Updated at 11:44 p.m. ET:
Newsweek writer Leah McGrath Goodman told the AP that she stood by her story on Dorian S. Nakamoto, saying, "There was no confusion whatsoever about the context of our conversation — and his acknowledgment of his involvement in Bitcoin.'' And Gawker reported that Newsweek editor-in-chief Jim Impoco also said Newsweek stood by the story.
Updated at 8:02 p.m. ET:
In an exclusive two-hour interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Dorian S. Nakamoto repeated what he briefly told reporters earlier in the day: He had nothing to do with the digital currency.
Nakamoto told the AP he had never heard of bitcoin until his son told him he had been contacted by a reporter three weeks ago.
Original story:
The alleged creator of the digital currency bitcoin denied his involvement with the tech world's hottest cryptocurrency to reporters outside his California home on Thursday afternoon.
"I'm not involved in bitcoin," Satoshi "Dorian" Nakamoto insisted on Thursday, hours after Newsweek published an article claiming the reclusive 64-year-old is the creator of the digital currency.
Nakamoto made the comment, his first since the article was published, to reporters outside of his Temple City, Calif., home.
Evelyn Koskie, who lives two doors down from the Nakamoto family, told NBC News she was surprised at the fuss in her middle-class neighborhood. She described Nakamoto as educated and intelligent, and she added that his mother is a "wonderful" person who brought over flowers from her garden.
"It's good news for the neighborhood ... Kinda. Famous for Temple City," said Peter Lam, another Nakamoto neighbor.
Newsweek's report comes after much speculation about the identity of the person or group who created bitcoin.
Ted Nelson, the Internet pioneer who first coined the term “hypertext” in the 1960s, theorized in a YouTube video last year that Nakamoto was Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki.
Nelson declined to give his opinion of the Newsweek article to NBC News, but he did say: “It had to be one guy. No committee could have tied together all of the threads in the brilliant bitcoin design ... [that would be] beyond the capacity of communication among a team.”