The true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, has perplexed the cryptocurrency community for over a decade. This enigmatic figure laid the foundations for blockchain technology and the decentralization movement before disappearing from the public eye. But what if Satoshi has been hiding in plain sight this whole time?
In recent years, some anons have pondered whether Sergey Nazarov, the founder of the decentralized oracle network Chainlink could be Satoshi himself.
Sergey undoubtedly possesses the technical skills and background to have plausibly created Bitcoin. But beyond that, his timeline during Bitcoin’s formation and series of coincidences have led many to speculate if he could be the mastermind behind it all.
From registering domains associated with Nakamoto’s areas of interest before the white paper’s release to possible ties with the Russian proxy server used by Satoshi, Nazarov emerges as a possible candidate.
This article will delve into the tantalizing clues that point to Sergey Nazarov actually being the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto.
While no smoking gun exists, the evidence makes a compelling case and if proven true, it would solve Bitcoin’s greatest mystery and provide insight into the ideology of the man responsible for starting it all.
Let’s go deep…
4chan: The Genesis of an Idea
Much of the speculation around Sergey Nazarov originally stemmed from anonymous users on 4chan, the infamous imageboard. 4chan has a deep connection with and affection for Chainlink, which likely inspired the detective work to link Nazarov to Nakamoto.
4chan is definitely the most uncredible source and you should never trust anything said there. But at the same time, its also one of the most honest and raw websites created – who can argue with weaponized autism?
The coincidences and details the anons unearthed are intriguing.
One of the first puzzles is the timeline of Nazarov’s activities, which lines up suspiciously well with Nakamoto’s. A possible smoking gun is Nazarov’s registration of the domain name smartcontract.com (Which now redirects to https://chainlinklabs.com) on October 25, 2008 – just 6 days before Satoshi published the Bitcoin whitepaper and introduced the world to blockchain technology.
Smart contracts were a central part of Nakamoto’s vision for the future of Bitcoin, so it’s a strange coincidence that Nazarov had the foresight to register the smartcontract.com domain 6 days before the whitepaper’s release.
Additionally, Nazarov registered several other domains related to companies such as QED Capital around the same period Nakamoto was active.
Beyond the domain evidence, both figures have a connection to Russia. Satoshi appeared to use a Russian proxy server to hide his identity, while Sergey was born in Russian before moving to the US.
In a 2020 interview Sergey accidentally admits he has been in the blockchain space for over 10 years before catching himself and downplaying the timeline. This would mean Nazarov was working in the industry during Bitcoin’s formative period from 2008-2010 when Nakamoto was still involved before disappearing.
The moment Sergey realised he almost just outed himself as Satoshi. $LINK@ChainLinkGod @ChainlinkP @permabulltard @ChainlinkBull @ChainlinkoracIe pic.twitter.com/Hj9cnY5FEQ
— David Levinson (@david__levinson) October 18, 2020
SideNote: 4Chan, Chainlink, Assblaster, Sloppy Jobs & Meme Culture
Before we dig deeper, lets establish a little backstory between 4chan and Chainlink.
4Chan has a long and storied history with Chainlink, it would be impossible to go into every detail here but I will try and convey their special relationship as best I can.
- Chainlink ICO: Chainlink held it’s ICO back in 2017 and had a 300ETH minimum to enter the presale, early anons on 4chan realizing its potential arranged to pool together their ETH to participate in the ICO and distribute LINK among themselves.
- Theories & Speculation: After the ICO concluded, there were daily threads on 4chan about Chainlink discussing it’s potential and how it could unlock the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
- Assblaster: At this time there was one poster who stood out by a mile, going by the moniker “ASSBLASTER” the poster seemed to have insider knowledge about Chainlink and it’s connections to banking and specifically SWIFT. There was something different about this person which stood out: Educated, articulate and with a seeming wealth of inside information that some people thought he might be part of the Chainlink team, or even Sergey himself. A lot of the information is lost due to the nature of 4chan, here is a typical thread though. Image version here (4.6MB) if that disappears.
- FUD & Reddit: After deciding that 4chan had found the God Protocol, Solved the Oracle problem and identified the key to generational wealth, the next part of the mission was to accumulate as much LINK as possible while also making sure that no Redditors were able to join the ride. A campaign of FUD and disinformation was waged, quite successfully to the point that most Redditors to this day still probably think Chainlink is a scam perpetuated by anonymous frogs.
- WTFWT: The 2018-2019 bear market was kind to Chainlink holders, the LINK token defied everything and stood out among a sea of red and steadily rose in price based on fundamentals, Google blog posts and endless partnerships.
- The Power of Memes: 4chan has long been an originator of some of the most famous memes which then filter down to Reddit, Twitter, 9Gag and other websites. The Link marines weaponized the power of memes to promote LINK with inside jokes, rare Sergeys and other images which have become part of Chainlink lore.
- Sloppy Job Simeon: Zeus Capital and the FUD Report: Around 2020 an unknown company named “Zeus Capital” released a report titled “The chainlink Fraud Exposed”, surprisingly still online. ( Uploaded here if it’s deleted). It was a well produced piece of content full of nonsense. 4chan being 4chan quickly worked to find out who was behind it and debunk it. It didn’t take long. The report was connected to NEXO, who seemingly had a large LINK short open which they needed to protect. Although never proven, evidence strongly pointed to the report being created by Simeon Rusanovof NEXO. Using the same typeform links as the NEXO website and containing a link in the PDF pointing to a users local computer using the hyperlink “file:///C:/Users/Simeon/Desktop/Chainlink/NAME_OF_REPORT”. A good breakdown is seen here from ChainLinkGod:
I tried to stay neutral during this whole @NexoFinance being @ZeusCapitalLLP debate, but we may have just found the smoking gun, ontop of all the other evidence found
They leaked themselves in the site’s typeform source code, screenshots below, I checked it my self$LINK https://t.co/9hjn3zk8LQ pic.twitter.com/ii7U8GsXos
— ChainLinkGod.eth (@ChainLinkGod) July 19, 2020
I could go on, but I think that covers some of the history of 4chan and chainlink.
I’ll leave you with an Assblaster quote.
I can’t reveal how much the other firms put in, but we put down 14MM USD executed when the price was around 16 cents, under the counter negotiations for bulk sum we basically got 100MM of the LINK. In essence the firm I work for PERSONALLY got 10% of all the LINK.
ASSBLASTER
Nazarov and Nakamoto: Personalities
There are subtle ways in which Sergey Nazarov mirrors the persona of Satoshi Nakamoto. Despite his accomplishments, Nakamoto intentionally remained a mysterious figure – known only by a pseudonym and communicating sporadically.
Similarly, Nazarov maintains a low profile and reveals little about his personal life, he seems driven and focused on work. Both men value privacy and anonymity, shunning the spotlight. This aligned mindset extends to how they present themselves and interact with the public.
SN=SN
Nazarov and Nakamoto also share the same first initial and last initial, a coincidence maybe, but worth noting.
When directly questioned in interviews if he is in fact Satoshi, Nazarov denies the claims but refuses to speculate on Nakamoto’s true identity.
Some interpret this caginess as an indirect way of hiding the truth. After all, if he definitively knew he wasn’t Satoshi, why not just provide thoughts on who the real one could be? This evasiveness echoes Nakamoto’s own disappearance when pressed for more personal details.
Both figures seem to want to let their work speak for them, rather than engaging in excessive publicity or personal brand building.
The Russian Proxy Connection
Some of the most compelling technical evidence linking Nazarov to Nakamoto comes from Bitcoin’s early code itself. When examining the code for Bitcoin v0.1.0 released in January 2009, oddities stand out in the file “irc.cpp” on line 212.
- This line appears to contain a cipher that decrypts to a Russian proxy IP address, suggesting Satoshi was utilizing a Russian proxy at the time.
- The proxy was provided by the now defunct Russian technology company Anders Telecom.
- Experts debate the true meaning of the cipher, but many find it a credible sign of Nakamoto’s attempts to obscure his identity and location.
- The motivation to use a Russian proxy service suddenly makes sense if the Russian-born Nazarov was behind Bitcoin’s creation.
The Hotel Review
The cipher used in the irc.cpp file produces an IP address: 87.251.146. From CoinTelegraph –
Searching for this IP address yields results in Iran. However, due to IPv4 address exhaustion, global IP addresses have been reassigned since 2009. We did find a user named Sergey, posting reviews of hotels in Vietnam in December 2008 and January 2009, logging into the site with the same proxy as Satoshi.
So this shows a Russian user named “Sergey” posting from the same proxy around the time Nakamoto was active. The user posted a review of a hotel in Vietnam.
Interestingly, one part of the review mentions the poor internet service at the hotel and how he had to “fix some glitches myself”
The hotel has internet on a computer next to the reception. Few of the staff understand it, I even had to fix some glitches myself: don’t take their word for it that the Internet doesn’t work! Check that the network connection is marked enabled!)))))) Computers are not Russified – therefore communication is only through transliteration.
There is free wi-fi on the territory, as well as on the only street along the coast.
“Sergey”: otzyv.ru Review of Ocean Star Resort
It’s interesting that someone who shared an IP address with Satoshi Nakamoto at some point deemed it necessary in a hotel review to mention the poor internet connection and had to personally fix some problems with it, suggesting a technical background.
The Boat Photo
Another piece of evidence is that the same Satoshi IP address (87.251.146) was also used to review a cruise trip from Russia, via Finland & Sweden to Tallinn in Estonia, by a user named “Sergey”.
There also happens to be a photo of a young Sergey Nazarov taken on a boat with the Estonia flag behind him.
This one is a maybe a stretch as the cruise ship would probably fly the Russian flag and Sergey is wearing short sleeves which would indicate the photo is not taken around Christmas in northern Europe.
The language used in this review also doesn’t seem to line up with Satoshi’s. You can read a full archive of his communications online here.
Who is Sergey Nazarov?
Sergey Nazarov was born in Russia before immigrating to the United States as a child with his family in the 1990s. He studied philosophy and business at New York University before entering the entrepreneurial world.
After formative business experiences at QED Capital and other firms, Nazarov founded Chainlink in 2017. Chainlink has grown into the most widely used decentralized oracle network, providing critical off-chain data to blockchain applications.
Despite his outward success, Nazarov remains an enigma to most. He operates quietly (unlike a lot of founders!), letting his technology speak for itself.
His consistent avoidance of the spotlight seems to hint at a desire to let his work do the talking.
Nazarov possesses the ideal background to have plausibly led Bitcoin’s creation during his early ventures. The intellectual philosopher turned innovator may have left more than a legacy of oracle networks, but rather the entire crypto space as we know it.
If Nazarov has perpetuated one of history’s greatest mysteries simply out of a wish to stay anonymous and eschew fame, it would be perfectly in character.
Conclusion
The cumulative evidence makes a compelling case that Sergey Nazarov could indeed be the man behind the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym. While no singular smoking gun exists, the pattern of coincidences could point to his involvement in Bitcoin from the very start.
Nazarov’s prescient domain registrations before the whitepaper release, use of Russian infrastructure mirroring Satoshi, accidental timeline admissions, and strategic avoidance of publicity demonstrate more than just random chance. He possesses the ideal background and philosophical beliefs to have pioneered decentralized technology motivated by anonymity.
Perhaps the greatest testimony rests in Chainlink itself – a project that embodies the ideals of connectivity, transparency and trust that Satoshi originally envisioned…
