It is another mystery about the mysterious founder of Bitcoin.
An Australian entrepreneur claimed Monday to be the creator of the online currency. But almost immediately, digital currency developers expressed doubt about the claim.
Craig Steven Wright, a computer entrepreneur, told the BBC, The Economist and GQ that he was the currency's founder. He said he had been forced to come forward because so many people were pursuing him.
"I didn't take the decision lightly to make my identity public," Wright said in a news release, "and I want to be clear that I'm doing this because I care so passionately about my work, and also to dispel any negative myths and fears about Bitcoin."
The latest twist in Bitcoin's origin story comes as the virtual currency faces an existential crisis over its evolution. Bitcoin's longtime backers have been split recently over how to grow the Bitcoin network. In the meantime, the growth of the system has stalled.
Founded as a digital competitor to existing currencies, Bitcoin has moved more into the mainstream of late. Financial institutions are putting resources into researching how they can use the blockchain, the currency's communal digital ledger, to make transactions faster and cheaper. Competition, too, has risen, with a host of new virtual currencies, like Ethereum.
While some see an opportunity to expand Bitcoin into the commercial realm, many purists want it to maintain its outsider status. And the mystery surrounding Bitcoin's founder, a developer who went by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, has been central to the virtual currency's cachet since it surfaced in 2009.
Satoshi, as the creator became known, communicated only by electronic message, never revealed his or her true identity and cut off all communication in 2011. That led to frequent speculation about Satoshi's identity — speculation that proved wrong. In perhaps the most notable example, Newsweek claimed in 2014 that the founder was Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, a physicist living in California. He denied being the Bitcoin founder.
To back the latest claims, the BBC said Wright had provided digitally signed messages using cryptographic keys inextricably linked to Bitcoin generated by Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym previously linked to the currency's creator. Wright also posted evidence on his blog, where he wrote, "Since those early days, after distancing myself from the public persona that was Satoshi, I have poured every measure of myself into research. I have been silent, but I have not been absent."
Wright was first identified as Satoshi Nakamoto in December 2015 by Wired magazine and the technology website Gizmodo.
Soon after those articles were published, the Australian Federal Police raided Wright's home in a suburb of Sydney in connection with a tax investigation. The Australian tax authorities said at the time that they had determined that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto.
Gavin Andresen, who succeeded Satoshi Nakamoto as the lead Bitcoin developer, wrote Monday on his blog that he believed Wright's claim.
"After spending time with him, I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt: Craig Wright is Satoshi," Andresen wrote. "During our meeting, I saw the brilliant, opinionated, focused, generous — and privacy-seeking — person that matches the Satoshi I worked with six years ago."
But the Bitcoin community was not in consensus. Another one of the leading developers working on Bitcoin's basic software, Gregory Maxwell, said that the evidence presented by Wright was not enough to convince him.
"It demonstrates no connection between this person and Bitcoin's creation," Maxwell wrote in an email to The New York Times.
Michael Marquardt, a programmer who is in charge of Bitcoin discussion boards, wrote on Reddit under the handle "theymos" that Wright's new writings suggested an effort to deceive the public.
Maxwell and Marquardt stand in opposition to Andresen in the division over the best way to grow the Bitcoin network.
Wright, in interviews, has placed himself on Andresen's side. The divisions are already coloring the debate within the Bitcoin community over whether Wright is in fact Satoshi Nakamoto.
The main Reddit page dedicated to Bitcoin was full of conversation Monday about the legitimacy of Wright's claims.