The American journalist tried to find out the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto by asking the CIA and the FBI

Desperate to figure out Satoshi Nakamoto at the IP address , the Internet decided to ask the FBI. In 2016, it was reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had identified Satoshi Nakamoto. Following in the footsteps of this story, Daniel Oberhaus from Motherboard this spring sent journalistic inquiries to the FBI and the CIA, in which he asked what kind of information about Satoshi was in the hands of American intelligence agencies.



The CIA answered a month later: “Your request has been rejected. The management is neither able to confirm nor deny the fact of ownership of the requested documentation. ” The answer from the FBI was lying among the papers on Mulder’s desk until he received one.


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

For this, he said, stylometry was used, a stylistic method that uses statistical analysis in relation to the written text. The method, according to Muse, allowed NSA staff to highlight patterns specific to Nakamoto's text. Further, these patterns helped Satoshi find when analyzing electronic messages collected by the special service as part of the PRISM program (something like SORM). The source of the blogger did not tell him who is actually hiding behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

Interested in this story, Oberhaus decided to support Muse’s investigation, and as a result, he received silence from the FBI and a letter from the CIA. Actually, the form and content of the answer are by no means new. The CIA gave such letters 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 “Azorian Project”. Within its framework, the Americans raised the remains of the sunken submarine K-129, which belonged to the USSR.

Satoshi's riddle

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

• 64-year-old American of Japanese descent Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. He, as it turned out, was a physicist, worked as a system engineer on secret defense projects, after which he was an employee of various fintech companies. He himself denied his involvement in the creation of bitcoin.
• Hal Finney is a neighbor of Nakamoto, who is one of the pioneers of cryptography. They tried to interview him, but nothing came of it. Finney refused to contact the press, in addition, he is sick with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which deprived the scientist of the opportunity to speak and move.
• Craig Wright is a scientist and entrepreneur from Australia, who himself called himself the creator of Bitcoin. Not everyone believed him, and Wright said several times that he was going to prove his involvement in the creation of bitcoin. Why he did this is unknown, since evidence has not been obtained. And Wright gradually went into the shadows, having received a number of accusations of striving to seem like what he really is not.
• Michael Clear, a cryptographic student from Ireland, Finnish video game developer Willy Lehdonvirta and other people, at different times, became “suspected” of being the creators of bitcoin. As in all previous cases, this failed to be proved.
• It may well be that this is not just one person at all, but a whole team of developers, not completely independent at all, but working in the interests of any country or large organization.

Even if the US secret services are aware of his secret identity, it is unlikely that they will be able to get this information out of them simply by asking, in the hope that they will be confused. However, we do not particularly believe that they have something to hide - rather, that the CIA with the FBI and the NSA are not really up to date.