A “highly entertaining” ( The Wall Street Journal ) investigation into the mysterious identity
of Bitcoin’s creator and a deep dive into crypto’s utopian origin story—from The New York Times
bestselling author of The Billionaire’s Vinegar “Could be the best mystery story of the past
twenty years.”—James Patterson “Superb.”—David Grann #1 New York Times bestselling author
of The Wager Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z In 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. The Mysterious Mr.
Nakamoto 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. But 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. With the same propulsive-narrative
flair that made his New York Times bestseller The Billionaire’s Vinegar 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.
