{"product_id":"the-mysterious-mr-nakamoto-isbn-9780593594025","title":"The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto","description":"\u003cb\u003eA “highly entertaining” (\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e) investigation into the mysterious identity of Bitcoin’s creator and a deep dive into crypto’s utopian origin story—from \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Billionaire’s Vinegar\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Could be the best mystery story of the past twenty years.”—James Patterson\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Superb.”—David Grann, #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Wager\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eKillers of the Flower Moon\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Lost City of Z\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNEW YORK POST\u003c\/i\u003e BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn October 2008, someone going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto posted a white paper outlining “a peer-to-peer electronic cash system” called Bitcoin to an arcane listserv populated by Cypherpunks. No one in the community had heard of Nakamoto, and just as people were starting to wonder who he was, he vanished. As the years passed, and the scope of Nakamoto’s achievement became clear, the truth of his identity grew into the greatest unsolved mystery of our time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto\u003c\/i\u003e traces Benjamin Wallace’s attempt to unmask the figure behind the currency and the world it wrought. Nakamoto’s Bitcoin at first seemed destined to fulfill the dreams of fringe 1990s utopians for a currency set free from governments and big banks. Yet after he disappeared, his creation took on a strange new life in the financial markets, where rampant speculation fueled a vision of crypto as a potential windfall, inviting charlatans and scammers and opening a vast gulf between Bitcoin’s idealistic origins and its troubled reputation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut who was Nakamoto? Whoever he was could rightly claim to have invented one of the most important technologies of the new century. And Nakamoto was a billionaire—his Bitcoin wallet held an untouched eleven-figure fortune waiting to be claimed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith the same propulsive-narrative flair that made his \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestseller \u003ci\u003eThe Billionaire’s Vinegar\u003c\/i\u003e an instant success, Benjamin Wallace presents a page-turning work of investigative journalism. Tracking leads from London to Oslo to Los Angeles, from coastal Australia to the Arizona desert, he takes readers through a rogues’ gallery tour of Nakamoto suspects—from benevolent geniuses like cryptographer Hal Finney to difficult ones like a reclusive polymath known to his followers only as Jim; from the mercurial Australian Craig Wright, who claims to be Nakamoto, to a secret team at the National Security Agency. With the forensic skill of Sherlock Holmes and the storytelling verve of Arthur Conan Doyle, Wallace follows the trail of computer code and personal writings to the heart of the Nakamoto mystery while interrogating the very nature of mystery itself.“Highly entertaining. [Wallace] deftly creates drama. The book proceeds like a . . . murder mystery, introducing one suspect after another in what seems like an open-and-shut case, before puncturing the promising narrative with an inconvenient fact. \u003ci\u003eThe Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto\u003c\/i\u003e [is] an education in the pleasures and pitfalls of investigative journalism.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto\u003c\/i\u003e could be the best mystery story of the past twenty years. I’m not sure whether Ben Wallace should win a Pulitzer, be institutionalized for taking on this massive project, or both.”\u003cb\u003e—James Patterson\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Superb.”\u003cb\u003e—David Grann, #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Wager\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eKillers of the Flower Moon\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Lost City of Z\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Wallace is an elegant historian and a talented anatomist of the Satoshi affair, and \u003ci\u003eThe Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto\u003c\/i\u003e deserves a wide readership.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is, by far, the deepest investigation into possibly the biggest mystery of the twenty-first century. I couldn’t put it down.”\u003cb\u003e—Mark Manson, #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] fascinating mystery in a world where mysteries are ceasing to exist.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The New York Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto\u003c\/i\u003e delves into the enigma of Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and the quest to unmask the figure behind the revolutionary cryptocurrency. Combining deep research and gripping storytelling, Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery of Nakamoto’s identity while exploring the cultural and financial impact of Bitcoin on the modern world. It’s a thrilling, illuminating read.”\u003cb\u003e—Bradley Hope, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author of \u003ci\u003eBillion-Dollar Whale\u003c\/i\u003e and co-founder of Project Brazen\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Benjamin Wallace’s astonishingly obsessive deep dive into the financial world’s greatest modern mystery will leave you amazed, enlightened, and utterly breathless.”\u003cb\u003e—Robert Kolker, #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eHidden Valley Road\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto\u003c\/i\u003e takes us on a wild adventure among the oddballs, geniuses, longevity fanatics, and anarchists of crypto in search of one of the most elusive and consequential figures of our time.”\u003cb\u003e—Sheelah Kolhatkar, \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e staff writer and bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eBlack Edge\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I have long relished Ben Wallace’s storytelling talents, and in \u003ci\u003eThe Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto\u003c\/i\u003e, he delivers a tale that is somehow a blend of Agatha Christie and Soren Kierkegaard, unravelling a mystery while also exploring the nature of mystery itself. His search leads us into many dark corners of the nation-state of Bitcoin, a world and its people I was surprised, as a reader who willfully never gave much thought to crypto, to find absolutely mesmerizing.”\u003cb\u003e—Adam Moss\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003eauthor of \u003ci\u003eThe Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eBenjamin Wallace\u003c\/b\u003e is \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Billionaire’s Vinegar\u003c\/i\u003e. He has been a features writer at \u003ci\u003eNew York\u003c\/i\u003e magazine and a contributing editor at \u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cb\u003eIt’s Him\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, was who I believed him to be, he was not going to acknowledge it. He probably wouldn’t talk to me. And seeing him was going to mean sitting on a plane for twenty hours and driving another eight. But I needed to try to have a conversation with him, and it had to be face to face.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNakamoto had disappeared in the spring of 2011. I learned about him that summer, when I wrote Wired’s first feature article about Bitcoin, the internet-based currency that operated beyond the control of a government or bank. Twelve years later, Bitcoin’s creator remained unknown and his enormous fortune untouched. His anonymity and restraint were a confounding rebuttal to the acclaim and riches that would be his were he only to step out of the shadows. The modern history of science supplied no precedent for someone who conceived a revolutionary technology and brought it into the world without taking credit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcolytes of Bitcoin, denied a flesh-and-blood human to venerate, had conferred on the pseudonym the halo of legend. In 2022, you could see Kanye West, as he stepped from an Escalade in Beverly Hills, wearing a Satoshi Nakamoto baseball hat. In Budapest, adherents had unveiled the first statue of Nakamoto, a depiction in bronze of a hooded, spectral figure. In the Vanuatu archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, real estate developers sold shares in a utopian paradise named Satoshi Island. A trio of libertarians bought a decommissioned cruise ship, christened it the MS Satoshi, and recruited settlers for the world’s first sovereign Bitcoin-powered society. More than one fellow technologist lobbied for Satoshi Nakamoto to receive a Nobel Prize.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the riddle of Nakamoto’s identity stubbornly defied solution. Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, among others, speculated about it. Obsessed Nakamoto hunters strove to unearth new clues or remix existing ones in a more convincing way. By this point, more than one hundred different suspects had been fingered.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe intrigue transcended technology. In a world where the internet shone a pervasive light into every corner, there were vanishingly few unanswered questions of this kind. We’d learned who Bob Woodward’s secret source was. We finally knew the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. We’d been informed that Thomas Pynchon likely copped his bagels at Zabar’s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I first set out to write about Nakamoto, I couldn’t have foreseen that more than a decade later his identity would be the last big mystery. It would have been still more ludicrous to imagine that the ghost behind the world’s first cryptocurrency, and the drive to decipher him, would bring with them lawsuits, a car chase, a bounty, a $75 billion fortune, extortion attempts, death threats, a SWAT team, a suicide, a fugitive arms dealer, a serial forger, a hidden society of paranoiacs known only by pseudonyms, a big-hearted genius trapped by disease in his own body, a nuclear bunker in Europe, frozen corpses in the Arizona desert, and a British spy in a locked duffel bag.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePrior attempts to unmask Nakamoto had failed, sometimes spectacularly. Even 60 Minutes, with untold resources and a deep bench of seasoned investigative journalists, had thrown up its hands and declared the challenge “mission impossible.” Yet now, against all odds, I believed I had cracked it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was nervous about what this might mean. The Bitcoin world was hostile toward projects like mine. But that wasn’t my main concern. When I’d locked in on Nakamoto’s real identity, I’d been surprised that he wasn’t a usual suspect. This was someone who’d gone to great lengths to be unfindable. And what I learned about him was disturbing. He was nothing like how people had imagined Satoshi Nakamoto. He’d repeatedly described himself as dangerous. He had guns.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore I flew around the world to meet him, I needed to be certain that I knew where he was. He owned at least four properties on two continents. I’d initially thought he was hiding out in a remote part of Hawaii’s Big Island. More recently, I’d come to believe that he lived on the east coast of Australia, in a small beach community north of Brisbane. It was dawning on me that I’d have to hire private investigators to surveil the property and confirm his presence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was in the midst of fretting about all this when I met my sister for dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan and told her what I’d learned.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It’s him,” she said, with a certainty I didn’t feel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe coolly sipped her margarita while I made doubtful noises.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It’s him,” she repeated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI told her my anxieties, but she had more experience with this sort of thing. She’d been a TV news producer for twenty years. During a period when she worked at 48 Hours, she’d been onsite in Montana after the FBI raided the Unabomber’s property and arrested him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe suggested I take professional security people with me. And that I wear a bulletproof vest. And give local police a heads-up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Thanks,” I mumbled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI felt a little better. This was a plan. TV news people did this all the time. She wasn’t worried. I needn’t worry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLater that night, she texted me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Couldn’t sleep not sure why.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was 4:09 a.m.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Two thoughts. Maybe doorstep him in a public place if he ever leaves the house. Also might be worth having someone video the encounter (from a safe distance) for evidence.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Straight-Up Legend\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEighteen months earlier, on New Year’s Eve 2021, an email had arrived in my inbox.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Subject: New information re Satoshi.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEver since writing the Wired article, I’d periodically received emails like this. Bitcoin, and the broader cryptocurrency industry it begat, was still young enough that if you’d bought some as recently as 2017, you were an “OG”; journalists who’d covered the story in its earliest years were graybeards, and natural targets for anyone with a Satoshi theory to sell. Someone was always shopping a new Satoshi theory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUsually, I paid little heed to these emails. Nakamoto news would rekindle a fleeting hope of learning something fresh and inevitably prove unconvincing. I was inured to the likelihood that the mystery would persist. This particular email hardly inspired confidence, being unsigned. I clicked it open anyway. There was no text, but a link led to a blog post titled “I’m the SpaceX Intern Who Speculated Satoshi Is Elon Musk. There Is More to the Story.” The author, Sahil Gupta, had briefly produced a ripple on the internet four years earlier with another post making the case that Musk was “probably” Nakamoto. Now he presented further evidence: an account of an interaction he’d had with Musk’s chief of staff, Sam Teller. It seemed slight and ambiguous, and I didn’t respond.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo days later, I received another unsigned email from the same address. This one contained a link to a page on GitHub, a website where software programmers share their work, featuring a detailed breakdown of Gupta’s case for Musk as Nakamoto. Maybe because Musk was by then a fixture in the news, over the next few weeks I found myself mulling over Gupta’s theory. I didn’t know what to make of his arguments, which ranged from vague to highly technical. Finally, I wrote back to Gupta, who’d clearly sent the emails. He had, after all, in looking for someone to amplify his theory, singled me out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Thanks for taking the call,” Sahil began. “I’ve emailed hundreds of reporters.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was at home near San Jose, and we were on a video call. He wore a magenta T-shirt and silver can headphones and the shadow of a beard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It’s remarkable how negative a caricature of Musk they have,” Sahil continued, with an antsy energy. “They think he built a rocket and a car company by a fluke.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSahil then described how he’d come to discover Nakamoto’s real identity.New York Times bestselling author of The Billionaire's Vinegar","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301362454757,"sku":"NP9780593594025","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593594025.jpg?v=1767740604","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-mysterious-mr-nakamoto-isbn-9780593594025","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}