“WHY is bitcoin worth anything?” once enquired the father-in-law of this tome’s author, Benjamin Wallace – which prompted him to riposte, “why is gold worth anything?” To which the in-law retorted, “why does everyone I ask this question respond with another question?” – a response which per se wasn’t as daunting as Wallace’s own 15-year-old million-dollar enquiry: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
Nakamoto is purportedly the secret inventor – probably even inventors – of Crypto (a digital currency designed to work through a computer network which is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it) who had emerged into Wallace’s purview in 2011 after the journalist had written an article headlined “The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin” in wired, the magazine which focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy and politics.
Earlier in 2008, someone who referred to himself as “Satoshi Nakamoto” had signed a digital white paper proposing a cryptocurrency named bitcoin (the first decentralized cryptocurrency based on a free-market ideology) which he followed through by releasing the source code to the internet and afterwards remotely collaborated on the venture with co-developers until he abruptly discontinued in 2011.
With Wallace’s interest piqued by his article and Nakamoto’s sudden ‘disappearance’, he would embark on a fifteen-year quest to unravel a riddle hordes of exponents within the technology community have also been obsessed with solving – even though his quest of unmasking the mysterious inventor was also in conflict with Bitcoin adherents’ insistence on the anonymity which has enabled the crypto’s continued decentralization.
Á la a detective, Wallace’s search of a ‘suspect’ who fit Nakamoto’s identity would have him tracking leads from Arizona to Australia, Los Angeles to London, as well as other locations – as he enthusiastically delved into the realm of Nakamotologists (what adherents are apparently called) comprised of cypherpunks’ (digital rights activists) and ‘extropians’ (proponents of the creation of environments which foster free markets, etc.).
Among suspected-to-be-Nakamoto candidates was Nick Szabo – an American computer scientist and cryptographer who in the 90s had proposed a digital currency named Bit Gold – upon whom Wallace’s suspicion repeatedly fell, based on what he referred to as Nick-as-Nakamoto exhibits such as trivial-seeming details like how, similar to Nakamoto, Szabo applied two spaces after a period when writing.
The tome’s endless chapters then transport the reader from one candidate to the next with each ‘suspect’ leaving Wallace with further speculation whilst his combined investigative journalism and forensic skill strove to expose a long-standing unsolved mystery. His pursuit of the enigmatic inventor even assumed an apophenic approach with him enlisting the assistance of experts who applied methods such as stylometry (statistical analysis applied in identifying an author’s unique “fingerprint” based on their writing style) in order to determine which of his candidates matched his target’s profile.
Wallace’s search also took him to a Bitcoin conference in Miami in 2022 where, whilst pursuing Szabo, he beheld PayPal’s founder Peter Thiel take a dig at “enemies of the movement” such as Warren Buffett (whom he referred to as “Enemy #1” – and whose crime was to call the currency “rat poison”) and JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon (who dissed Bitcoin as “worthless” – and whom Thiel called “the New York banker bias”) – for standing in its way.
The duo Thiel additionally referred to as “extensions of the state” were the converse of fellow entrepreneurs like Sir Richard Branson who had announced that his Virgin Galactic space travel company would accept Bitcoin, and Bill Gates, who referred to Bitcoin as “better than currency.”
Having quit his job to devote his time to exposing who Nakamoto is, Wallace mentions that he wouldn’t had foreseen that his pursuit would entail, among other things, lawsuits (a fellow newshound was dragged into one which cost him more than $100 000), a bounty, extortion attempts, a serial forger, a SWAT team, frozen corpses in the Arizona desert, a nuclear bunker in Europe, a British spy in a locked duffel bag, death threats (at least one reporter received those) and a car chase.
The latter incident, a hilarious moment borne of scoop-hunting desperation really, involved one Japan-born US citizen and engineer named Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto who led the media corps on a Los Angeles freeway-chase hashtagged bitcoinchase whilst masquerading as the elusive Nakamoto – which turned out to be a wild goose chase “all for a free lunch” of sushi for the imposter!
One fellow author may have lauded Wallace’s account as, “by far the deepest investigation into possibly the biggest mystery of the twenty-first century”, yet it culminated in his failure to expose the identity of the person or people behind the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym. Instead, he admitted his inability to solve the riddle after his lengthy investigation, ceding deep into the read: “I was making little headway in my own investigation and beginning to despair.”
“I’d always wondered whether the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto might turn out to be more compelling than its resolution.”
Alas, Wallace’s failure to reveal who the mysterious creator is, also means that an eleven-figure fortune in Nakamoto’s Bitcoin wallet still awaits to be claimed!
An alternative to fiat currencies (government-issued money), Bitcoins are created through ‘mining’ and transacting in them is recorded on a ‘blockchain’, which is a computerized database that uses a consensus mechanism to secure transaction records, control the creation of additional coins, and verify the transfer of coin ownership. It has been transacted in, traded and invested in – and presently holds a $1 trillion market capitalization, making it the ninth most valuable asset in the world.
Pedantic Bitcoiners point out that, whereas paper bills and coins faded, spread germs and are forgeable – Bitcoin is money 2.0!
To offer a glimpse of the cryptocurrency’s worth, at the time of the publication of this review, 1 BTC = R1 962 007,86c.
A trade paperback, The Mysterious Mr Nakamoto is published by Atlantic Books and distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball Publishers.
Available at leading bookstores countrywide, it retails for R435.
