How This Fake Satoshi Fooled Some Of The Biggest Names In Finance

Did a fake Satoshi infiltrate traditional finance and even find their way into an SEC meeting? Twitter is reeling in hilarity this week in our latest retrospective exploration into an old 2017 SEC meeting that supposedly featured the ever-so-elusive Satoshi Nakamoto and Tim Draper. The only problem? It seems that venture capitalist Draper was duped and drug along a ‘fake Satoshi’ to the SEC. What a time to be alive.

Let’s dive into some of the latest absurdity in crypto.

B-Grade Bitcoiner: A Fake Satoshi!?

Of course, we’ve covered speculation on ‘who is Satoshi’ for years now here at Bitcoinist, but it’s been a while since we’ve had new developments or considerations on the topic. However, this week’s madness doesn’t turn over new stones, but rather just adds context to existing (and hilarious) ones.

Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett pushed a tweet out on Tuesday that suggested that the SEC was aware of who Satoshi Nakamota is, with the weight carried behind a supposed screenshot of 2017 SEC meeting entries with venture capitalist Tim Draper and one “Satoshi N.”:

?SCOOP: It would appear @SECGov and @TimDraper know who Satoshi Nakamoto is. Check out this entry from Wednesday, August 23rd 2017 @ 11:00AM…

More on this @LizClaman @FoxBusiness at 3:45PM @CGasparino pic.twitter.com/eEUJqJe8zV

— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) September 27, 2022

The tweet followed an announcement from Terrett that she had a copy of all of former SEC director (turned Andreessen Horowitz partner) Bill Hinman’s calendar from his duration of time spent at the SEC.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) founder has been the heart of a heated crypto-community debate since it’s genesis. | Source: BTC-USD on TradingView.com

But Then…

Within a few hours, the power of crypto Twitter came to life and uncovered the reality of Terrett’s findings: it was just a fake Satoshi the whole time. Just two days after the supposed SEC meeting with Satoshi and Draper back in 2017, Draper posted this tweet:

I just got targeted by a Satoshi fake. He was very convincing, and wasted a lot of my time. Could have been much worse. Watch out!

— Tim Draper (@TimDraper) August 25, 2017

If Draper really attended an SEC meeting with a fake Nakamoto, it was certainly a moment for the crypto history books. Even if the meeting didn’t happen, it provides a little extra glimmer of context to the wild 2017 story of Draper’s short journey with the imposter. At the time, Draper was working on an ICO (this was of course pre-2017/2018 ICO carnage) with the fake Satoshi, before eventually catching on and cutting them off. He went on to tell The Verge quite simply, “he is a fake.” Draper later added that “he had me going for a bit, but his ‘proof’ didn’t check out.”

If there’s one thing that’s for certain, there’s few dull moments in this space.

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