Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym of the person or people who created Bitcoin. The name first appeared in 2008, when the bitcoin.org domain was registered on 18 August and the white paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" was posted to a cryptography mailing list on 31 October. Satoshi used a Japanese name and gave Japan as residence, though many have speculated the creator is British, and the real identity has never been proven.

In January 2009 Satoshi released Bitcoin v0.1 and mined the genesis block, which paid a reward of 50 bitcoins. During the first two years Satoshi worked with Hal Finney, James Donald, Nick Szabo and Ray Dillinger on the core code, mostly through email and forum posts. The last known message to the early group came in 2011, when Satoshi wrote that Satoshi had moved on to other things.

The person who usually ends up talking with this version is curious about how the system was designed, why proof-of-work decides which chain is valid, or what building something in public looked like before an