Recently, there has been speculation about a potential breach of wallets believed to be associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator.
Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, has weighed in on these speculations, offering his perspective on the matter.
The speculation arose from an unsubstantiated report that researchers from a Kentucky-based lab have reportedly cracked eight out of twelve key mnemonics securing Satoshi Nakamoto’s Genesis Wallet. The mnemonics words revealed were "Kentucky," "chat," "fried," "Friday," "Vivo," "chicken," "dollar" and "fifty."
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Hoskinson debunked the report saying "Fake news is fake" adding that Satoshi did not use keywords, thus nullifying the claims made. The BIP-39 standard used for creating seed phrases and encryption keys in crypto wallets came out in 2013, Hoskinson added.
Fake news is fake https://t.co/Z1JvRinLJA
Satoshi didn't even use keywords. BIP-39 came out in 2013. He generated his keys using the old wallet.dat keypool. I'm not sure one can even partially break keywords through brute force. How would you even verify that the partial keyset…
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) November 29, 2024
BIP39 was introduced in 2013 by Marek Palatinus, Pavol Rusnak, Aaron Voisine and Sean Bowe to propose a standardized method of generating mnemonic sentences for deterministic wallets. This was four years after Bitcoin's launch and two years after Satoshi exited the scene.
On April 23, 2011, Satoshi sent an email to another Bitcoin developer informing him that they had "moved on to other things" and that the cryptocurrency's future was "in good hands."
Hoskinson went on to say that "Satoshi generated his keys using the old wallet.dat keypool," highlighting the uncertainty of a breach. He added, "I'm not sure one can even partially break keywords through brute force. How would you even verify that the partial keyset belongs to a particular wallet?"
Satoshi among top 20 wealthiest individuals
As previously reported, Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin holdings have topped $100 billion, propelling the BTC pseudonymous creator into the world's top 20 richest people.
Patoshi wallets are currently worth almost $108 billion, according to Timechainindex. These wallets, which were involved with early Bitcoin mining between 2009 and 2010, are thought to be Satoshi's and contain more than 1.12 million BTC. With Bitcoin's recent climb, these holdings now compete for fortunes on the Forbes Rich List.
Amid all these, Satoshi Nakamoto's identity remains a mystery till present.
