the Bitcoin genesis block.

That is since only the print edition of  ‘The Times’ distributed in England used the headline, “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”. On the other hand, the online edition included the chancellor’s name in the headline.

The United States edition of the paper never covered that story at all. Karaivanov reviewed readership data that indicates around 43% of The Times’ readership is based in London, and when:

“coupled with London being the largest financial hub in the world, this data makes it highly probable that Satoshi lived in London in the period between 2008 and 2010.”

The Analysis

Karaivanov’s analysis of all the time-stamped resources and materials posted by Satoshi offers more evidence that Satoshi may have resided in the GMT (U.K.) time zone. He analyzed posts on Bitcointalk, emails sent to and received from Bitcoin’s early developers, and commits that were made to the Bitcoin repository on SourceForge.

Nonetheless, he acknowledges that Satoshi’s pattern of posting and sending emails might also reflect somebody that lived in the EST (U.S. east coast) or PST (U.S. west coast) time zones.

Among these time zones that were ruled out entirely were those that focused on Japan where Satoshi alleged to have come from based on his P2P Foundation profile. Australia was disqualified as “not even remotely possible” unless Satoshi was “a vampire.”

The discovery that Satoshi might have lived in London between 2008 and 2010 was not quite revelatory information to some Reddit users with one of them commenting:

“In other breaking news, Santa Claus may have lived in the North Pole while working on toys for young children.”

Furthermore, not everyone in the Bitcoin sector is eager to discover the origins or identity of Satoshi. In August 2020, Adam Back who is the Blockstream CEO told reporters that it would be unwise to know the identity or for Satoshi to reveal himself publicly. Blockstream maintains the position that Satoshi’s identity must never be speculated upon since the activity runs “counter to cypherpunk ideals.”