How strange it is that a man whose invention may change the way the world uses money should be so mysterious and unknowable. The only record we have of Satoshi Nakamoto are antiseptic posts that he made between 2008 and 2012 relating to Bitcoin and the technologies and use cases around it. But even in these emotion-devoid posts, we can glean a lot about what type of personality he had. Our objective with Tales of Satoshi is to create a credible backstory to this amazing innovator. To do so, we “reverse engineered” his persona by using a variety of psychological frameworks, his work as quantitative measures of personal values, and general assumptions related to his upbringing in Japan’s relatively homogeneous society.
So what kind of person was Satoshi? Our research and modeling suggests that if we constructed the persona with Myers Briggs values, he would be either INTP or INTJ. The definitions of both follow. However, tempering his persona were overlays of other frameworks, including Japanese religions, traditional values, societal development influences, and other factors.
INTJs are visionaries who generally prefer to work unnoticed. They spend most of their time secretly contemplating how they can achieve their goals and seldom divulge their grand plans with others.
As naturally inquisitive people, INTJs never back away from a challenge and like to offer solutions that forgo conventional methods and far exceed expectations.
For INTJs, life, such as work, family, relationships, etc., is a system of interwoven variables that they can examine and solve.
Some defining traits of INTJs are: innovative, organized, reserved, imaginative, harmony minded, logical, abstract, independent, cause-and-effect oriented, determined, purposeful, individualistic, and strategic.
INTPs are reserved, thoughtful, and analytical people who put a lot of effort into everything that they do. These hard workers avoid the spotlight and prefer being alone with their thoughts. INTPs usually have a close knit group of friends that they feel comfortable opening up to, and thus, may appear distant and even impersonal with people they don’t know well.
INTPs are gifted at creating structural models and challenging traditional methods to solve problems. They tend to view the world as a system that they can investigate and often apply this logical thinking to their own lives.
Some defining traits of INTPs are: analytical, conceptual, logical, quiet, independent, easygoing, complex, driven, curious, questioning, methodical, self-critical, thoughtful, innovative, problem solver, reflective, and autonomous.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a self-reported personality test that evaluates how users perceive the world and make decisions. At the conclusion of the survey, the test assigns users four-letter personality types that offer insights into their strengths, weaknesses and preferences. The framework of MBTI is based on Carl Jung’s theory of personality types, which states that personalities are centered on rational functions (thinking and feeling), irrational functions (sensation and intuition) and how a person reacts to their surroundings (introversion and extraversion). Jung’s main theory states that people are connected to each other and their ancestors through shared experiences and that they draw upon this collective consciousness to interpret and interact with the world. Interestingly, Japanese religions, especially those rooted in reincarnation and interactions with the spirit world, hold similar viewpoints.
As mentioned earlier, we think Satoshi was an INTJ (most likely) or INTP.
Abraham Maslow was a professor at Brandeis University from 1951 to 1969 who was interested in how ordinary people thought and acted, in a time when his contemporaries were mostly studying people with behavioral problems. In focusing on “normal”, he created a hierarchy of needs that posits that people are motivated by five basic categories: physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization. Maslow hypothesized that people generally need to satisfy their more basic needs to free up emotional space before they can engage with their higher level needs. That said, Maslow readily agreed that not everyone progressed through the levels in order, and that a poor person with little or no food could still be esteemed (Gandhi anyone?).
We believe Satoshi operates in the “Self Actualized” tier of behavior during the period of Bitcoin development, and likely through much of his twenties.
The Hofsteder model tells us that Satoshi was used to a competitive environment and was able to compete with the best of his peers. Long hours and intense concentration were hallmarks of his education as a child, and these characteristics carried over into his adult career.
His careful, almost stage managed online presence was a reflection of the uncertainty avoidance that is a hallmark of Japanese society. For him, dealing with uncertainty meant making a closed loop financial system that wouldn’t break, even under severe attack. In this respect, he was reflecting the values of Japan itself, holding back the floods and tsunamis that threaten the nation with public works and concrete.
Satoshi was trying to create something that would outlast his own life. This drive spoke to his long-term point of view and desire, as well as his confidence that his creation could continue long after he left it. As a long-term thinker, he did not need to benefit financially to any great degree from his invention because in creating Bitcoin and setting it free, he only partially accomplished his true long-term goal, whatever that may have been. We suspect that his Bitcoin invention was the pinnacle of his material aspirations, just as getting a PhD was the peak of his academic ones. So what came next?
Gerard Hofstede was a Dutch social psychologist, who while an IBM employee came up with a theory of categorizing the behavioral values of cross-cultural groups and organizations. He focused on cultures and not individuals, to create scales of national cultural preferences. His six points of measure were:
i) Power distance index (PDI),
ii) Individualism vs. Collectivism (IDV),
iii) Masculinity versus Femininity (MAS),
iv) Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI),
v) Long Term Orientation versus Short Term Normative Orientation (LTO)
vi) Indulgence versus Restraint (IVR)
In our narrative, Satoshi’s mother, Toshiko, is a devout believer in Shugendo, as probably unconsciously many Japanese people are. Shugendo is a seventh century mountain worship religion that combines elements of Shinto, Buddhism, and Taoism. While the senior deities the worshippers generally pray to are mostly Buddhist, you can also see many elements of Taoism coming through, including even the root name (“do” - the way).
Toshiko was interested in the self-discipline aspect of Shugendo, which for her was a spiritual cleansing. This idea that “privation is good” is a very deep thread in Japanese society that goes back to Bushido and further. Toshiko also liked the supernatural, specifically divination, elements of Shugendo, such as oracles, spells, and charms. Naturally, these practices would allow her to understand her son’s future and plan accordingly.
Satoshi subconsciously became interested in divination, which fed his interest in collectibles.
Toshiko worships her ancestors at a small shinto shrine (“Kamidana”) at the family home. Today, the majority of Japanese identify Shinto as their main religion. Although Shinto is relatively new as an actual religion, its roots go back into Japanese antiquity, long before Buddhism, and was born as an animist belief in the power of natural things and the gods that inhabited them. Shinto is greatly intertwined with Buddhism, but we can generalize that Shinto refers to relating oneself to nature and maintaining purity of self. Like Shugendo, Shintoism believes in divination, so it fed Toshiko’s need to seek guidance on how to help her youngest son.
For Satoshi, the influence of Shinto was evident in his need to frequently commune with nature and know that his ancestors knew what he was doing.
Buddhism came to Japan 1300 years ago, and provides a robust structure for how to live, after-life, and the eventual destination of our souls. Japanese tend to turn to Buddhism for major life events, like celebrating births, marriages, and deaths, and to a lesser degree for good luck and divine help in life. Buddhism importantly gives people a structure to live their lives, thanks to the powerful ideas of Karma and Reincarnation. Although Buddhism can be very compassionate, these two constructs may cause people to rationalize leaving others to their preordained fates. This is perhaps why Japanese are not interested in supporting charities.
Satoshi’s exposure to Buddhism and willingness to watch rather than intervene, may have made him look selfish to westerners, but in fact, he was simply respecting other peoples’ karmic destinies.
Between 1542 and 1597, Christianity multiplied like crazy in southern Japan, and started to threaten the ruling shogunate. Consequently, Japan banned the religion and persecuted believers. We think that Christianity was a big hit in Japan because it offered an easy path to redemption, allowing a person’s lifetime of sins to be absolved with single acts. This type of forgiveness is not the case with other Japanese religions, where your karma is like a big pile of rocks that you have to deal with one by one over a lifetime to get back to equilibrium.
These days, Christianity is a minor religion in Japan, and in fact most Japanese believers are viewed as losers who can’t fix their own lives. Even so, given the source of modern Christrian messaging, being mostly the USA, the customs and traditions of Christmas and charitable giving are starting to gain momentum.
Satoshi would not have been a Christian while in Japan, but as a person with high EQ, he would have recognized the need to deal with Christian believers without antagonizing them. Therefore, on arriving in the USA, he would have eagerly soaked up Christian tradition, taking it on as another lifestyle framework.
There is one Christian tradition he would have appreciated as a child though, and that would have been in the commercialization of Christmas as a celebration for kids. In other words, if the way to a kid’s love is through their stomach, Christianity delivered in spades, in the form of cream sponge Christmas cakes decked with strawberries and big buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a popular Christmas feast in Japan.
