nChain Chief Scientist Craig Wright has claimed that he “was Satoshi,” the infamous pseudonym behind the anonymous founder of Bitcoin [BTC] who surfaced in 2009 with the whitepaper that gave birth to the world’s first cryptocurrency.
This stark announcement by Craig Wright has certainly enraged the collective community with some planning on launching legal cases against him. Wright has done this before, the last occasion when he claimed he was Satoshi Nakamoto was back in November 2018. In an email to Roger Ver, Wright claimed he was the founder of Bitcoin, but this claim was dismissed as it was said in the heat of the Bitcoin Cash hardfork.
Now, in a Medium post titled “Careful what you wish for…,” Wright spells out his journey with the Bitcoin world, concluding with the revelation. He begins the piece likening himself to the Apple genius, Steve Jobs, and goes on to state that,“When he started, Jobs was the outsider. He was rejected, and fought to grow what he was building each and every day. The attempted building of an alternative version of what I created goes against all I stand for. Yet, I allowed myself to get into such a position.”
Wright stated that, according to him, the intention behind Bitcoin was not to “help an anonymous money-transfer system,” and he did not want to operate outside the purview of the law. He further suggested that he despised people like Julian Assange, the man behind Wikileaks and Ross Ulbricht, the man behind Silk Road, the marketplace of the Darknet which became infamous for the rampant sale and purchase of guns, drugs and explosives, among others.
He described them as,“They are not freedom fighters, they are not libertarians. They simply are predators, and they are all that Bitcoin was designed to make far more difficult.”
According to Wright, the Bitcoin blockchain is able to be controlled and should operate within the legal framework of its existence. It ought to be simple to trace, especially when the law has been breached, it should allow for a paper trail so that it can be audited effectively.
Wright’s vision of Bitcoin and the blockchain that powers it is one that is enshrined to the letter of the law and does not allow for any illegal activity. Bitcoin is a permanent and unalterable evidence ledger and hence, all information can be verified. He added:“Bitcoin is an immutable data store, that is something that honest government desires.”
Silk Road was never the resultant application of Bitcoin, he said, adding that that, “No blockchain will ever be crime friendly.” He stated that Bitcoin is the cure from corruption and the ongoing increase in crime is due to its complete transparency of information transfers between the participants in the blockchain.
He went on to add,“Silk Road was poison to me. I saw a decade of work corrupted, twisted, and for a time I despaired. Bitcoin was like a child to me. I saw a child who had lost their way and become the worst thing they could be.”
Wright also shed light on why Bitcoin’s cap stayed at 1MB as the creation of off-chain channels would allow extra information to be deleted and hence the law could be circumvented. He stated that this would allow the creation of another Silk Road.
He added:“Bitcoin is the mirror of what I see, a world of work. We are stewards to wealth. We do not own it, it owns us, and we have to sacrifice daily to make the information flow to retain the right, not the privilege to help maintain the plumbing that is the conduit of life.”
Craig Wright concluded the blogpost stating that he was not going to list the names of the people who helped him get to Bitcoin, but he clearly stated that it was his, ‘idea, design, and creation.’
His final words in the post were:“I was Satoshi.”
