The hunt for the mysterious Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto continues to this day, as new data-driven research has recently been used to discover the creator’s location while he / she was working on the network. The researchers analyzed 539 Bitoshintalk Satoshi posts, 34 emails, 169 code commitments, metadata of all versions of bitcoin he worked on, the genesis block data, and archived data from the Wayback Machine .
Report Suggests Satoshi Nakamoto Lives In London When Creating Bitcoin
To this day, the world is still clueless about the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the first Bitcoin cryptocurrency network. He recently published research stemming from an editorial The Chain Bulletin that seeks to hone in on Satoshi Nakamoto’s location during the creation of the world’s first blockchain.
On November 23, 2020, author Doncho Karaivanov explains researchers combed through “Bitoshintalk Satoshi posts, Sourceforge commitments, and emails, along with other available data.” According to the research, the data points to “the most likely place where an unknown Bitcoin inventor is called home – London.”
Karaivanov says the research is data-driven and relies on schedules covering about “742 activity cases of 206 days (not consecutive).” The time stamped documentation began on Halloween on October 31, 2008 , and the statistics end on December 13, 2010, which was the last time the community heard from Satoshi.The researchers compiled scatter charts based on suspected time zones to see when the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin was alert and active.
“Common suspect locations are the UK (GMT), Eastern US (EST), US Pacific (PST), Japan (JST), and Australia (AEST),” details Karaivanov’s study. “The last two were easy to dismantle, but the first three forecasts needed further exploration.”
During Satoshi’s online activity, the researchers also note that Nakamoto has posted a total of 539 times on the site’s forum bitcointalk.org. “Looking at this data alone, we cannot determine, beyond reasonable doubt, the time zone in which Satoshi lived,” the Karaivanov report emphasizes.
On Sourceforge, a code repository web portal where the Bitcoin code was once stored, Satoshi used 169 commits during that time. Again, the researchers used dispersion charts based on specific time zones to analyze Satoshi’s commit activity, which has test time stamps at UTC.
Similarly, the commit charts just like Bitcointalk postcards, are consistent and Karaivanov states that they do not leave a smoking gun in any of the credible regions. The researchers then charted a bulk of Satoshi’s email activity that alone did not leave any hard evidence. However, by merging all the data from Bitcointalk’s mails, commitments and emails, the data begins to conclude that Satoshi’s home location was neither in Japan nor Australia.
Bitcoin Genesis Block: ‘Chancellor on the verge of Second Bail for Banks’
The biggest clue pointing to Satoshi emanating from London resided in the initial message of the genesis block taken from The Times (London of London) newspaper edition of January 3, 2009.
According to the researchers they deduce that Nakamoto could not have seen the headline of the Times of London, had the inventor been based in the United States. “This exact edition of The Times was not circulated in the United States,” wrote Karaivanov.
Karaivanov says it would be “highly unlikely” that the front page of the US edition was formatted in the same way, as it would be completely different than the UK Times headline. Furthermore, the newspaper had an online version of the story, but the headline was written in a completely different way. That particular online article said: “Chancellor Alistair Darling is on the verge of a second bailout for banks.”
The genesis block data suggests the scales are “strongly in favor of the GMT time zone,” the author insists. “This is without mentioning all the clues that point to Satoshi being British, such as spelling its endings with -ise instead of -ize and -our instead of -or, eg, analyzing, arranging, neighbor, color, etc., ”Concludes Karaivanov’s study. “Then there is his use of the word bloody. More specifically, we not only believe that he is British, but that he also lives in London while working on Bitcoin. ”
Karaivanov also admits that it is impossible to say with “absolute certainty” that London was the exact location. “However, we can say with reasonable confidence that it is based in London,” the researcher added.
Satoshi Time Zone Studies of 2011 and 2018
Karaivanov’s research is not the first time Satoshi’s clues have been revealed by researching specific time zones relative to Nakamoto’s known online activity. In February 2018, another data-driven research study called “The Time Zones of Satoshi Nakamoto,” also tried to reveal Nakamoto’s location during Bitcoin creation.
For example, the report highlights an early draft of the Bitcoin paper and the paper’s online metadata. Alongside this, they looked at the metadata attached to the bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf that Nakamoto also created. Combining the two time stamp values, it shows that the Satoshi computer used to do these things online was set to ‘Mountain Time Zone’ in the United States.
But the 2018 paper about Satoshi’s time zones is a bit more inconclusive, as there are several schedules that show Satoshi could be located in myriad regions. For example, a 2018 study also says Satoshi’s commitments indicate that his computer has leveraged “British Summer Time” schedules.
The “The Time Zones of Satoshi Nakamoto” review also highlights an analysis of Nakamoto’s hourly activity published in 2011. That particular research from 2011 concludes that Satoshi must have lived in an EST time zone in the US The 2018 investigation points to circumstantial evidence that Satoshi was a “night owl” and regularly drew everyone online. Most of Nakamoto’s lighter periods occurred in “summer 2010 and February.”
All Nighters and Cramming Satoshi to Complete Bitcoin
One of the most compelling findings in the 2018 research suggests that Satoshi has rushed towards the end of his task, having taken a short period of time away from the Bitcoin project. The findings show that during the months of 2010, March, April and May, Nakamoto provided little or no activity whatsoever in anything related to Bitcoin. Then, suddenly, in the summer of 2010, there was a huge burst of online activity from the creator of Bitcoin.
“This is the behavior of someone who, at the end of February, found himself with a daunting task to complete by the end of May and then who had virtually unlimited free time, including the latitude to work into the wee hours of the night, until the the following October, ”the armchair detective dubbed ‘In Search Of Satoshi’ ended on February 13, 2018.
The latest 2020 research that suggests Satoshi lives in London and the 2018 research shows evidence that is leaning more heavily towards home location in the UK. In Karaivanov’s opinion and his team’s research, London definitely has the highest probability.
“Taken together, his style of writing, pattern of activity, and Genesis block message, clearly point to the English capital as the most likely candidate,” Karaivanov’s findings deduce.
Meanwhile, several cryptocurrency advocates discussed Karaivanov’s time-domain study and questioned the reliability of its findings. For example, Jorge Stolfi, professor of computer science, commented on the theory after the study was published on a Reddit r / btc forum.
Stolfi said the “London” presumption implies that he worked on bitcoin immediately between 17:00 and 03:00 without lunch. The ‘US / East’ hypothesis would suggest that he started work at noon and had lunch after about 22:00. The “US / Western” hypothesis would suggest that it works all day between 08:00 and around 20:00 and in practice does not work after lunch. ”
Stolfi added:
While all of these are possible, if anything, this data would confirm that it was in the US, probably in the Western part during that time – in agreement with the PDF metadata.
What do you think of the study that assumes Satoshi was living in London while creating Bitcoin? Let us know what you think of this enigmatic topic in the comments section below.
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Satoshi Chain Bulletin study, “Satoshi Nakamoto Time Zones” study,
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, nor a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.