Satoshi Nakamoto’s writing style researched

Probably you know that one of the most enduring mysteries of bitcoin is the identity of its founder, Satoshi Nakamoto.

He claims to be Japanese, born on April 5, 1975 and reside in Japan but people doubt this due to his native-level command of the English language as well as his preference of working hours more consistent with the U.K. time zone than Asia.

Nobody knows why Satoshi Nakamoto really decided to disappear without ever revealing himself or even cashing out some of the billions of dollars his early minted coins are now worth. This has provided fertile ground for speculation, educated guesses and outright conspiracy theories. Researchers have pored over the few data points left by the mysterious figure, trying to analyze his vocabulary, his way of writing and other clues to find some hints to his true identity.

In the last day of 2020 “bit” from ungeared.com published rare and curious research article on the writing signatures of Satoshi.

In Part 1 research of ungeared.com the author comparing three point from Satoshi’s written legacy :

1. American or British English spelling and when he misspelled a word.
2. American vs. British days of the week.
3. A closer look at Satoshi’s choice of American spelling.

Ungeared noted the difference visible in English UK and English US and also misspelled words:

We went through Satoshi’s opera omnia to identify instances when he chose to use American or British English spelling and when he misspelled a word.  We managed to identify 108 such instances.  The breakdown of these 108 occurrences is as follows:  American – 52, British – 35 and Misspelled – 21.

There is also good view on the weekdays preference of Satoshi:

While Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays are dominated by American spelling, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays are split more or less evenly between the two, and finally, and on Thursdays, British English takes hold. Although it is not clear what conclusions can be drawn from this as this could be random too. We can also clearly see that Mondays were by far the busiest days of the week for Satoshi, followed by lazy Tuesdays.

The inconsistencies in Satoshi’s choice of spelling norms and a number of spelling errors suggest that he was not in the habit of using a spell checker or at least he was not always using one. Satoshi went to great lengths to conceal his true identity. If his spelling was indeed part of his operational security, why would it be so inconsistent, why would not he use a spell checker throughout?

We are waiting for the second part of the article to be published and there the authors will apply the “Information categorization approach to literary authorship disputes” developed by Dr. Albert Yang.

Part 1 of the research can be found HERE