Bitcoin is 14 years old today

Today marks the 14th anniversary of the launch of the flagship cryptocurrency’s main network — on January 3, 2009, Сатоші Накамото" href="https://noworries.media/biography/satoshi-nakamoto/" data-bio-id="4232">Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block of 50 BTC. Eleven days later, on January 12 of the same year, the first bitcoin transaction took place.

It is not known for certain who is behind Satoshi’s name (or pseudonym). Nakamoto disappeared from the public space back in April 2011 and has not been seen since, so there is speculation that he is dead. There is also a theory that an entire development team is behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Before his disappearance, Nakamoto claimed to be Japanese, born on April 5, 1975. However, he was very fluent in English, so many believed him to be a resident of an English-speaking country.

Regarding the first bitcoin transaction made to the address «1Q2TWHE3GMdB6BZKafqwxXtWAWgFt5Jvm3» — Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 BTC to the programmer Hal Finney, who died in 2014. According to Martin Shkreli, a well-known American criminal and co-founder of the hedge fund MSMB Capital Management, the transaction contained the signature: «This transfer was made by Paul Le Roux for Hal Finney on January 12, 2009». Accordingly, according to Shkreli’s guess, Paul Le Roux can be considered Satoshi Nakamoto.

Shkreli outlined his guesses in early December in the Substack mailing list with the headline: «Paul Le Roux is Satoshi». Paul Le Roux is a former drug cartel leader, DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) informant, and programmer. According to official reports, he has been behind bars since his arrest in 2012. However, anonymous sources claim that Le Roux has been cooperating with the US government, which is why he has been hidden and protected all these years. It is worth noting that according to one so-called conspiracy theory, bitcoin is a project of the US CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), in which case Paul Le Roux could be a perfect fit for the role of Satoshi Nakamoto.

It is worth reminding that December 12, 2022, marked the 12th anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto’s disappearance from the public space. It was on December 12, 2010, that the BTC developer wrote his last post on the bitcointalk.org forum. Since then, no one has seen or heard from Nakamoto.