Elon Musk has sparked furious speculation online after a cryptic post referencing the elusive creator of bitcoin.

The Tesla CEO tweeted an image on Wednesday of the logos of four companies, Samsung, Toshiba, Nakamichi and Motorola, with the first letters of each circled — showing how the name “Satoshi Nakamoto” was apparently derived.

To this day, the true identity of the cryptocurrency’s inventor has never been revealed. Some believe bitcoin was the work of more than one person hiding behind the pseudonym.

Australian computer scientist Craig Wright has claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, although this is widely disbelieved in the cryptocurrency community.

Musk, whose post has been retweeted nearly 63,000 times, has long been one of the popular names floated as the true Satoshi Nakamoto, alongside around a dozen potential suspects.

For his part, Musk told podcast host Lex Fridman in December last year that he believed computer scientist Nick Szabo was the true author of the 2008 white paper describing the digital currency.

“He seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind bitcoin than anyone else,” Musk said.

“(One could) look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of bitcoin and see who wrote about those ideas. Nick Szabo is probably, more than anyone else, responsible for the evolution of those ideas. He claims not to be Nakamoto, but I’m not sure that’s neither here nor there.”

In 1998, Szabo came up with the idea of Bit Gold, a decentralised digital currency widely seen as a precursor to bitcoin.

But he has repeatedly denied being Satoshi Nakamoto. In a 2014 email to financial author Dominic Frisby, Szabo wrote, “I’m afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I’m used to it.”

It’s believed that Nakamoto began writing the code for bitcoin in 2007. He revealed almost no personal details and claimed to be a 37-year-old male from Japan.

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