Police raid Sydney house after bitcoin ‘creator is named’

Police have raided the Sydney home of a man named as the likely creator of cryptocurrency bitcoin. Bitcoin’s code was released in 2009 under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto, and journalists and investors have been trying to track down the creator ever since. On Wednesday afternoon, around a dozen federal police officers raided the house after a locksmith broke open the door - just hours after Wired magazine named Craig Wright as the man responsible for bitcoin. As an early miner of bitcoins, Nakamoto is also sitting on about 1 million bitcoins, worth more than $400 million at present exchange rates, according to bitcoin expert Sergio Demian Lerner.

Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.

Wired magazine

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has long been a mystery that journalists and bitcoin enthusiasts have tried to unravel. The police raids in Australia came hours after Wired magazine and technology website Gizmodo published articles saying that their investigations showed Wright, an entrepreneur and academic, was most probably the secretive bitcoin creator. Wright is the chief executive of Australian-registered DeMorgan Ltd, which he describes on his Linkedin page as “a pre-IPO Australian listed company focused on alternative currency”. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) said in a statement that the officers’ “presence at Mr. Wright’s property is not associated with the media reporting overnight about bitcoins”.

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