We've published a small study of Satoshi Nakamoto's writing style
https://ungeared.com/the-strange-story-of-satoshi-nakamotos-spelling-choices-part-1/ - the first part was focused on his spelling choices. We went through every word written by Satoshi and picked out words that are spelled differently in American & British English and also all of his misspellings (contrary to popular belief, his spelling wasn't always perfect). We identified 108 such instances (likely we missed some, it was a manual process): American – 52, British – 35 and Misspelled – 21.
https://www.ibb.co/fNMfnW2Breakdown of Satoshi's Spelling Choices
Satoshi Was Consistently Inconsistent
Perhaps, the biggest takeaway from our research is that Satoshi was highly inconsistent in his use of American and British spelling and he was inconsistent from the very beginning. Many have noticed that in the Bitcoin whitepaper the British spelling of "favour", however, seemingly no one had spotted that in the same paper, he used American spelling for "characterized" (British: "characterised"). Interestingly, this irregularity would have been consistent with the rules of Canadian English.
https://www.ibb.co/7vsnhTQSatoshi's Spelling: Timeline
Canadian Satoshi
If we were to assume that Satoshi was indeed Canadian, then his spelling patterns become a bit more regular, but still, it doesn't answer all the questions.
https://www.ibb.co/v3ZLJXzAssuming Satoshi Was Canadian
Satoshi's Coding Suggests He Was American
Another interesting observation we made is that - predominantly Satoshi was using American English when discussing code. This is also consistent with his coding - we haven't identified any usage of British English there (though this may require additional research).
https://www.ibb.co/v3DN0G9Satoshi's usage of American English Spelling NOT directly related to coding
From this we came up with two alternative hypotheses:
- Satoshi's native tongue was American English (think Hal Finney or Nick Szabo) and British spelling was part of his operational security. However, being a human, he was not always consistent.
- Satoshi was multicultural. For instance, he could have been born in the UK and then worked for a US-centric company (think Adam Back).
More Inconsistencies
Did we mention Satoshi's spelling was inconsistent? - Sometimes, he would use American and British spelling on the same day and even within the same post.
https://www.ibb.co/ByR3jPSDays When Satoshi Used Both American & British Spelling
Moreover, even when it came to the same words, Satoshi was still inconsistent.
https://www.ibb.co/yF64fLSSatoshi's Spelling Idiosynchrosies (Words Grouped by Stem)
There is also some variance by the day of the week:
https://www.ibb.co/dtS96HRSatoshi's Spelling by Day of The Week
American: Mondays, Wednesdays, Saturdays
British: Thursdays
Even: Tuesdays, Fridays, Sundays
We are not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this yet. One thing that is clear is that for some reason Satoshi wasn't using a spell checker or at least wasn't using it consistently.
Part 2In the second part of our study, we will apply the “Information categorization approach to literary authorship disputes” developed by Dr. Albert Yang et al to the texts of popular Satoshi candidates to see if it can help identify the man or men who created Bitcoin. Dr. Yang managed to apply it successfully to such distinct cases as the attribution of Chinese 18th-century novel, Shakesperean plays, and the Federalist Papers. If you would like for us to look at particular persons, please let us know along with appropriate texts authored by them.
We look forward to your feedback
Bit
bit@ungeared.comWhose texts should we compare to Satoshi's?
1)Adam Back
2)Hal Finney
3)Nick Szabo
4)Craig Wright
5)Someone Else?