Who is bitcoins mysterious founder Satoshi Nakamoto? And why he might not exist

On April 7, 2022, PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel delivered the keynote speech at the annual Bitcoin Conference in Miami.He railed against the so-called enemies of Bitcoin, like Warren Buffett and Larry Funk, whom he called “extensions of the state.” The true believers of bitcoin, unlike these corporate stooges, weren’t part of a company and had no board. “We do not know who Satoshi is,” Thiel told the crowd.He was referring to Satoshi Nakamoto, the man who invented bitcoin, and had become an “elusive figure who might or might not exist,” writes Benjamin Wallace in his book “The Mysterious Mr.

Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto” (Crown), released on March 18.Back in 2008, Nakamoto was just the “no-name coder of an experimental money that was of interest mainly to a fringe community,” writes Wallace.When he first introduced bitcoin, its market value was $0.00099, or one-tenth of one cent. But by 2022, it was hovering around $42,000 per bitcoin.

Nakamoto’s creation had become “the ninth most valuable asset in the world, just below Tesla and above Meta,” writes Wallace. But then in the spring of 2011, Nakamoto disappeared.He stopped communicating with the outside world.He owns just over 1 million bitcoin, worth $100 billion (at least), putting him in the top 20 of the world’s richest people.

But as of this writing, he remains a complete unknown.Why has Nakamoto gone to such lengths to avoid the spotlight? “The modern history of science has provided no precedent for someone who conceived a revolutionary technology and brought it into the world without taking credit,” writes Wallace. It’s a fascinating mystery in a world where mysteries are rapidly ceasing to exist.We’ve long since known the identity of Bob Woodward’s “Deep Throat” secret source, and of Joe Klein, the “anonymous” author who penned “Primary Colors,” the scandalous account of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential ...