In a new analysis, American cypherpunk and Bitcoin security expert Jameson Lopp has refuted recent claims that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is in fact the elusive creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Lopp, who co-founded and serves as CTO of crypto security firm Casa, published a detailed compilation of timestamps, tweets, and other publicly verifiable data to show that Dorsey could not have simultaneously overseen two fast-growing technology companies and authored Bitcoin in secret.
Jack Dorsey Is Not Bitcoin’s Creator
Despite the circulation of a “half baked narrative” that Dorsey might be Satoshi, Lopp describes the prevailing evidence as largely circumstantial. In one of his more pointed remarks, Lopp remarks: “I will once again point out that Satoshi hunting is a dick move, and thus I once again find myself interested in discrediting said dicks. If you’re going to post a Satoshi claim, you should put as much effort into trying to disprove your own thesis as you do trying to improve it. Otherwise, you risk looking like a fool.”
Advocates of the “Jack is Satoshi” theory note that Dorsey, like Nakamoto, was a cypherpunk who wrote software and harbored a keen interest in digital technologies. However, Lopp emphasizes these points are the only significant parallels, adding that “everything else is circumstantial if not outright mental gymnastics via numerology.”
Lopp’s report focuses on the wide availability of Dorsey’s daily schedule and social media footprint from 2009 to 2010—a period in which Satoshi Nakamoto was simultaneously exchanging emails, posting to forums, and committing code to the Bitcoin project. Dorsey, at the time chaired Twitter’s board, served as CEO of Square (now Block), traveled the world for press engagements and philanthropic causes and posted over 6,200 tweets in 2009 and 2010 alone.
By contrast, Satoshi Nakamoto authored fewer than 1,000 timestamped events over the same period. Highlighting the disparity, Lopp says: “His [Dorsey’s] activities do not fit the profile of someone who had the time and mental bandwidth to also be building a completely new financial system from scratch while maintaining perfect anonymity.”
In an effort to show that Dorsey and Nakamoto kept different schedules, Lopp compares Dorsey’s tweeting habits and travels between San Francisco and New York with Satoshi’s more consistent posting patterns, which strongly suggest the Bitcoin creator was operating from a single time zone. Lopp characterizes Dorsey as “clearly more of a night owl,” while Nakamoto maintained steadier posting hours.
A linchpin of Lopp’s analysis is a series of date-and-time conflicts showing that Satoshi’s most active coding and forum posting frequently coincided with Dorsey’s real-world obligations. The report identifies numerous events—such as Dorsey meeting celebrities, furnishing his home, or speaking at conferences—happening simultaneously with Satoshi’s commits, emails, or forum posts.
For instance, on November 6, 2009, Dorsey was having lunch with venture capitalist Fred Wilson. Just five minutes after the tweet confirming that lunch, Satoshi posted code to the Bitcoin SourceForge repository.
In another illustration, on December 9, 2009, Dorsey met the mayor of Paris, an event he tweeted about. Eighteen minutes after Dorsey’s update, Nakamoto posted on the BitcoinTalk forum. Lopp presents a latitude of these examples where Dorsey was publicly engaged in high-profile activities at nearly the same time Satoshi was busy writing code or forum posts.
On February 26, 2010 Dorsey attended a lengthy Square meeting that concluded by 10 PM Eastern time, while Satoshi made two forum posts at 6:17 and 6:48 PM Eastern time, clearly indicating a session of focused work.
Another example is May 20, 2010 when Dorsey was documented driving to dinner with his family, and just 10 minutes later, Satoshi posted to BitcoinTalk. On May 26, 2010, Dorsey met with Newark Mayor Cory Booker—a meeting precisely timeboxed by before and after tweets—Satoshi not only posted twice on BitcoinTalk but also attached a translation template file to one of his posts, suggesting simultaneous engagement in Bitcoin development.
During two sizable breaks in Satoshi’s public activity (March to October 2009 and March to May 2010), Dorsey continued posting at an average of 8.5 tweets per day. Lopp concedes that while “this doesn’t prove anything” on its own, it adds to the cumulative evidence undermining the Dorsey-as-Satoshi theory.
For Lopp, pinpointing the true identity of Satoshi is an unproductive exercise—one that undercuts the open-source, decentralized philosophy of Bitcoin. He concludes that it serves the community better to preserve Satoshi’s anonymity: “It is better for Bitcoin that Satoshi not be a man, for men are fallible, fickle, and fragile. Satoshi is an idea; it is better that all who contribute to Bitcoin be an embodiment of that idea. As such, I pose to you that it is to the benefit of Bitcoin that we crush any myths of Satoshi’s true identity.”
At press time, BTC traded at $79,916.
