Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto is…… Australian scientist Dr Craig Wright!

After eight years of anonymity, the creator – or some may say genius – behind the development of cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has finally become known.

Satoshi Nakamoto, which was widely acknowledged in the cryptocurrency and digital trading world to be either an acronym or a pseudonym for the actual creator of Bitcoin, has now been proven to be exactly that.

Whilst the completely fabricated name under which Bitcoin’s inventor has until now concealed his identity appears Japanese, the man himself is Australian scientist Dr Craig Wright.

On May 2, 2016, Dr Wright publicly revealed himself to be the creator of Bitcoin. This claim was corroborated by Bitcoin Foundation Founding Director Jon Matonis in a blog post, stating “For cryptographic proof in my presence, Craig signed and verified a message using the private key from block #1 newly-generated coins and from block #9 newly-generated coins (the first transaction to Hal Finney).”

The creation of the pseudonym by which Dr Wright has been known for eight years, and the inability for even the most cunning internet technologist to uncover his true identity are equal in genius to the modus operandi of Bitcoin itself.

In 2008, Dr. Wright invented the virtual currency, under the name Satoshi Nakamoto with a very clever ‘mining’ system in place for those wanting to generate their own peer-to-peer, decentralized currency.

The mining of the digital currency emulated the mining of other precious commodities, or the minting of sovereign coins in that nodes had to be discovered by using the blockchain database, therefore limiting the number in circulation by making it more difficult to mine Bitcoin as time and number in circulation progressed, protecting the asset value of the currency.

Despite the early years of Bitcoin’s existence being encumbered by rapidly fluctuating prices – it raised from $240 to the dollar in March 2013 to $1000 to the dollar by the and of 2013, and various virtual currency exchanges including Japan’s Mt.Gox having gone west, the blockchain technology upon which Bitcoin is intrinsically based has become the subject of huge capital investment by banks in order to use it for the automation of ledger and other routine banking activities.

In addition, Bitcoin’s appeal to venture capital investors has grown exponentially as technological development of the blockchain system is now being encouraged in Britain, Switzerland, Japan, and the United States, demonstrating that Dr. Wright’s invention which in its inaugural years attracted the attention of mavericks and those wishing to circumvent the traditional financial system has now become the path to the future for many large, global institutions.

To those who have spent time in Australia’s institutional financial sector, Dr Wright may be a familiar figure.

He worked as an IT professional at the Australian Securities Exchange, as well as having spent time as a security consultant for Indian outsourcing and professional services consultancy Mahindra & Mahindra, based in Australia.

Dr Wright designed the architecture for possibly the world’s first online casino, Lasseter’s Online (based in Alice Springs, Northern Territory), which went online in 1999.

He was the information systems manager for the accounting firm BDO Kendalls and also spent time as CEO of the technology firm Hotwire Preemptive Intelligence Group which planned to launch Denariuz Bank, the world’s first Bitcoin-based bank, though it encountered regulatory difficulties with the Australian Tax Office and failed in 2014.

Dr. Wright is the founder of cryptocurrency company DeMorgan Ltd., which received $54 million in tax incentives via AusIndustry.

Educated at Charles Sturt University, Dr Wright holds a PhD in, of all things, theology, and a second PhD in computer science, with his dissertation having been entitled “The quantification of Information Systems Risk”.

If there has been a true disruptor during the last decade, this mild-mannered scientist and computer engineer is it.