Scott Stornetta, who is the co-inventor of Blockchain, recently discussed the origins of the name Satoshi Nakamoto and why that entity is not him. The original whitepaper on Bitcoin uses eight references. One is a general book on probabilities. The others are the foundation to cryptocurrency. Three of them were co-authored by Stornetta.

In a 1991 piece, he wrote about how to time stamp a digital document. His long-term partner Stuart Haber proposed a decentralized setup that allows certification after a file is created or updated. In it, they proposed practical procedures for digital time stamping of documents for back-dating or forward-dating. The paper also gives reference to Turing award winner Silvio Micali of Algorand.

A lot of the principles in the paper were used later by Satoshi Nakamoto. Well before Bitcoin, Huber and Stornetta began their own blockchain network that was the first one and is still operational now. Stornetta's religious conversion took him to Japan as a missionary. He became fluent in Japanese and got work as a patent translator.

Stornetta explains that there are 20 kanji behind the name Satoshi. A lot of them translate to "to know" or "to be wise." The name Nakamoto is common in Japan. If broken into kanji, naka means the center of, and moto refers to origin of. Some of this information lead to a conspiracy theory that Bitcoin was created by the CIA.

Stornetta has always denied being Satoshi Nakamoto. He explains that he is focused on integrity and he has some computing focuses that do not seem to be within the realm of Nakamoto. Stornetta added that he does not know the identity of Nakamoto. He did rule out Craig Wright, but he did not offer an explanation as to why.

Stornetta thinks that people should try to learn more about Satoshi's plan for Bitcoin. That would facilitate forward movement. Stornetta also thinks that Bitcoin is more art than science. He added that there are a lot of possibilities, but it is not the last or best solution. Even if Stornetta isn't Nakamoto, the work is foundational to cryptocurrency.