Who Created Bitcoin?

More than 16 years ago, on Halloween Day of 2008, an entity by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto sent out the whitepaper

Benajmin Wallace’s “The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto” is a 342-page investigation into the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious entity who created Bitcoin. First announced in October 2008 via email to a cypherpunk listserv, Bitcoin quickly spawned a global cultural movement and a multi-trillion dollar industry.

Back in 2011, when Wallace wrote a piece on the phenomenon for WIRED, it seemed like everyone was searching for Nakamoto, but no one could figure it out. Now, more than 10 years later, the author of “The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine” (2009) is still juggling that question.

After receiving persistent emails from an ex-Tesla employee who was absolutely convinced that Elon Musk was Nakamoto, Wallace decided to take another look at the enigma, which he previously covered in 2011 for WIRED. Keeping clear of that particular theory, which he says is “not a view I share,” Wallace lays out his own findings in “The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto,” set for release on March 18 by Simon & Schuster.

The conclusion? Well, by the end of it, Wallace is forced to admit that he failed to solve the Nakamoto riddle once again. But his obsession yielded a thoughtful survey of Bitcoin’s history with a special emphasis on the cypherpunks whose ideas contributed to the cryptocurrency’s birth. “The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto” is a perfect work for crypto veterans and beginners alike who are curious to know more about Bitcoin’s origins; in that respect, it’s comparable to Laura Shin’s “The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze” (2022), which focuses on Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum’s early days.

The DEVOLUTION OF A MYSTERY

At the beginning of the book, we learn that the fibonnacci sequence, magic squares, and "exceedingly boring" meetings with venture capitalists will play a role in the tale to come. We're also told that Nakamoto's identity is one of the great secrets of the 21st century.

As Wallace points out, everyone is interested in putting a face on Bitcoin's inventor now that Wall Street and the White House are beginning to fully embrace the crypto sector. There is perhaps a feeling that we need to make the digital asset a little cleaner and safer to integrate into the global financial system.

Nakamoto's identity is crucial because its discovery would impact the way people see Bitcoin. Crypto folks prefer to think of Satoshi as a kind of promethean figure that unleashed Bitcoin as a gift to mankind before disappearing for the greater good. But what if Nakamoto was an outright criminal like former cartel boss Paul Le Roux who simply cannot access his private keys because he's behind bars? Would BlackRock and Fidelity still race to recommend exposure to the cryptocurrency to their clients?

Finally, we're told that the tale unfolded over the course of a year and a half and begins in the autumn of 2021, when, after an "unusually hot summer," a friend of the author's suggested that maybe he shouldn't try to solve the mystery of Nakamoto's identity.

"What could we possibly learn from Nakomoto’s biography?" Wallace muses at some point, after a friend of his suggests the story would be better without an answer. "That he was a random professor who’d had a lucky brainstorm? No, what was most interesting about Nakamoto was his absence. He was defined by what we didn't know about him."