- Stephen Mollah said he was Satoshi Nakamoto in front of a dozen journalists in London
- Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd was wrongly named as Nakamoto last month in an HBO documentary
Another man has come forward claiming to be the mysterious creator behind Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
This time, he’s called Stephen Mollah. Taking to the stage at London’s Front Line Club in front of around a dozen journalists, Mollah made the claim with one journalist calling it an “odd set up.”
Live tweeting the event on X, Joe Tidy, a BBC journalist, said: “An odd set up to the press conference as the organiser asked me to pay £500 to attend and appear on stage to ask questions of the billionaire mystery man.”
I’m at a London event billed as the ‘unveiling of the true legal identity of Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto’. An odd set up to the press conference as the organiser asked me to pay £500 to attend and appear on stage to ask questions of the billionaire mystery man. pic.twitter.com/3oTB6qX20U
— Joe Tidy (@joetidy) October 31, 2024
According to Mollah, he’s claimed he’s Nakamoto before, is currently in a legal dispute about it, and is now ready to provide evidence. He tried to reveal who he was in 2016, but “someone stopped him.”
After an hour of listening to Mollah’s backstory, he failed to provide evidence. Instead, he supplied a series of screenshots that could have easily been faked. When Mollah was asked to move some of the Genesis Bitcoin, he said he would in the ‘next few months.’
Mollah and Charles Anderson, the event organizer, have been accused of fraud when Mollah posed as Nakamoto between November 2022 and October last year. The pair pleaded not guilty at a hearing last month, The Standard reports.
Another one to the list
Mollah joins a growing list of people who have claimed to be Nakamoto or others believe them to be.
Last month, the HBO documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery wrongly named Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd as Nakamoto. Before the big reveal, the documentary also pointed to Blockstream founder Adam Back.
Following the documentary, Todd said he’d been forced underground over fears for his safety.
Others believed to be Nakamoto include late software engineer Hal Finney and computer scientist Nick Szabo.
In May, a UK High Court ruled against Australian Craigt Wright that he was Nakamoto, arguing that Wright had lied “extensively and repeatedly” throughout the trial, further accusing him of presenting “fabricated” evidence to support his claims.