- Satoshi Nakamoto’s old Twitter account has not just been uncovered by a crypto researcher
- Varun Mather thought he had uncovered the old Twitter account and offered masses of evidence for his theory
- The real account owner was revealed as being “someone called Mike who runs an affiliate site”
For six glorious hours on Monday we lived in a world where the anonymous Twitter account of Satoshi Nakamoto had been discovered. An intrepid researcher going by the name Varun Mather engaged in a lengthy tweet thread which detailed how he had come across a Twitter account that bore all the hallmarks of the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator, from early Bitcoin references to an apparent similarity in language. However, the joy was to be short-lived when the real owner of the account was identified as a gold fan by the name of Mike, although Mather is still convinced he has struck gold.
GoldLover Really Satoshi Nakamoto?
Mather’s investigations began when he “stumbled across what I now sincerely believe is Satoshi Nakamoto’s anonymous Twitter account” under the handle @fafcffacfff and the name GoldLover. Investigations of GoldLover’s tweets led Mather to make some connections to Satoshi, given that he frequently referenced the contents of some of Satoshi’s emails as far back as February 2009. Mather also claims that GoldLover was the second person to ever tweet about Bitcoin.
Recently I stumbled across a curious tweet from 2009, which upon further analysis, convinced me that it was from an anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto account.
This is Satoshi -> @fafcffacfff
Pre-Bitcoin announcement era. Thread (also, non-paywalled post)👇https://t.co/UgdIyTHo8t
— Varun (@varun_mathur) February 22, 2021
Mather went through “every tweet ever written by” GoldLover to see if he could find more corroborating evidence, putting together a “wall of interesting tweets” that he thought backed up his theory:
Mather also compared the language used in the tweets with that of Satoshi, believing that “The language is similar (but not identical) between Satoshi’s email to Wei Dai on Jan 10th 2009”. Mather also found a correlation between GoldLover’s tweets and the sequence of events in Bitcoin’s history, leading him to the conclusion that “this was Satoshi”.
Real Owner Identified
Mather posted his evidence on Twitter and on his blog, Off The Track. However, just six hours later his theory was debunked by Twitter user xtranaut who unveiled the true account owner’s identity:
The account belongs to add someone called Mike who runs an affiliate site. He took an early interest in Bitcoin. Not evidence of Satoshiness. pic.twitter.com/MogPJByx0j
— xtranaut (@xtraelv) February 22, 2021
This theory was backed up by Bitcoin developer Cøbra who added that “Occam’s razor would say this is more likely an account that stumbled on Bitcoin somewhere, and just posted about it. Rather than Satoshi secretly tweeting clues.”
Despite this apparent rejection of his theories, Mather has stuck to his guns, stating in an update that “the level of conviction this indeed was Satoshi’s account has gone up significantly.”
Someone should ask Craig Wright if he’s got any old Twitter accounts he has forgotten about. That’ll clear it up.
