Opinion: Satoshi Nakamoto Worked on Bitcoin in London

The creator of the first cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto, worked on aspects of its development while residing in London from 2008 to 2010. London, the capital of the United Kingdom, is cited as the most likely location in a study by Doncho Karaivanov, according to Chain Bulletin.

The author arrived at this conclusion based on an analysis of timestamps of Satoshi’s published materials, the use of region-specific vocabulary, and peculiarities in spelling. The idea was also prompted by the use of The Times’ headline, embedded in the hash of Bitcoin’s genesis block.

Karaivanov’s work complements a large body of other materials that also indicate that Satoshi Nakamoto resided in the United Kingdom.

The new study notes that The Times’ readership is 43% London residents. In the genesis block hash, the phrase “Chancellor on brink of the second bailout for banks” appears, which was used in the print edition of the city newspaper. The US edition did not contain this note, and in the online edition the headline differed from the original.

To corroborate his position, Karaivanov also cites timestamp analyses of Nakamoto’s actions: Bitcointalk posts, emails to early developers, commits in the Bitcoin repository—all of these increase the likelihood that he resided in the London time zone. The researcher admitted that publication patterns could also indicate Nakamoto resided on the East or West Coast of the United States.

Karaivanov rejected the possibility that Satoshi Nakamoto worked on Bitcoin from Japan or Australia. “If he wasn’t a vampire,” the researcher added.

Some users mocked the researcher’s conclusions.

“And in other ‘Lightning’-tagged news. Santa Claus may have lived at the North Pole, working on toys for little children. But one cannot rule out that it was the South Pole or Los Angeles,” — wrote one of them.

Earlier, Adam Back, a pioneer of the cryptocurrency industry and the CEO of Blockstream, rejected the notion that he could have personally met Satoshi Nakamoto in a London pub.

Before this, Back again rejected the speculation that he is the creator of Bitcoin. He believes that behind the Satoshi pseudonym lies a single person, not a group of developers.

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