So much about Bitcoin’s early popularity–its cachet anyway–derived from the legendary mystery attached to its unknown creator. The profile was of a mad computer genius, hellbent on disrupting the world with his futuristic digital cryptocurrency. This was Steve Jobs as Thomas Pynchon, a Davos debunker living in an underground bunker somewhere, plotting the devastation of world currency markets. This anarchist mastermind went by a surely false name: Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin began trading back in 2009, and until Marc Andreesen got on board as Promoter-in-Chief, Bitcoin believers had only the cult figure Nakamoto as a godhead. It was enough of a story to warrant a virtual detective whodunnit in the New Yorker back in 2011, by the stylish sleuth Joshua Davis.
Now Leah McGrath Goodwin of Newsweek has supposedly found out who the creator of Bitcoin is–a man named, wait for it, Satoshi Nakamoto. McGrath Goodwin sourced the secret from Gavin Andresen, a Silicon Valley veteran who nowadays is an avid developer for The Bitcoin Project. Andresen tweeted that he regrets talking to Leah McGrath Goodwin but the Bitcoin faithful are mad. But why? The real currency can’t survive on a cult of personality but on the potency of its source code. As @Cryptoauction writes: “Does it even matter (Satoshi’s identity)? I care not who invented the wheel.” Yeah well, maybe not now, but at the time you know everybody was talking about him–or her. Did you see that wheel man? For a market that’s already mysterious to most, and which has been plagued of late by corruption, maybe taking the Guess-The-Inventor game out of the equation will be a positive. Bitcoin holders haven’t had a good couple of weeks. Maybe their luck is about to change?
