Survey: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

About half of the public thinks Satoshi Nakamoto first explained the idea for Bitcoin on a bar napkin, not a white paper, highlighting the persistent education gap about crypto 10 years into its existence.

That’s from survey of 2,000+ people (full results here) Circle commissioned to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the white paper that helped found the crypto and blockchain industry. It is part of our effort to continue to educate consumers about the often complex world of crypto. And for Circle Invest, specifically, we’re focusing on making crypto investing accessible for everyone through a simplified product experience and by delivering educational content within our app. (Circle Invest is available here on iOS and here for Android.)

We believe crypto technology will enable powerful ways to create and share value for everyone, across all generations and genders, and want more people to experience it. That’s why, starting in November we’re going to reward people who sign up and use Circle Invest. More to come on that soon.

Additional insights from the survey include:

• Of people who have invested in crypto, nearly half think Satoshi Nakamoto would say the industry is on the right path

• Only 1 in 6 crypto investors think the pseudonymous founder (or founders) of Bitcoin would say “my vision is fulfilled”
  Most people (62%) don’t think we’ll ever learn the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto
• If Satoshi’s identity is revealed, a majority (53%) say it’ll be hackers who unearth it, rather than the government (17%) or the media (22%)
• When it comes to famous pseudonyms, people favor street-artist Banksy over Satoshi

• Men invest in crypto at twice the rate of women, a gender divide similar to what we saw from a survey we released in September

We plan on releasing several more surveys through the end of the year, so stay tuned.