It's been 13 years since Satoshi Nakamoto, the shadowy figure behind Bitcoin, left his final public words on the Bitcointalk forum.
On April 26, 2010, in a seemingly mundane post about denial-of-service (DoS) attack prevention, Satoshi quietly stepped away from the spotlight. He left behind a digital currency and a community that would grow beyond anyone's wildest imagination.
Satoshi's brief reappearance?
Satoshi's last known post on the Bitcointalk forum didn't hint at any goodbye. Instead, it was a technical comment focused on reinforcing Bitcoin against DoS attacks.
Fast forward to 2014, and the Satoshi saga took a curious twist. Amid intense media speculation about Satoshi's identity, a message popped up on a P2P Foundation profile linked to him, simply stating, "I am not Dorian Nakamoto." This was a direct reference to the frenzy caused by a Newsweek claim that Dorian Nakamoto, a California resident, was the brain behind Bitcoin.
This fleeting re-emergence, shrouded in ambiguity, left the community guessing about the authenticity of the message and the intentions behind it.
Theories about Satoshi's disappearance
Satoshi's exit from the crypto scene has been fodder for endless speculation. Was it a calculated move to keep Bitcoin's ethos of decentralization intact? Or did concerns about privacy, security, or potential legal issues in the uncharted waters of digital currency lead to this digital disappearing act?
There's also the possibility that "Satoshi Nakamoto" was always meant to be a pseudonym -- a mask for one person or a group of people who preferred the shadow to the spotlight.
What's clear is that Satoshi's vanishing act has left Bitcoin to evolve as a decentralized, community-driven project
Valeria Blokhina
Yuri Molchan
