Peter Thiel: Early meeting of E-Gold founders may provide clues to Satoshi Nakamoto's identity

PayPal co-founder and billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel thinks he may have a clue about how to find Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, disappeared two years after mining the Bitcoin genesis block in January 2009.

His speculation stems from an early meeting of E-Gold's founders in February 2000, when about 200 people gathered on a beach in Anguilla to strategize about promoting a new monetary system that could challenge central banks. E-Gold, a digital gold currency, collapsed in 2007 after its founders were indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“In February 2000, I met them on the beach in Anguilla,” Thiel said Wednesday at a cryptocurrency conference in Miami, referring to the E-Gold founder. “My sort of speculation about Satoshi’s identity is that Satoshi was on the beach in Anguilla at the time.” He further explained:

“We started a revolution against central banks on the beaches of Anguilla. We intend to make PayPal and E-Gold interoperable, and then destroy all central banks.”

The failure of E-Gold may have given Satoshi the foresight to remain anonymous while crafting a successor. Thiel said: "Bitcoin is the answer to E-Gold, Satoshi Nakamoto realized that anonymity must be maintained, there must be no company."

Not everyone is convinced that Satoshi Nakamoto was the creator of the early electronic cash protocol. Dustin D. Trammell, one of the first cypherpunks to mine Bitcoin, told Cointelegraph Brazil in March that Satoshi's lack of bias in implementing the new technology meant they approached the project with a fresh eye.

Satoshi Nakamoto's 2008 Bitcoin white paper gave birth to a multi-trillion dollar crypto industry, with thousands of digital assets vying for a piece of the pie. Bitcoin is in for a historic week, hitting an all-time high above $67,000 on Wednesday.

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