Feds raid alleged Bitcoin creator’s home

The Reuters news agency confirmed the raid, quoting “Reuters witnesses” as saying that Australian police had “raided the Sydney home and office on Wednesday of a man named by Wired magazine as the probable creator of bitcoin and holder of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency”.

According to The Guardian, more than 10 police personal arrived at a property in the Sydney suburb of Gordon to “clear the house”.

The publications both used documents, leaked emails, interviews, and a transcript of a meeting reportedly between Wright and Australian tax officials in order to make the connection.

Based on Wright’s LinkedIn profile, he is involved in a number of Australian tech enterprises including holding the role of CEO at DeMorgan, a “pre-IPO Australian-listed company focused on alternative currency” that controls companies such as C01N, an electronic wallet and transaction processor based on the bitcoin blockchain.

Australian Federal Police have raided the home the Sydney home of Craig Steven Wright, who is now believed to be a co-inventor of the Bitcoin digital currency.

The raid is apparently due to a tax dispute between the Australian Tax Office and Wright’s former company, Hotwire Preemptive Intelligence. Officers wearing white gloves could be seen from the street searching the cupboards and surfaces in the garage and were said to be “clearing the house”.

Wired magazine said their own investigations showed that Mr Wright was probably the secretive bitcoin creator.

According to recent findings, the founder of digital currency bitcoin, who is commonly known by his pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, could be a 45-year-old Australian.

WIRED US said it first saw evidence linking Wright to bitcoin’s origin in November, when a source provided documents leading to “several direct, publicly visible connections between Nakamoto and Wright”.

In 2014, Newsweek claimed it found Nakamoto-a Japanese-American named Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoins are generated by complex chains of interactions among a huge network of computers around the planet, and are not backed by any government or central bank, unlike traditional currencies.

“He was a very mysterious type of guy, he didn’t say a whole lot”, he told AFP, adding that he was “ultra intelligent”.

Last year, its tax office ruled that bitcoin should be considered an asset, and not a currency. It was created in 2009 by a person or group called Satoshi Nakamoto.

Federal police searched Craig Steven Wright’s properties, but said the raid was about tax, not Bitcoin.