Benjamin Wallace’s The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto (2025) is disappointing. One already knows at page one that this American journalist will not be successful in unveiling the so-called ‘real’ identity of the Bitcoin inventor. Due to its narrow methodology, the “fifteen-year quest to unmask the secret genius behind crypto” delivers a profoundly uncritical investigation. The one founder myth has taken its toll, for no apparent reason. The suggestion that a group and not one individual is behind Bitcoin has been made several times, already a decade ago and is in itself highly uncontroversial. Even Satochi’s Wikipedia page takes the option serious. Yet, the cooperative, collaborative approach is deemed far-left or ‘communist’ as it directly undermines Silicon Valley’s sole founder-venture-hero approach (these days embodied in the ‘tech bro’ myth).
The dominant right-wing neo-liberal ideology supports hyper-individualism in the ideal of the male celebrity/founder. It is this element that remains strictly unreconstructed in Benjamin Wallace’s book. In his role as Sherlock Holmes, Wallace fails in his mission. There’s not one chapter in which the collaborative approach is investigated. Instead, we hop from one eccentric male to the next. Hal Finney, Gavin Andresen, Nick Szabo? The list goes on and on. James A. Donald perhaps? Wei Dai? Why not Peter Todd? There are dozens of candidates suggesting that this may not even be the last book with this approach. In each case, a thorough deduction method proves that one or the other skill is missing. Wallace’s easy-to-read investigation, written by an ‘old media’ personality, shows an open disdain for the laws of group creativity and how this can play out in complex cases like the invention of Bitcoin. Thus, the book symbolizes the widespread stagnation of thinking about Big Tech as a societal issue in the US, as it reduces developments to the tribes and tribulations of a handful of billionaires.
In the last pages, Wallace suggests that more people could have been part of the Sakamoto identity. If this is the outcome of fifteen years of research, why not open the book with such an obvious proposition? Instead, the emphasis is on Anglo-Saxon individuals, white and slightly singular, not cranky males with a right-wing libertarian worldview that all lead a bitter, isolated existence. This conclusion doesn’t help if one wants to do a ‘collectivist’ reconstruction of Operation Becoming Bitcoin. What also doesn’t help is the repeated reference to the ‘right to privacy’ that key players do not want to reveal their fundamental role in the saga. It is striking that even a fundamental network analysis between the main characters was not made.
In the years leading up to 2008, to create a smokescreen was likely a collective decision that was made even earlier. Nowhere in the book can we find even a suggestion that Satoshi Nakamoto has been a deliberately designed ‘open identity’. A historical example, not far removed from the mid-1990s cypherpunk context, would be the early internet figure Luther Blissett. Or think of the collective use of Anonymous (a network of hacker groups active in the crucial period of Bitcoin’s inception). The cultural orientation here does have to be solely on Mediterranean Europe but also has ‘orientalist’ far-east Asia elements. The cult status of Japanese techno-culture during the 1980s is not even mentioned anywhere in Wallace’s book. A cultural analysis of cyberpunk? No thanks. Manga books and videos? Otaku? Neuromancer perhaps? William Gibson’s 1996 novel’ Idoru ‘? Never heard of… But this techno-culture is no doubt where the collective name Satochi Nakamoto is coming from.
A new way of telling histories is necessary here, actively using common notions of the community, networks, and collaboration to describe the creation of Bitcoin using a modular approach. This will have to drop the method of suspicion and secrecy related to the sole genius who oversaw (and controlled) all the different steps. The rigid contrast Wallace is constantly drawing between the ‘discursive’ side of discussion and the ‘real’ work, in silence, of coding, will also need to be questioned, as it leads to deeper insights. Instead of endlessly debunking individuals, it could be more productive to understand how myths are coming into being these days. Why is a temporary, distributed collaboration such an unlikely proposition? To me, there always was an element of alchemy involved. To ‘invent’ value, seeming out of nothing, is a mysterious process—for outsiders. We now know the environmental cost of creating Bitcoin. Today’s crypto-dystopia can be traced back to the ideological constellations of the extropian and cypherpunk milieu.
In the meantime, the Satochi myths continue to make the rounds in American mainstream media:
One of the greatest NBA basketball players of all time, the 59-year-old Chicago Bulls Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen, claims he has been speaking with Satoshi Nakamoto in his dreams for some time. Pippen says their first encounter was in real life in 1993 — though the details are unclear, as they didn’t talk about Bitcoin, which didn’t exist for another 15 years. He claims the same person identifying himself as Satoshi has been popping up in his dreams ever since. According to Pippen, Satoshi even gives him Bitcoin price predictions in his dreams, which he then shares online. Pippen recently got a stern warning from Strategy’s executive chairman, Michael Saylor, who took him out on his yacht. This wasn’t just any ask; it’s tied to one of the biggest mysteries in Bitcoin. ‘My guy, Michael Saylor, asked me not to speak on my conversations with Satoshi,’ the LA-based, six-time NBA champion said. (adopted from Cointelegraph)
The never-ending reproduction of the Satochi myth as a singular person is ultimately in the interest of alt-right Bitcoin holders that want to lure in more (institutional) investors by showcasing a solid foundation in popular culture for the crypto-asset, in this case, through a famous US basketball player.
In this light, it may be interesting to contrast the Satochi myth with Hito Steyerl’s critique of what she calls ‘blockchain orientalism’:
If you really want to follow some ‘way’ or another—good for you! I find the idea of cultural private property to be just as ambivalent as the idea of private property of art. What kind of social contract, if any, do you want? Make up your mind! If it’s a glorified investment pool, then please just own up to it and stop clouding it in orientalist verbiage. If not, then kindly please tell us what else it is supposed to be. Otherwise, potentially valuable social experiments might end up in an irrelevant subfolder of some dim-witted monopoly metaverse in which rotating Dogecoin memes burn up the planet. (Medium Hot, p. 131)
