US lawyer claims bitcoin invented by Estonian cryptographer

An American jurist is convinced that Estonian cryptographer Helger Lipmaa can be identified as cryptocurrency bitcoin's creator. Lipmaa himself rejects the idea. The question of the real identity of the digital currency's creator is of some interest, as they would be worth some €12.3 billion at bitcoin's current value.

Los Angeles lawyer Justin Sobaje is convinced that Helger Lipmaa is the creator of bitcoin, and says he has analyses and studies that prove it.

This would mean that Lipmaa is the individual behind Internet nom de guerre Satoshi Nakamoto, the handle used by the person or people who created bitcoin's original reference implementation, the standard from which the cryptocurrency has since grown.

Nakamoto published a paper in October 2008 that first described bitcoin, and followed this with the release of the first bitcoin software some three months later. He (or they) remained involved in the project personally until 2010, when others took over.

Creator's bitcoin reserves worth billions of dollars

As the original bitcoin miner, Nakamoto held a large amount of the digital currency. Sources put Nakamoto's stock at around one million and claim that apart from test transactions, hardly any of it was ever spent.

At the cryptocurrency's current value even after its recent crash, this means Nakamoto's reserves are worth more than €12.3 billion.

According to daily Postimees, Sobaje is convinced that senior researcher of the University of Tartu's computer science institute, Helger Lipmaa, is Satoshi Nakamoto, though Lipmaa rejects the idea.

"I'm certainly not Satoshi and I don't understand how he got to my name of all things," Helger commented Sobaje's claim. He added that bitcoin's original creator wasn't a cryptographer.

Despite the Japanese name, those after Nakamoto's true identity don't believe the digital currency's creator to actually be Japanese. Theories about the origin of bitcoin have included the names of several American and European cryptographers, computer scientists, and programmers.