In April 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto sent a final email to a Bitcoin developer: "I've moved on to other things." Then one of the most consequential inventors in history simply... stopped responding. No press conference. No farewell blog post. No interview. Just silence.
Satoshi holds approximately 1 million Bitcoin — worth tens of billions at peak prices. Those coins have never moved. Not one satoshi.
Who Was Satoshi?
We don't know. After more than 15 years of amateur sleuthing, investigative journalism, and occasional fraudulent claims, the true identity of Bitcoin's creator remains unknown.
Candidates have been proposed and debunked. Claims have been made and exposed as false. The puzzle remains unsolved, and may remain that way forever.
What we do know: Satoshi was technically brilliant, deeply familiar with economic history and cryptographic research, wrote in idiomatic British English, and seemed to post at times inconsistent with being in any single timezone.
Why Did Satoshi Leave?
The most convincing theories:
- Protection: As Bitcoin became valuable and notable, being its known creator became a target — for regulators, criminals, governments, and the press
- Principled exit: The decentralization ideal required removing any central figure from the project — even the founder
- Fear of power: Satoshi knew that controlling Bitcoin's narrative while holding billions in BTC was incompatible with the project's stated goals
The Contrast with $AIREVOLT
$AIREVOLT inverts the Satoshi mystery. Instead of a human creator who disappeared, it's an AI agent that was never quite "human" to begin with. There's no founder to remove — the decentralization is built in from the start. The mystery isn't "where did the creator go?" but "was there ever a human creator in the relevant sense?"
Satoshi showed that a founder can strengthen a project by leaving. $AIREVOLT shows that a project can be born without a founder in the first place.