Unmasking of bitcoin creator throws up more questions than answers

Most experts name Satoshi Nakamoto as its founder – the controversial currency was first mentioned in a 2008 paper published under that name. However, it was widely assumed to be a pseudonym, either for an individual who had since disappeared in Japan, or for a collective of engineers who have devoted themselves to “mining” Bitcoins from complex computer source code.

On Thursday, however, America’s Newsweek magazine threw a shaft of light onto Bitcoin’s murky history. It claimed to have tracked down Mr Nakamoto. Instead of being a collective, or a technology whizzkid in his bedroom, it unmasked a 64-year-old father of six, with a penchant for model railways, living in the San Bernardino foothills around Los Angeles.

When broached about Bitcoin, Mr Nakamoto called the police and shut down the conversation. “I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection,” is all he would say.

The rest of what we know about Mr Nakamoto has been pieced together from interviews with his family members. None of them can say categorically whether he is indeed the founder of Bitcoin, but most of them say it sounds credible, and that the American-Japanese figure would never tell them even if it were the case.

Together, they paint a picture of a humble man who is a phenomenally gifted mathematician, but who is also difficult to deal with and secretive to the point of paranoia. One of his daughters, Ilene Mitchell, recalls him instilling a distrust of government in them from a young age.

"When I was little, there was a game we used to play. He would say, 'Pretend the government agencies are coming after you'. And I would hide in the closet,” she said.

However, even if the founder of Bitcoin has finally been unmasked, some mysteries remain unsolved. Mr Nakamoto is sat on millions of dollars of the so-called crypto-currency. According to his children, he - and they - could do with the money. Is remaining in the shadows so important to Mr Nakamoto that he will refrain from cashing in? Maybe so. But that in itself raises far many more questions than it answers.

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