I Am Not Dorian Nakamoto: 'Real' Satoshi Nakamoto Speaks For First Time in Five Years

An online chat account last used by bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto has spoken for the first time in five years, stating he is not Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, the 64-year-old man thought to have made the virtual currency.

Los Angeles resident Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto was claimed to be the creator of bitcoin by a feature in Newsweek magazine; hours later, the Japanese-American was hounded by journalists, chased across town and finally interviewed at a local Associated Press bureau. Newsweek is owned by IBT Media, parent company of IBTimes UK.

Nakamoto denied any involvement with the cryptocurrency, telling the AP that his quotes published by Newsweek were misinterpreted. "I got nothing to do with it," he said, repeatedly. "It sounded like I was involved before with bitcoin and looked like I'm not involved now. That's not what I meant. I want to clarify that," he said.

"I'm not involved with bitcoin, ok?" Nakamoto had earlier told the pack of journalists waiting outside his house.

Satoshi breaks five year silence

Just hours after the AP interview ended, an account for P2P Foundation's Ning communication network - in the name of Satoshi Nakamoto and using the same email address published by Nakamoto in the 2009 white paper outlining what bitcoin is - denied he was the man featured by Newsweek.

Having laid dormant since first posting on Ning more than five years ago, Nakamoto broke his silence to say "I am not Dorian Nakamoto" in the early hours of 7 March.

Speaking to TechCrunch, the creator of Ning, Josef Davies-Coates, said the person posting last night "could easily be the same person" who first posted about bitcoin in 2009.

Davies-Coates added: "I can confirm that the registered email address on the account on our ning network is [redacted] which is the same one mentioned in the original paper. So perhaps whoever created that account is indeed the 'real' person, whoever that is. I'd guess they likely are."

In a post on Reddit, P2P Foundation employee Nicolas Mendoza said: "We are in the process of verification of Satoshi's post in our Ning network. We will publish an official statement on this subject in the next hours."

Until earlier this week, Nakamoto was believed to be pseudonym hiding the true identity of one or several people who created the bitcoin virtual currency. After publishing the white paper outlining what bitcoin is and how it works, Nakamoto mined the first 50 bitcoins on 3 January, 2009 in what has become known as the Genesis Block.

Soon after, Nakamoto vanished and is not known to have communicated with anyone using this identity, until today.