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Bitcoin Creator Also Founded Monero, New Research Suggests
Anatol Antonovici | Apr 01, 2020 | 09:15
While no one knows who’s behind the Satoshi Nakamoto name, a research document suggests that the Bitcoin creator might have also developed another cryptocurrency – Monero.
Nakamoto Had Motives to Improve Bitcoin’s Algorithm
New research by Monero Outreach concludes that Bitcoin and Monero might be the creation of the same person or entity.
Monero is a cryptocurrency that came out in 2014 to address Bitcoin’s privacy issues. While the former uses a public ledger, no one can trace transactions on it, which makes XMR the most used coin among dark web users.
Monero’s whitepaper was published on December 12, 2012, about three years after Bitcoin’s genesis block. The author of the whitepaper is Nicolas van Saberhagen. As you might guess, this is also a pseudonym, so no one knows who created Monero.
Monero Outreach suggests that Satoshi Nakamoto and Nicolas van Saberhagen are the same entities. The main argument provided by the research authors is that Nakamoto had a clear motive to release the CryptoNote whitepaper, the document laying out the Monero concept. In a Bitcointalk forum post from August 2010, Nakamoto shared the first concepts of privacy that would later show up in Monero’s whitepaper, including stealth addresses and ring signatures, which hide receivers and senders of XMR.
Besides this, when CryptoNote 1.0 came out, Nakamoto had already observed Bitcoin’s block size changes and mining reward halving. Monero’s blockchain addresses those issues. It also improved the proof-of-work to make mining more available to anyone using typical GPUs.
Stylometry Theory Also Supports this Conclusion
When analyzing the writing style of both whitepapers, one can notice a style connection between the two. The authors of the research used stylometry, a software program called Java Graphical Authorship Attribution Program (JGAAP), and figured out that the author of the CryptoNote whitepaper was more likely to be Nakamoto than the author of any other 15 leading papers picked from the Monero literature.
Some similarities are visible with the naked eye. For instance, both whitepapers used the spelling of “favour/favourable,” the contraction “can’t” instead to the typical style observed in academically formatted papers, and the wording “In this paper, we…” Also, both documents used black-and-white line drawings with solid and dashed lines.
Thunderosa, Monero Outreach Creative Lead, commented:
When you first look at those two documents side by side you can get floored by the crazy similarities. Maybe we should start calling the author Satoshi van Saberhagen.
However, research authors don’t expect that the Bitcoin or the Monero community would embrace this revelation.
Xmrhaelan, Monero Outreach Organizer, said:
Like many, I’m still processing this. I will, though, say with confidence that if Satoshi Nakamoto is Nicolas van Saberhagen, Monero was Satoshi’s greatest work.
All in all, the main conclusion is that Craig Wright must be a genius…
Do you think Monero was created by Nakamoto or is this an April Fool’s Day joke from Monero Outreach? Share your thoughts in the comments section!
Image via Shutterstock, Monerooutreach.org
