The FBI's recent response to a journalist's FOIA request, refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records on Satoshi Nakamoto, has reignited discussions about the elusive Bitcoin creator's identity.

FBI Response Prompts Inquiries Into Satoshi's Identity

In a supposedly FOIA response to a journalist's request, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) implied that Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, was a "third party individual" about whom it could neither confirm nor deny having documents.

Investigative journalist Dave Troy claimed in an August 13 X post that the FBI had sent a "Glomar response" in response to his inquiry about Satoshi, which did not confirm or deny that the FBI had documents identifying the anonymous Bitcoin founder. Troy described the FBI's suggestion that Satoshi was a "third party individual" as an "interesting assertion," and he planned to fight the FOIA response because of this, Cointelegraph shares.

Dave Troy Aims to Uncover FBI's Satoshi Files

“I submitted as a broad general subject request, with full context, so it is the bureau and not me that is asserting that this is an individual,” Troy explained. “[M]y intent is not to establish the identity behind the pseudonym, but rather to get what info the bureau may have on the subject. If that helps establish identity somehow, fine, but that’s not my primary question.”

Whether the initial creator of Bitcoin was a single individual or a collective, Satoshi's identity has been the subject of much speculation since the 2008 publication of the Bitcoin white paper. No one has ever proven Satoshi to be exactly who he claimed to be, though early Bitcoin contributor Hal Finney has been named as a plausible candidate. We lost Finney in 2014.

"There should not be any problem releasing his file if the bureau thought Finney was Nakamoto," Troy asserts. The US Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) both gave identical answers in 2018 to a comparable FOIA request, meaning they did neither confirm nor deny the existence of any records pertaining to the founder of Bitcoin.

Satoshi Nakamoto's Identity Continues to Stir Debate

The allegations made by Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, who has long professed his belief in being Satoshi, may land him in a British court facing perjury charges. Wright added a legal disclaimer to his website in July, ending eight years of claims that he was the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. He clarified that he was not.

Not much is known about the real Satoshi. April 5, 1975, was the suggested birthday on their P2P Foundation profile. They had "moved on to other things," according to the final message from BTC's founder and developers in 2011.