Was the inventor of Bitcoin a man found dead in horribly tragic circumstances?
A few days ago Cointelegraph carried an article by my colleague Cyril Gilson, which asked the question God is Dead? Craig Wright Is a Very Bad Satoshi Anyway.
Cyril proposed that David Kleiman may have been Satoshi Nakamoto, the enigmatic inventor of Bitcoin, the world’s most famous cryptocurrency. We have covered the topic of Satoshi Nakamoto extensively in the past and being a Cryptocurrency publication, I am sure that we will touch on this subject in the future as well.
One thing is for certain that anything you read online surrounding this topic will involve a certain amount of conjecture.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto is turning out to be a mystery that is a case fit for M. Hercule Poirot. Here is a theory that we must consider as well.
A grisly end, a promising beginning and a bravely led life
David Alan Kleiman is no longer with us, he died in April of 2013 after having been confined to a wheelchair for years following a motorcyle accident in 1995.
He was all of 46 years old. David died in abject poverty and was found in his Riviera Beach, Florida house which was facing foreclosure. According to Gizmodo his body was found in a state of decomposition, with wheelchair tracks of blood and fecal matter covering the room. A loaded gun and open bottles of alcohol were also discovered by his side.
A bullet hole in the mattress suggested that a gun had been discharged in the room at some point but no casings were found. Keiman had been suffering years of ill health and had been infected with MRSA, which was the most likely reason for his demise.
However things were not always so bad for David who was a US Army veteran and a deputy for Palm Beach County Sheriff. An obituary in Florida Weekly described him as being 6’ tall and weighing over 200 lbs.
After being rehabilitated from the effects of the motorcycle accident, he started getting more interested in computers and started a company called Computer Forensics LLC with two business partners Carter Conrad and Patrick Paige.
David would not let his disability come in the way of his passion: Computers.
The Common Threads
Why would we consider David Kleiman as Satoshi Nakamoto. There are two reasons for that. One is the connection between Satoshi Nakamoto and David Kleiman and the second the connection between Craig Wright and David Kleiman.
Craig Wright has attempted to come out as Satoshi Nakamoto recently with futile results. However, it can be that either Craig was aware of who the real Nakamoto was or he was part of a team or at least on the sidelines of a team that were or are Satoshi Nakamoto.
David Kleiman was a contributor to computer security mailing lists in the early 2000s and these lists were maintained by securityfocus.com and metzdowd.com. It is thus a strange coincidence that we find that Satoshi Nakamoto also used metzdowd.com during the early times of Bitcoin.
In fact Satoshi’s famous paper was released in a Metzdowd.com list in 2008. Now we come to the connection between Wright and Kleiman. Gizmodo claim that they have emails between both Wright and Kleiman. In fact, in the emails they have, Wright is asking for Kleiman’s help.
The email reads:
“I need your help editing a paper I am going to release later this year. I have been working on a new form of electronic money. Bit cash, Bitcoin...You are always there for me Dave. I want you to be a part of it all.”
A Mysterious USB Drive
The plot surrounding David Kleiman thickens even further as he was known to carry a metal encased USB drive on him at all times. It is believed that this drive was passed down from him to his brother Ira.
David’s business partner and friend Patrick Paige told Gizmodo that David was using strong encryption technology. He was quoted as saying that it would be a waste of time to try to look for anything in Dave’s computer.
In the article we published earlier we did discuss Craig Wright’s purchase of supercomputers and it may be possible that the idea that Wright would like to access David’s locked away fortune is not that inconceivable after all.
A million dollar Bitcoin question might be, what was on that USB drive? Will we ever find out?
David Kleiman as a likely Satoshi
It is quite likely that David was a probable Satoshi Nakamoto. He had a strong background in cryptography. He was active on the same mailing lists as Nakamoto. He knew one of the principle characters in this drama - Craig Wright, and moreover he was known to be secretive and went to great lengths to protect his privacy. Unfortunately we have no way of knowing if David really was Satoshi Nakamoto and the only voice that is left from him is one giving expert opinions in video clips on CNN and ABC.
If David was really Satoshi, then we will never ever be able to solve the problem of Nakamoto ever. He will always remain a mystery. But given the luck of the journalists who have covered this story, it is quite likely that I may also be proven wrong.
Many have burnt their fingers on covering the story of Satoshi Nakamoto including the BBC, the Economist and others. We are certainly not scared of doing that either.