- Today is celebrated as Satoshi Nakamoto’s 48th birthday, based on the birth date he registered with The P2P Foundation.
- Satoshi’s disappearance from Bitcoin after its early days allowed the protocol to grow without a central leader, which was crucial for its success.
- Bitcoin now belongs to everyone, and even if Satoshi’s identity were revealed, they would not be granted complete ownership over the project.
Today we celebrate the creator of Bitcoin on Satoshi Nakamoto’s birthday. Happy birthday, Satoshi!
Satoshi’s Mysterious Birthday
We don’t know who Satoshi is and we likely never will, but the pseudonymous founder does apparently have a birthday. Satoshi entered a birth date when they registered the pseudonym with The P2P Foundation. Satoshi’s birthday is, according to that registration, April 5, 1975. (For proof, Satoshi’s age showed up as 38 on The P2P Foundation on April 4, 2014, and as 40 on April 5, 2015, implying an April 5, 1975, birthday.)
Of course, the Bitcoin faithful have drawn up all sorts of theories about why Satoshi chose this date specifically – besides it actually being their real birthday.
Theories on Satoshi’s Birthday Date
One has to do with the anniversary of Executive Order 6102, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt banned the private ownership of gold on April 5, 1933. Americans handed over gold to the government and, with the Gold Reserve Act the following year, the gold content of the U.S. dollar was increased from $20 to $35 an ounce. Really, that was just a devaluation of the dollar because it now took more dollars to buy the exact same amount of gold.