Australia police raid home of man said to be bitcoin founder

Satoshi Nakamoto was previously floated as the name of the person who originated the ingenious concept and the computer coding behind it. But no one ever saw the presumably pseudonymous creator – he, she or they only communicated on the Internet.

A series of archived blogposts, old emails, other evidence and a supposed admission from Wright, crossing the Wired and Gizmodo reports, suggest Wright, a technology entrepreneur and computer scientist.

It’s not known precisely why at least 10 police officers descended on Wright’s home in the Australian suburb of Gordon at about 1:30 pm local time, but witnesses reported that a thorough search was conducted and that one officer was heard to say that they were “clearing the house”.

What’s particularly interesting is that Wright was raided by the police “to assist the Australian Taxation Office”-and according to the leaked documents, Wright was involved in a tax dispute”.

Two separate investigations published Tuesday, by Wired and Gizmodo, identified Australian businessman Craig Steven Wright as a key figure in the development of Bitcoin.

The article will be updated later today. The digital currency, started as an obscure Web technology, was created by a person or group using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. On the one hand, leading bitcoin payment processor BitPay works with more than 60,000 businesses and organizations – roughly three times more than it did a year ago.

Bitcoin climbed on Wednesday to hit its highest levels since early November, amid fresh speculation that the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto-the virtual currency’s creator-may have finally been revealed.

Dr Wright has also talked of moving operations to Iceland, because it is “cheaper”.

One of Dr Wright’s most recent public appearances was at the Bitcoin Investor Conference in October, where he Skyped in to a so-called all star panel on the digital currency.

In a statement, the Australian Federal Police said officers’ “presence at Mr. Wright’s property is not associated with the media reporting overnight about bitcoins”. The documents contained notes from Wright’s blog, emails and transcripts.

But a 1,100,111 bitcoin stash, now worth around $400 million, is locked in a trust fund between Wright and Kleiman until 2020.

Police have raided the Sydney home of a man named as the likely creator of cryptocurrency bitcoin.

Unlike other currencies, it has no central authority or government-based backing.

Ira Kleiman, Dave’s brother, told Gizmodo that Wright had contacted him after Dave’s death, telling him that he and Dave had been involved in inventing Bitcoin. Dorian Nakamoto publicly and vehemently denied he was Satoshi, and the Newsweek story is seen as being widely discredited.

Wright is identified as saying, “I did my best to try and hide the fact that I’ve been running Bitcoin since 2009 but I think it’s getting – most – most – by the end of this half the world is going to bloody know”. A report there shows the amount of Bitcoin listed as being held by Wright.