Every few years the crypto world gets obsessed with one question all over again: who the hell is Satoshi Nakamoto?
We’ve had governments, AIs from the future, even wild theories about extraterrestrials. But lately a much simpler – almost uncomfortably – human candidate has been gaining traction. And no, it’s not who you immediately think (well, maybe it is now).
The idea that Jack Dorsey, the beard-wearing, Bitcoin-maximalist ex-CEO of Twitter and founder of Block, could actually be the person who wrote the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008 feels both ridiculous and weirdly plausible at the same time. I’ve followed this rabbit hole deeper than I care to admit, and honestly? The circumstantial evidence is starting to pile up in ways that make you raise an eyebrow.
Why Some Very Smart People Think Jack Dorsey Is Satoshi
He Was Literally One of the Original Cypherpunks
Let’s start with the basics. To even be in the running for Satoshi, you pretty much needed to be swimming in the cypherpunk waters in the 1990s. Jack Dorsey wasn’t just dipping a toe – he was all in.
At around 20 years old, while studying at the University of Missouri-Rolla, Dorsey joined the legendary cypherpunk mailing list – the same one that birthed the ideas behind digital cash, privacy tech, and eventually Bitcoin itself. We’re talking the original 1,300 members. That puts him in extremely rare company.
He even built his own little website on the university server promoting the cypherpunk mission. Old screenshots show him name-drops of Adam Back, Hal Finney, and David Chaum’s DigiCash years before most tech bros had ever heard those names.
“I also wish to end my dependence on the American Dollar ($) and in that vein am setting up a bartering network.”
– Jack Dorsey, blog post from 2003
That quote didn’t age poorly, did it?
The Man Can Actually Code – And in C++ No Less
One of the weakest parts of most “Satoshi candidate” theories is that the skill question. Bitcoin’s original client was written in C++, a language that’s unforgiving and was already considered “old school” even in 2008.
Dorsey learned BASIC on an IBM PCjr as a kid, moved to C, then taught himself a ridiculous list of languages by his late teens: Python, Java, Perl, Lisp, Objective-C… and yes, C++. By 15 he was already writing commercial dispatch software for taxi companies that stayed in use for decades.
By the time he was 32 – the exact age Satoshi would have been when the whitepaper dropped – Dorsey had been a professional programmer for almost two decades. That’s more than enough runway.
Perfect Timing: Fired From Twitter Right Before the Whitepaper
Here’s where things get spooky. Satoshi once told an early collaborator that Bitcoin took roughly two years of serious work. Do the math backward from October 31, 2008, and you land right in the middle of… Jack Dorsey getting fired as CEO of Twitter.
Reports from the time say he was leaving the office early for “fashion drawing classes” and yoga. Or… was he quietly finishing the most important software project in financial history?
Three weeks after he’s shown the door, the Bitcoin whitepaper hits the cypherpunk list. Two months later, the genesis block is mined. The timing is uncanny.
The “Coincidences” Are Starting to Feel Less Coincidental
Believers have compiled lists that make you feel like you’re losing your mind. Some highlights:
- Bitcoin whitepaper released on Halloween – the birthday of Neal Stephenson (author of Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash, both massive influences on cypherpunks and confirmed favorites of Dorsey)
- Satoshi’s first recorded transaction: January 11, 2009 – Jack Dorsey’s mother’s birthday
- Satoshi registers on BitcoinTalk: November 19, 2009 – Dorsey’s own birthday (and later the date Block chose for its 2025 Investor Day)
- Last block believed mined by Satoshi: May 3, 2010 – Dorsey’s father’s birthday
You can call it numerology all you want, but when the dates keep lining up with family birthdays and favorite authors… it stops feeling random.
He Basically Bankrolled the Destruction of “Faketoshi”
When Craig Wright spent years claiming to be Satoshi, Jack didn’t just sit quietly. He co-founded and funded COPA – the organization that eventually took Wright to court and forced him to admit he lied.
Then, in the middle of the trial, Dorsey starts wearing “Satoshi” shirts in public. The timing feels like performance art.
Perhaps the strangest detail: in May 2020, 145 ancient Bitcoin addresses signed a message calling Wright a fraud. The very first address listed began with “1jak” – Dorsey’s extremely old online handle from the 1990s.
But Wait – Five Solid Reasons This Theory Falls Apart
Look, I get the excitement. But there are also extremely good reasons to pump the brakes.
Jack Was Insanely Busy – And Very Public
Bitcoin required thousands of hours of focused, anonymous work. Meanwhile Dorsey was:
- Chairman of Twitter after being fired as CEO
- Founding and launching Square in 2009 (a company that went public at $9 billion)
- Traveling the world doing press, conferences, and State Department trips to Iraq and Syria
He was one of the most visible tech founders on earth. Satoshi, by contrast, was a ghost who complained constantly about being “very busy” and eventually vanished because he had “moved on to other things.”
The Posting Patterns Don’t Match At All
Casa CTO Jameson Lopp did the forensic work here, and it’s brutal. Satoshi’s forum and email activity shows an extremely regular sleep schedule in Pacific Time – posting peaks between 9am and 9pm PST with sharp drop-offs at night.
Jack Dorsey’s Twitter activity from the same period? All over the place – exactly what you’d expect from someone flying between time zones constantly.
Direct Conflicts in the Timeline
There are multiple moments where Dorsey was verifiably in one place while Satoshi was posting:
- December 9, 2009 – Dorsey tweets he’s walking to meet the mayor of Paris. Eighteen minutes later Satoshi makes detailed technical replies on BitcoinTalk.
- November 2009 – Dorsey tweets about a late lunch with Fred Wilson. Five minutes later Satoshi commits code to SourceForge.
- July 2010 – Dorsey tweets “Boom” after a Square presentation. During the exact same window Satoshi is active on the forums.
You can argue pre-scheduled posts, but at some point Occam’s razor kicks in.
Personality Mismatch
Satoshi’s writing is cautious, almost paranoid about government surveillance, extremely private.
Dorsey spent years as one of the most public CEOs in Silicon Valley, doing TED talks, podcast circuits, and diplomatic trips with the U.S. government. Hard to reconcile the recluse with the guy who lived on Twitter (literally).
The Dates Are Just Apophenia
Humans are pattern-matching machines. Show us enough dates and we’ll find Jesus in toast. When you have thousands of Bitcoin-related timestamps and a public figure with a documented life, coincidences are inevitable.
“You can find patterns in anything. It preys upon our monkey brain’s innate desire to find meaning in random noise.”
– Jameson Lopp
He’s not wrong.
So… What Do I Actually Think?
Here’s where I land after months of reading every forum post, every old tweet, every archived website:
The evidence that Dorsey is Satoshi is easily the strongest circumstantial case ever made for any public figure. It’s orders of magnitude beyond the Len Sassaman or Nick Szabo theories in terms of timeline fit, skill match, and ideological alignment.
But – and this is a big but – there is zero smoking gun, and the direct timeline conflicts are extremely hard to wave away. My current probability? Maybe 15-20 %. Enough to keep the theory alive forever, not enough to bet the house on.
The most Dorsey-like explanation is that he knows exactly who Satoshi is (or was part of a small group), has chosen to protect that secret, and occasionally drops breadcrumbs because he finds the whole mystery hilarious. The “Satoshi” t-shirt during the Wright trial? Classic Jack performance art.
But damn if this particular theory doesn’t keep me up at night.
