Former programmer, cartel leader, and DEA informant Paul Le Roux was detained in 2012 and is presently being held on charges of running a criminal cartel, seven killings, and drug trafficking. Le Roux was thought by some to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the person who created Bitcoin, in the spring of 2019. This suspicion was strengthened when it was found that Le Roux’s Wikipedia page’s URL was included in an unredacted footnote in a document submitted by Craig Wright in the Kleiman v. Wright litigation. The footnote went viral on cryptocurrency forums and social media, sparking rumors that Le Roux might have invented Bitcoin and that Wright had access to the thief’s hard drives.
Le Roux was thought to have the technical know-how to construct Bitcoin because of his training as a software engineer and his participation in the development of the open-source disc encryption technology E4M. E4M, which stands for “Encryption for the Masses,” was made available as a freeware substitute for PGP in 1998. (Pretty Good Privacy). Le Roux has denied having anything to do with the Truecrypt E4M fork, which was also made public.
People speculate that Le Roux may have invented Bitcoin for a number of reasons. One explanation for this is the fact that he was a software engineer with a history of showing an interest in encryption, a crucial aspect of Bitcoin’s technology. Le Roux’s arrest in 2012 also occurred at the same time that Satoshi Nakamoto vanished from view in December 2010. Some have conjectured that Satoshi’s silence and stoppage of work on the coin may have been brought on by the arrest.
His E4M Manifesto, which promotes robust encryption as a way to safeguard privacy and freedom, has also been used to infer a connection between Le Roux and Bitcoin. The manifesto, which was made available along with the E4M software, comprises concepts and tenets that are consistent with what the Bitcoin community stands for. According to an article published in Wired in July 2019 by investigative journalist Evan Ratliff, Le Roux is “the most believable Satoshi yet” and the person who invented the Bitcoin network.
Le Roux made an unexpected claim in court in 2020, telling a federal judge in Manhattan that he intended to launch a company that would sell and host Bitcoin miners. He asserted that he had created a bespoke application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for Bitcoin mining that was a great deal faster than any existing model. Le Roux claimed that by founding this company, he would put his knowledge and abilities to “better and lawful use.”
