An American journalist tried to find out Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity by asking the CIA and the FBI.

In 2016, the Internet decided that the US National Security Agency (NSA) identified Satoshi Nakamoto. Following in the footsteps of this story, Daniel Oberhauz from Motherboard this spring sent journalistic inquiries to the FBI and the CIA, in which he inquired what information about Satoshi actually was in the hands of the American special services.



The CIA responded in a month: “Your request has been denied. The management is not in a position to either confirm or deny the fact of ownership of the requested documentation. ” The answer from the FBI was lying around among the papers on Mulder's desk until it arrived.


It all started with the fact that in 2016, blogger Alexander Muse, who usually writes about entrepreneurship, published a post in which he declared the successful identification of Satoshi Nakamoto of the NSA of the USA.

For this, he said, was used stylometry, a method in style, which uses statistical analysis in relation to the written text. The method, according to Mewes, allowed NSA staff to highlight patterns characteristic of the Nakamoto text. Further, these patterns helped to find Satoshi in the analysis of electronic messages collected by the special service under the PRISM program (something like SORM). The source of the blogger did not tell him who is really behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

Interested in this story, Oberhauz decided to support the investigation of the Muse, as a result of which he received silence from the FBI and a reply from the CIA. Actually, the form and content of the answer itself is not new. The CIA gave such replies to many journalists and organizations. For the first time, a wording of this type appeared in the response of the media organization about the secret operation “Project Azorian”. In its framework, the Americans raised the remains of a sunken submarine K-129, which belonged to the USSR.

Mystery of Satoshi

There are many rumors about Satoshi Nakamoto’s personality, although not one of them has been confirmed at least partially. At various times, information appeared that Satoshi could be:

• 64-year-old American of Japanese descent Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. He turned out to be a physicist, worked as a system engineer on secret defense projects, after which he was an employee of various FINTECH companies. He himself refuted his involvement in the creation of Bitcoin.
• Hal Finney - Nakamoto's neighbor, who is one of the pioneers of cryptography. They tried to interview him, but nothing happened. Finny refused to contact the press, in addition, he was ill with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which prevented the scientist from speaking and moving.
• Craig Wright is a scholar and entrepreneur from Australia who himself called himself the creator of Bitcoin. Far from everyone believed him, and Wright said several times that he was going to prove his involvement in the creation of Bitcoin. Why he did it - is unknown, because the evidence has not been received. And Wright gradually went into the shadows, receiving a number of accusations of trying to appear to be who he really is not.
• Student cryptographer from Ireland, Michael Clear, Finnish video game developer Willy Lehdonwirth, and other people also became “suspected” at various times that they were the creators of Bitcoin. As in all previous cases, it was not possible to prove it.
• It may well be that this is not one person at all, but a whole team of developers, and not independent at all, but working in the interests of any country or large organization.

Even if the US intelligence services are aware of its secret identity, it’s unlikely that they can extract this info from them simply by asking if they can be lost. However, we don’t really believe that they have something to hide - rather, that the CIA with the FBI and the NSA doesn’t really know.