Satoshi Nakamoto is Dead, Thinks BitMEX’s Arthur Hayes

Arthur Hayes, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, thinks that the Cryptoverse’s icon and the inventor of the world’s first and most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is in fact – dead.

We don’t know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, or even “are”, but the rumors about their identity, or if they are even still alive for that matter, have been a constant in the Cryptoverse since its inception. Many large figures within this industry have weighed in on the topic too. Just recently, when asked if we’ll ever find out who Satoshi is, Bloomberg reports that BitMEX’s co-founder replied with a ‘no’, explaining that: “I think they’re already dead.”

Some are saying that Harold Thomas Finney, cryptographer and crypto pioneer who worked closely with Satoshi Nakamoto, was Satoshi himself – Finney passed away in 2014 and was cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.

Over the years, many have come out with various claims relating to the Bitcoin founder, but none are as interesting as those claiming to actually be him. The most famous case is that of a controversial Australian computer scientist and supporter of Bitcoin SV (BSV), Craig Wright, known also as Faketoshi. In the most recent episode of the long Faketoshi saga, Wright was ordered by the court to pay BTC 550,000 (USD 5.5 billion) to the brother of his late business partner David Kleiman, who sued Wright for stealing Kleiman’s BTC holdings.

In the meantime, we saw Caantoshi enter the scene, when a person called James Caan came out with a series of detailed blog posts, claiming to be the Bitcoin creator.

Going back to Hayes, though, speaking at the Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore, he stressed how Satoshi’s creation is changing the global market: unlike the traditional markets which have an opening and closing times, as well as lunch and weekend breaks, the cryptocurrency market is opened 24/7/365. Hayes finds that digital finance will have an effect on every aspect of the market, including traditional equities, bond and currency trading, and that these traditional markets will absorb elements of the digital markets, probably costing traders their lunch breaks and weekends in the process, Bloomberg reported.

Hayes, who is known for his earlier predictions, now estimates that BTC will hit USD 20,000 in a year, and USD 100,000 in three years. He explained that one realizes that BTC is not such a strange idea, once one “understand[s] that everything will be digital in the next 10 years.” He added that crypto is not a threat to fiat and that it’d be useful to the governments too, “because they can track things better in their native currencies, which they can’t do with physical cash.”

Meanwhile, as reported in July, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) started an investigation into whether BitMEX broke rules by allowing Americans to trade on the platform, which isn’t registered with the agency.