Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Dear friends,

If you aren’t intrigued by the question of who created Bitcoin, you may not have given much thought to how improbable it is that his (or her or their) identity remains a mystery. As of this morning, the total value of Bitcoin is $1.737 trillion. The total value of Satoshi’s stake is about 100 billion. None of it has ever been sold. How many individuals could resist cashing in on the money and acclaim? How many groups could keep the secret (after all, “two can keep a secret if one of them is dead,” according to Mark Twain). Precious few. 

It is, arguably, our greatest unsolved mystery. And the story is told with riveting suspense by acclaimed author Benjamin Wallace (who happens to be an old high school friend of mine!). Listen to my colleague Caleb Bissinger's conversation with Ben on Apple or Spotify, share your comments below, and read on for more from Caleb!

Rufus called me a few months ago. “I just had lunch with an old friend,” he said, his voice bouncing with the giddy tremble of someone about to disclose a secret, “and now I think the NSA might have invented Bitcoin.”

The friend who planted this conspiratorial seed in my co-host’s loamy mind was Benjamin Wallace. Ben is a journalist-cum-treasure-hunter. Or maybe he’s a treasure-hunter-cum-journalist. He has a tartufaio’s knack for unearthing hidden mysteries and a Columbo-like ability to pursue them with unassuming tenacity. He first made waves with his 2008 bestseller The Billionaire’s Vinegar, a book about the most-expensive bottle of wine ever sold, which — uh-oh — may have been counterfeit. He followed that with a series of spellbinding stories in Vanity Fair and New York Magazine about patricidal rich kids and a “brainscrambling” search for gold in the American West (now the basis of a docuseries on Netflix).

When he dined with Rufus, Ben was putting the finishing touches on a book about his obsessive quest to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, who vanished in 2011, taking with him a $100 billion fortune.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Satoshi’s disappearance is the greatest mystery of the digital age. In fact, when I asked ChatGPT to write a logline for the inevitable blockbuster based on Ben’s book, it spat back, “A mysterious genius invents Bitcoin, triggering a financial revolution. But as his creation takes over the world, he vanishes — leaving behind the greatest mystery of the digital age.” 

Over chicken palliard — Rufus’s go-to order — Ben mentioned a surprising theory he’d dug into for the book. What if Satoshi wasn’t some reclusive genius? What if “he” was actually a hoax created by an intelligence agency as part of an elaborate honeypot operation? It’s kind of the perfect scheme if you think about it: convince criminals to adopt Bitcoin by marketing it as anonymous and borderless, then secretly surveil their every transaction.

When Rufus shared this juicy tidbit with me, on his walk from the restaurant back to the office, he added, “We’ve gotta get copies of Ben’s book.”

A few months later, we got our hands on advanced copies of The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto, and we immediately started trading theories.

“Could Elon Musk be Satoshi?”

“That would explain why he’s never cashed in his coins — he doesn’t need the money!”

Eventually, these gleeful exchanges turned to heated negotiations. We both loved the book and wanted to talk with Ben on The Next Big Idea. Who should do the honors? Ultimately, I won out, partly because I’m young and scrappy, but mostly because Rufus is very gracious — and also because interviews about non-fiction page-turners (with legends like David Grann, Erik Larson, and Sebastian Junger) are something of a speciality for me, and The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto is one of the best non-fiction page-turns I’ve read in a long, long time. (Don’t just take my word for it; James Patterson calls it “the best mystery story of the past twenty years.”)

What I love about Ben’s book is that it’s not only a spellbinding mystery and a rip-roaring ride through crypto-land, but also an excellent primer on how crypto works and why it matters. I hope that comes through in our conversation. Something else I hope comes through? Ben’s book isn’t just a work of narrative non-fiction; it is, in some ways, a philosophical treatise. He explores thorny issues like the right to privacy in an age of internet nosiness. It’s a great read. I hope we turned it into a great listen.

Listen to the conversation on Apple or Spotify, and let us know what you think in the comments below.