Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym under which the creator of Bitcoin used to sign his name: as far as is known, he never had his own Twitter profile, partly because nobody knows who he is.
However, since it is only a pseudonym, anyone can use it, and since the real Satoshi has been missing for more than ten years, no one can prevent it from being used.
Bitcoin: the fake Satoshi Nakamoto on Twitter
The Twitter profile (now X) of a self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto can be found at twitter.com/satoshi.
It is a profile that was only created in 2018, more than seven years after the Bitcoin creator’s disappearance.
This fake profile started tweeting again yesterday.
The latest tweet announces the reactivation of the profile itself, promising to publish popular tweets.
The curious thing is that it is a verified profile with a blue checkmark, but that does not mean that Satoshi Nakamoto is the real name of the profile owner. It does mean, however, that X knows the true identity of the owner of this profile, although it should be noted that he is not the creator of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin: Monetising Satoshi Nakamoto’s fake Twitter profile
But why has this profile just been activated, after five years of inactivity?
In fact, the previous post is dated 31 October 2018, which means that the owner abandoned the profile only five months after creating it.
The blue tick may be a clue.
It makes no sense for a virtually anonymous profile to be verified with a blue tick. However, it does make sense that it has activated the premium subscription, for example to use the additional features.
But the main reason why this profile has been verified is probably another: monetisation.
This is a profile with 62,000 followers, and one that can certainly generate a lot of buzz (as this very article shows).
By posting consistently, it is very likely that such a profile can get to the point of monetising views.
However, in order to do this, it needs to have the blue tick, and this is probably the real reason why it has been verified, even if it is a profile that does not use the identity of its owner (which X knows anyway).
Suffice it to say that a minimum of five million views in three months is required to activate view monetisation on X, and Satoshi’s fake profile even managed to exceed this target with that one tweet yesterday.
So he can activate views monetisation now, and it is very likely that he can make a lot of money by tweeting.
The Misunderstanding
All of this is obviously based on the misunderstanding that this could be the profile of Bitcoin’s creator, otherwise there would be no explanation for the huge success of his tweet yesterday.
The problem is that there is no indication whatsoever that this is not the profile of Bitcoin’s creator, and this could also mislead many people.
The real Satoshi Nakamoto, the person who created bitcoin and uses this pseudonym to make himself known, is not known to have ever been active on Twitter. At nakamotoinstitute.org you can find all his known communications, and none of them took place on a social network.
Nakamoto communicated via email, newsgroups and forums.
While it is possible that Satoshi Nakamoto’s fake account on X is very successful and can make a lot of money by monetising views, it is also possible that someone might not realise that it is a fake account, especially now that it has a blue tick.
Earnings
It is not easy to estimate how much the owner of this fake account could realistically earn.
With view monetisation enabled, earnings depend on the total volume of tweet views.
While it is extremely unlikely that he could maintain an average of 5 million views per tweet, it is not inconceivable that he could consistently exceed 5 million views per month.
To date, there is no reliable data on the revenue generated by a thousand views, the so-called RPM (Revenue Per Thousand), but from some information provided by those who have already activated monetisation, it seems that the RPM on X is much higher than on TikTok, for example, but much lower than on YouTube.
However, as it is much easier to get a lot of views on X than on e.g. YouTube, it is even possible that for the same amount of effort and dedication on X, the views can be monetised to a much higher extent on YouTube, simply for the reason that many more views can be made.
A rough estimate of the potential monthly income from Satoshi Nakamoto’s fake account on X could be in the range of $500 to $5,000. However, it cannot be ruled out that it could go as high as $10,000 per month if you try a little harder.
With this in mind, it can be said that this is almost certainly not the account of the Bitcoin creator, who has more than $25 billion in BTC that has never been used.