Many in the Bitcoin community told me that, in deference to the Bitcoin creator’s clear desire for privacy, they didn’t want to see the wizard unmasked. But even among those who said this, few could resist debating the clues the founder left behind. As I had these conversations with the programmers and entrepreneurs who are most deeply involved in Bitcoin, I encountered a quiet but widely held belief that much of the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo.
Mr. Szabo is nearly as much of a mystery as Satoshi. But in the course of my reporting I kept turning up new hints that drew me further into the chase, and I even stumbled into a rare encounter with Mr. Szabo at a private gathering of top Bitcoin programmers and entrepreneurs.
At that event, Mr. Szabo denied that he was Satoshi, as he has consistently in electronic communications, including in an email on Wednesday. But he acknowledged that his history left little question that he was among a small group of people who, over decades, working sometimes cooperatively and sometimes in competition, laid the foundation for Bitcoin and created many parts that later went into the virtual currency. Mr. Szabo’s most notable contribution was a Bitcoin predecessor known as bit gold that achieved many of the same goals using similar tools of advanced math and cryptography.
It may be impossible to prove Satoshi’s identity until the person or people behind Bitcoin’s curtain decide to come forward and prove ownership of Satoshi’s old electronic accounts. At this point, the creator’s identity is no longer important to Bitcoin’s future. Since Satoshi stopped contributing to the project in 2011, most of the open-source code has been rewritten by agroup of programmers whose identities are known.
But Mr. Szabo’s story provides insight into often misunderstood elements of Bitcoin’s creation. The software was not a bolt out of the blue, as is sometimes assumed, but was instead built on the ideas of multiple people over several decades.
This history is more than just a matter of curiosity. The software has come to be viewed in academic and financial circles as a significant computer science breakthrough that may reshape the way money looks and moves. Recently, banks like Goldman Sachs have taken the first steps toward embracing the technology.
Mr. Szabo himself has continued to be quietly involved in the work. In the beginning of 2014, Mr. Szabo joined Vaurum, a Bitcoin start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., that was operating in stealth mode and that aimed to build a better Bitcoin exchange. After his arrival, Mr. Szabo helped reorient the company to take advantage of the Bitcoin software’s capability for so-called smart contracts, which enable self-executing financial transactions, according to people briefed on the company’s operations who spoke on condition of anonymity.
