After many years, a new lead has emerged to follow for identifying the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, and this lead points to Kraken.
At the moment, however, it is only a lead, because there are still many uncertainties. Nevertheless, the source of this lead seems reliable, so it is worth considering.
The new lead of Kraken on Satoshi Nakamoto
Everything originates from a post published yesterday on his official X profile by the director of Coinbase Conor Grogan.
Grogan reports having examined Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallets and having made some new discoveries that were previously unknown.
The first discovery is that the creator of Bitcoin would have been active on the blockchain he created from January 2009 only until 2014.
The fact is that Satoshi disappeared in 2011, and since then he has never been heard from again. Many believe that he is dead, and indeed one of the main suspects, Hal Finney, died in August 2014 due to ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis).
However, this is not enough to confirm that it is indeed Finney, also because over the years several clues have emerged that lead to excluding this hypothesis.
The subsequent discovery, on the other hand, could lead somewhere.
Grogan indeed discovered 24 outgoing transactions that likely originate from Satoshi’s wallets. The main address to which these transactions were sent also received BTC from CaVirtEx, a Canadian exchange.
The director of Coinbase writes:
“I believe this is the first on-chain transaction documented between a wallet connected to Satoshi and a CEX”.
Kraken reveals the clue about Satoshi Nakamoto
As Grogan always reports, CaVirtEx was acquired by Kraken in 2016.
The director of Coinbase adds:
“Therefore, there is the possibility that Jesse Powell [founder and president of Kraken] has information on the true identity behind Satoshi, if they have kept KYC information on this wallet. My advice for him would be to delete the data.”
Kraken is one of the leading and oldest crypto exchanges in the United States still in operation.
It was launched in the USA in 2013, and three years later it also entered the Canadian market thanks to the acquisition of CaVirtEx.
It is not only a crypto exchange with a great history, but also one of the most serious in the world. Its founder, Jesse Powell, is also well known in the crypto sector, as he has often published statements in the past that have made headlines.
Satoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym used by the creator of Bitcoin to remain anonymous.
Up to today, many hypotheses have circulated, but his true identity has not yet been discovered.
Satoshi became known in 2008 when he published the Bitcoin whitepaper, and on January 3, 2009, he mined the first block of the cryptocurrency’s blockchain. Bitcoin is the very first cryptocurrency ever created.
Initially, only Satoshi mined the blocks of the Bitcoin blockchain and did not perform any transactions. The first known transaction was made to Hal Finney’s wallet on January 12 of the same year.
At the end of 2010, however, Satoshi stopped posting, and in 2011 he also stopped sending emails. Since then, no one has heard anything more about him.
The doubts about the new track
It is Conor Grogan himself who raises doubts about the trail he found. This also gives a very good idea of how serious his research is.
First of all, he admits that he is not certain that the wallets believed to belong to Satoshi are truly his.
In reality, in fact, no one knows exactly which on-chain addresses were used by Satoshi to cash in the BTC earned by mining, but several years ago the so-called “Pathoshi” was identified, which is the list of addresses that seem to be linked to Satoshi’s mining activity. These addresses have been recently cataloged by Arkham.
The second doubt concerns the fact that one of those addresses is associated with the financing of 12ib, one of the largest active BTC addresses of all time (and which today holds BTC worth about 3 billion dollars). This address could therefore be associated with Satoshi, but also with some other early user or contributor, perhaps even Hal Finney himself.
The third doubt lies in the fact that it is not certain that CaVirtEx required KYC, or identity verification, from its users. For this reason, Grogan says that “there is a possibility” that Kraken has in its archives the data concerning the true identity of Satoshi, but obviously does not say that this is actually the case. Furthermore, it cannot be ruled out that Satoshi might have provided false data, given that at the time crypto exchanges were really poorly regulated.
Grogan also discovered that some addresses presumed to be of Satoshi Nakamoto had sent 200 BTC to a Bitcoin faucet, given that at the time you could obtain 5 BTC for free simply by completing a CAPTCHA.
Although there are no certainties, the director of Coinbase says that if nothing else, this trail may allow for obtaining evidence at least on the validity of Patoshi, which must surely be connected only to Satoshi Nakamoto.