WEBVTT - The Hunt for Bitcoin’s Creator 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:07.720 Okay, please introduce yourself now. For the record, my name 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:11.320 is Andy Greenberg and I'm a senior writer for Wired. 0:00:11.640 --> 0:00:15.800 What drew you to the hunt for Setoshi Nakamodo? Well, 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:21.760 I um, let's see. In late two thousand fifteen, Andy 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:24.520 got an email from out of the blue. It was 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:28.960 encrypted and the writer was using a pseudonym. Andy's mysterious 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:34.120 correspondent made an incredible claim. He said he possessed documents 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:39.199 that revealed conclusively the true identity of Setoshi Nakamoto, the 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:43.720 mysterious creator of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, one of the tech 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:48.440 industry's biggest unsolved mysteries. It was the story of the decade, 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:52.680 a story that could make a journalist career. Andy and 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:56.560 his correspondent started working together. The evidence was pointing towards 0:00:56.560 --> 0:01:01.800 a little known Australian computer scientist named Craig Right. If 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.200 you just took a glance at this stuff, you would 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:08.720 very quickly to find enough evidence to convince yourself if 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:11.399 you believe the documents were real, that this guy had 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:16.720 created Bitcoin, this eccentric Australian genius you know, nobody had 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:22.319 ever heard of before they collected his old blog posts. 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:26.080 They did linguistic analysis to compare rights writing style with 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:31.440 post written by Satoshi. And on December eight Andy published 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:36.679 his blockbuster story and Wired titled Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:41.880 is probably this unknown Australian genius. And then it happened 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:46.640 what always seems to happen to the Satoshi hunters, this 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:51.840 community of bitcoin enthusiasts and cryptocurrency fanatics just went to 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:55.760 work to methodically disprove the claim that Craig Wright was 0:01:55.800 --> 0:02:00.480 Satoshi Nakamoto, and the fallout made Andy Greenberg's life a 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:12.079 living How. Hi, I'm Brad Stone and I'm Julie r H. 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:16.160 And this week Undercrypted, we're asking the question whatever happened 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.200 to the hunt for Satoshi Nakamoto? Now, Bratt, I know 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:22.920 this has captivated me for some time. Julie I confess 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:25.600 to having fruitlessly spent some time on it as well. 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:30.080 And over the years, publications like The New Yorker, Gizmoto, 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:34.120 Fast Company, Forbes, the London Review of Books, Vice have 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:37.080 all tried to find sitution. It's become a kind of 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:41.639 journalistic tarbie. The more reporters getting tangled in the mystery, 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:46.400 the worst fever, and there's this question of whether Satoshi 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:50.240 should even be identified. You know, Satoshi still controls about 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:53.520 a million bitcoin, making them the largest holder of the 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:57.679 cryptocurrency and a billionaire. In paper, a journalist would say, 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.320 the world has a right to know, but maybe this 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:02.960 genius just wants to be left alone. And if we 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:06.840 never find out Setoci's true identity, does it even matter anyway? 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:17.080 Stay with its first, Brad, remind us what we really 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:20.760 know about Setoshi. All we really know about Setoshi is 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:24.680 what he wrote. In October two tho paper appeared online 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:28.480 describing a new kind of digital money called bitcoin. A 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:32.440 few months later, Satoshi released the very first bitcoin software, 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:36.040 And this was right after the financial crisis. Is your 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:39.720 money safe? The fault of Lehman brothers, And of course 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:42.120 it is not just Lehman's night. Bank of America sealing 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:44.840 a deal to buy Maryland for twenty nine dollars a 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:48.600 share that is roughly Bitcoin attracted libertarians and people who 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:52.400 had lost faith in the global financial system. They liked 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:55.840 this idea of an electronic currency with no central bank 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:59.320 standing behind it. In the beginning, Bitcoin was only known 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:03.480 within small circles of developers, and for a while Satoshi 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:07.760 communicated with them sending emails, talking on bulletin boards, but 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:11.280 those people say they never met Setoshi in person. In 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:14.200 two thousand and eleven, as bitcoin was starting to become 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:18.320 associated with shady criminal enterprises like the Silk Road, which 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:22.360 was an illegal online drug market, Satoshi disappeared and his 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:26.040 final post said quote, I've moved on to other things. 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:29.560 It's in good hands. And with that the legend of 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:44.760 Satoshi was born. So Brad together we went to interview 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:48.839 the very first Setoshi hunter. Right, Joshua Davis is a 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:51.400 great journalist who wrote one of the first stories about 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.400 bitcoin for the New Yorker magazine all the way back 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:57.479 in October two eleven. Yeah, and that's just a few 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:00.279 months after Setoshi went silent. We went for to the 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:03.640 Mission District in San Francisco for this interview, meeting josh 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:06.560 at a small office. There was a walk up apartment 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:08.640 with just a couple of rooms and a gate on 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:11.400 the entry door. We sat down in a quiet room 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:16.080 at the back. Please introduce yourself. My name is Joshua Davis, 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.640 and I am the co founder of Epic magazine and 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:26.160 a contributing editor at Wired. Josh's article cryptocurrency introduced bitcoin 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:28.919 to a lot of readers. It also said a pattern 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.039 that would be repeated over and over. Journalists would set 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:35.560 out to understand bitcoin and then get enticed by the 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:39.400 Satoshi mystery and end up going down the rabbit hole. 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:43.320 You know, it's like a classic treasure hunt where you 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:46.599 don't know exactly where the treasure is, but you could. 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.000 You see one crumb, and you follow that crumb to 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:51.400 the next crumb, and and next thing you know, you've 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:54.919 been led down this crazy journey. One big win was 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:58.040 only worth about three dollars at this time. Josh ended 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:00.680 up buying some and spent them one of the only 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:03.240 places you could find that accepted it at the time, 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:08.320 Howard Johnson's hotel near Disneyland. Yikes, and since one bitcoin 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.920 does around ten thousand dollars today, that ended up being 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:16.600 a very expensive hotel room. Josh also attended a cryptoconference 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:20.160 in Santa Barbara, one of the first, and became convinced 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.880 that one of the attendees must be Setoshi hiding in 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:27.480 plain sight. He scanned the attendee list and going on 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:29.800 clues like the fact that Setoshi seemed to use some 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:33.280 British sayings in his writing, he settled on an Irish 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:38.000 cryptography student named Michael Clear. As Josh described it in 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:41.560 the story, he met with Michael outside the conference and 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:45.599 then asked him, point blank, are you Setoshi Nakamoto? We 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:48.400 talked about bitcoin a little bit and I said to him, 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:51.400 I'm also looking for the person who created it. And 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:54.880 I said, I know, it happened to notice that you 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:57.359 have a lot of the same experience, and so I 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:04.000 just want to ask you. Are you set Toshi? And 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:09.640 he said no, But if I was, I wouldn't tell you. 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:18.240 From the story, it's clear Josh wasn't entirely sure if 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.760 Michael was telling the truth, right, because denying it is 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:26.640 exactly what Satoshi would do. Many years later, Josh's circumspect 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:30.520 about the challenges of revealing Satoshi's identity. I think the 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:32.400 biggest problem is that there's just not a lot to 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:37.120 go on, and so you very quickly start making assumptions. 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:40.200 This is something we heard over and over. You start 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:42.960 finding ways to convince yourself that you're on the right track. 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:47.040 A confirmation bias. So, you know, let's look at some 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:51.880 of those assumptions. British English, the assumption that it's a 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:55.520 heat because he's using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. I mean 0:07:55.560 --> 0:08:01.000 the very initial assumption that he's Japanese. Again, there's no 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:06.160 guarantee that he's Japanese. At many points in the reporting, 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:11.960 I was imagining Satoshi just laughing, just laughing at me, 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.120 and then over the years, as other people have chased him, 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:24.640 just laughing at everybody else. A few years later, in 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:28.440 two thousand fourteen, the crypto community got a rather large 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:33.040 surprise when Newsweek magazine ran a story revealing the true 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:36.760 identity of the creator of Bitcoin. It has been one 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:40.720 of the biggest mysteries raging across the internet and business worlds. 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:45.199 Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? The man who created bitcoin is 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:48.720 known as the father of Bitcoin, the online currency now 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.680 worth billions. Take a look at this scene last night 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.920 after Newsweek published an article claiming the man in these 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.320 images is the Bitcoin founder. Now, this is probably the 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.720 best known attempt at un mask Satoshi. So speaking to 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:03.800 the woman who wrote it, was at the top of 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:07.959 our list. My name is Leah McGrath Goodman, and I 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:11.960 was the writer of the Bitcoin story cover story for Newsweek. 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:16.520 Back at this time, Newsweek had been temporarily out of print, 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.000 Leah's article appeared on the cover of their first issue 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.920 back and there was a lot of anticipation around it. 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:27.000 Leah had identified a sixty four year old Japanese American 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:31.240 living in southern California, and his real name, as it 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.560 turned out, was Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. When this hit on March, 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:39.520 I was back in New York. I was online and 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:42.560 watching from across the country. There was a huge reaction 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:45.800 to the story, something Leah says she never could have expected. 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:50.000 Camera crews and police cars descended on Dorian Nakamoto's home. 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:53.280 He was hounded by reporters while trying to leave this house. 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.520 I hadn't seen anything like that in California since I 0:09:56.600 --> 0:09:58.920 was a little kid with the O. J. Simpson Wake 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:03.120 Bronco car chase. I was in complete shock. I just 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:05.400 got up and walked across the room and people were 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:08.560 congratulating me and shaking my hand, and I went to 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:13.040 the ladies room and just threw up um and just panicked, 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.000 had a panic attack because I realized that the theories 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:20.200 of events that had been found in motion was um 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:28.520 something I couldn't change or do anything about. In addition 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:32.200 to the media surface, Leah faced an outcry from bitcoin 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:36.280 die hards online on Twitter and read it immediately with 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:39.800 people trying to discredit her story as well. But the 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:44.319 biggest blow probably came from Dorian Nakamoto himself. When reporters 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:47.199 confronted him on this driveway, he told them he had 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:57.400 never worked on cryptography or alternative currencies. It took me 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.480 a while to get Lea comfortable with talking about this 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:03.840 moment in her life. Corresponded with her for a few 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.200 months and met her for coffee when she visited New 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:09.240 York before she agreed to speak with us. I'm not 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:13.359 surprised she was reticent because that story was fairly discredited 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:15.760 in the in the tech community. So I'm dying to 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.040 know Julie. If she could go back again, would she 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:20.880 still write her story? Yeah? I asked her about that. 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:23.600 If you go back again and you knew that this 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:26.360 whole reaction was going to happen, and I mean, it's 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:29.319 sort of like altered your life quite a bit, would 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:33.560 you still go back and write this story? Yeah. I 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:36.080 have actually had this question recently put to me by 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:38.840 a couple other people, and I said I couldn't really 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:41.600 say if I would do it again to be honest, 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:44.600 So does she still think that Dorian is the real 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:47.640 said Tosi. Unlike the other people that we've talked to, 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:50.840 Leah is still quite certain that Dorian is a guy, 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:54.400 just perhaps as part of a group rather than by himself. 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:57.520 And we should point out that news Week never retracted 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:13.439 that story. That probably should have been enough to dissuade 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:17.360 other journalists from following in Leah's footsteps. But as the 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.360 price of bitcoin rose from two hundred dollars in the 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:24.480 fall to eight hundred dollars a year later, the stakes 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:28.280 got higher and the intrigue around the mystery of Satoshi 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:32.360 got even more intense and irresistible. I found it really 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:35.360 exciting that there was this unknown thing, like I've always 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:40.320 writing about whether anonymitia is possible on the Internet, and 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:43.120 it kind of excited me that someone had actually achieved it. 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:45.920 Someone had done something really significant on the Internet, and 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:49.040 we still didn't know who they were. That's Andy Greenberg, 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:52.000 the writer for Wired magazine we met at the beginning 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:54.839 of the episode. Brad and I traveled down to One 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:58.240 World Trade in Manhattan, where the Wired offices are located. 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:01.800 Andy has a bushy beard which he was stroking as 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:04.319 he was remembering a time in his life that he 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:08.079 had tried to forget. Andy says he was originally deflated 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:11.800 by the Newsweek story. He couldn't believe Satoshi was hiding 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:16.040 in plain sight. You see, Andy was a Setoshi hunter himself. 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:20.800 When he was still at Forbes magazine. He had written 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:23.760 a story about a man named Hal Finny. Now, How 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:26.960 was a computer scientist and the first person to ever 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:32.640 exchange emails and bitcoin with Setoshi. Andy suspected maybe How 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:37.199 was Setoshi himself. Andy had visited Hal, who had advanced 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:39.960 a LS at his home in two thousand and fourteen. 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:43.080 At the time, he thought it was significant that Hal 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:46.840 and Dorian Nakamoto lived only a half mile away from 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:50.360 each other in Los Angeles. Yeah, but then he concluded 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.920 it was just that confirmation bias at work. Again. There's 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:56.280 a line in that story that I thought was resident 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.760 and really applies to this entire kind of topic, which 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:02.600 as I believe that those connections were in fact random, 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:04.640 that Finny is telling the truth when he denies helping 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:07.000 to an event bitcoin, and that I am only the 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:09.600 most recent of a long string of journalists to succumb 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:13.160 to the mirage of us Atoshi Nakamoto shaped pattern in 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:20.000 a collection of meaningless facts. Yeah, that's it's even more 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:23.280 painful to think about those words now because I I 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:27.560 don't think I may have felt for it again. That's 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:30.280 because about a year after the Newsweek story fell apart 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:34.840 in late and he started getting encrypted emails from someone 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:38.640 using the name weren Brandwyn Goern said he was in 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:43.040 possession of emails, texts, accounting documents, and other evidence that 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:48.280 conclusively revealed that an esoteric Australian computer scientist named Craig 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:52.400 Wright was the one and only Satoshi nakamuk and he 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:55.520 was looking for advice and a good journalist to share 0:14:55.560 --> 0:15:00.400 this document trove with. So of course I I couldn't 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:02.840 let Gun just take this to another reporter. I mean, 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:07.040 I would have, you know, been losing out on the 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:10.640 biggest story. And I'm sure I'm sure that Green knew 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:14.320 what he was doing, and so I negotiated with him 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:18.680 that we would delve into it together. Investigated cod byeline 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:21.600 of story, which is very strange because he's not a 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:27.520 journalist and I don't know his real name. Andy spent 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:31.280 three NonStop weeks working on the story, identifying Craig right 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:35.640 as Setoshi throwing himself right back into it despite his hesitation. 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:40.880 I dropped everything like eating and sleeping. They reported carefully 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.840 worried about inadvertently tipping off their competition. So we were 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:49.600 constantly doing these really kg interviews where we were just 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:53.840 asking these really circumspects questions that people. They spent hours 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:57.920 pouring over old Craig Right blog posts comparing his style 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:01.920 to that of Setoshi's. Andy was focusing on a possible 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:04.960 cover story for Wired, but he also was preparing a 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:08.480 shorter piece just in case he heard that competition was 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:12.800 working on the same story. Andy and Goren contacted Craig 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:16.520 Right directly, but he was cag full of hints, non 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:20.080 denials and even a little bit of menace. Right was 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:24.840 really weird right from the beginning and just got back 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:29.280 to us with these pseudo denials, like not really denying 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:32.920 that he was the guy. They were kind of menacing 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:38.040 responses that were not helpful but not not actual denials either, 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.240 which is like, I feel like that's what Satoshi would 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:45.280 do to kind of but they were meaner than Satoshi 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:49.320 is in his um you know, original persona. A picture 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.320 seemed to emerge of this eccentric Craig Right, who had 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:57.320 worked in tandem to create bitcoin with a forensic investigator 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:01.480 in US Army veteran named Dave Kleinman who had passed away. 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:05.080 And so the weird tone of Craig Rights writing, which 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:08.480 was kind of paranoid and angry and just very strange, 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:12.119 the fact that didn't match to Toshi's persona that seemed okay, 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:15.080 like we could explain it away. And then just as 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:18.960 that picture was coming into focus, Andy got word that Gizmodo, 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:22.240 the tech news site, was working on the same story. 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:26.120 Wired rushed its story onto the web. To be clear, 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:28.960 we did not have the opportunity to do the story 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:33.240 we wanted to do. Instead, I heard that Gizmodo was 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:35.800 working on a piece, and like an hour later we 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:39.920 published hours because we were not going to like run 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:44.040 the risk of losing what could be a big scoop. 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:52.080 The next few days were pretty dark for Andy. They 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:55.080 were miserable days because even if you get the rights, 0:17:55.280 --> 0:18:00.920 everyone's furious a view for having violated the privacy Setoshi Nakamoto. 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:04.639 Members of the bigcoin community were furious at him and 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:08.600 Wired for trying to unmask Setoshi. Many of them believe 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:11.720 the world should never find out who Setoshi is and 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:14.879 that the person deserves the privacy. It was like he 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:18.080 had desecrated a temple. The blowback was as bad as 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:22.320 anything experienced by lea newsweek. Bitcoin is, by its nature 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:25.879 this thing that a lot of people see as a 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:29.119 privacy tool, although it actually is very difficult to use 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:31.800 in a private way. As you know, everybody knows. Increasingly 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:35.639 it's it's becoming more understood that bitcoin is not actually 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:38.840 very easy to use in a private way. But it 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:41.840 comes from the world of cryptography, where everyone is obsessed 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:44.760 with privacy, and so there are a lot of people 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:47.640 who are just angry at me and gorn and wired 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:52.960 for having even attempted to out the docs. Setoshi, Um, 0:18:53.040 --> 0:19:01.960 this poor genius who just wanted to be hidden. My 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:05.920 Twitter mentions were just a war zone for weeks to come. 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:11.040 So I spent you know, these just defending the decision 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:14.560 to try to do this. As journalists. I hope you 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:17.119 guys can see that you can't you can't not do 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:20.440 it if the clues come to you. It's not like 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:25.880 it's not like it's a TOCI is just a random 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:32.200 private person. He would be a multi billionaire with immense 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:37.320 power and money and influence, you know, and that you 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:41.880 know that really matters, Like I do think it's completely 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:45.000 defensible to to to say who's a toci is if 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:49.560 you know. But then things got worse. A journalist from 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:53.360 Forbes wrote a story suggesting that Craig Right had falsified 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:57.120 his academic record, that he didn't in fact have multiple 0:19:57.200 --> 0:20:01.639 PhD s, and then another reporter up information showing that 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:04.600 Craig Wright had backdated some of his blog posts to 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:06.600 make it seem like you wrote them back at the 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:10.120 creation of bitcoin. Yeah, and he says he knew about that, 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:13.280 but rationalized it. He felt like Craig was leaving him 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:16.479 these breadcrumbs that he'd previously concealed. You know a lot 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:18.920 of people have been pointing to that and said, what 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:20.879 were you guys thinking? You even saw that he had 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:24.000 backdated the blog posts? How could you be so silly? 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:26.680 And I don't know. It's a good point. It was 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.159 confirmation by us, like we had other evidence that was 0:20:30.200 --> 0:20:33.919 pointing in the positive direction. So we found ways to 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:37.000 tell ourselves that the negative stuff didn't matter as much 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:40.120 as it should have. Andy followed up three days after 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:43.119 the original article with a story and Wired that said 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:46.760 that elements of craig wright story didn't add up. That 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:51.600 later story was titled new Clues suggests Craig Wright suspected 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:55.920 Bitcoin creator, maybe a hoaxer now, to be fair, and 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:59.160 he had hedged his original story well. He made sure 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:01.760 to say in that first piece that Craig could be 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:04.760 a huckster. But that's the kind of nuance that gets 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:08.200 lost in a media scrum, right, and almost didn't matter. 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:12.360 The Gizmoto story that also identified Craig was less careful 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:16.320 and together, the impression was that both publications had identified 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:20.560 Craig as Setoshi. Now they were seemingly big, embarrassing holes 0:21:20.600 --> 0:21:24.320 in their stories. It seemed like another journalistic failure to 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:28.040 hunt Setoshi down. About six months later, by the way, 0:21:28.320 --> 0:21:31.960 Craig Wright tried to prove publicly that he was Atoshi Nakamoto. 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:36.320 He gave a technical demonstration that convinced Gavin Andreessen, a 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:39.600 high profile member of the bitcoin community, But then a 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:43.199 reputable security researcher alleged that he had faked as proof. 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:47.239 Rights claimed to be Satoshi seems to have collapsed, at 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:51.720 least for now, after the whole painful episode. What really 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:54.719 shocked Andy was that readers didn't seem to care as 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:57.440 much as he thought they would, right. He actually said 0:21:57.440 --> 0:22:02.399 readership was kind of disappointing. Craig writes story people were 0:22:02.480 --> 0:22:05.680 less interested, Like I thought that would blow up the internet, 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:08.560 and it didn't because people had already gone through this 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:12.720 once with the newsweek piece and they kind of didn't 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:16.760 care as much. And then after Craig writes kind of 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:22.480 like disappointing mysteries, you know, resolution, but then it's not 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:24.920 a resolution, and then he comes out again and then 0:22:25.520 --> 0:22:28.959 that's disproven, and it's kind of like never resolved. Uh, 0:22:29.480 --> 0:22:32.240 it's just made the mystery much less fun. Uh, and 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:36.000 it's it's just kind of sad. And I I know 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:39.480 that I am part of making that mystery less fun. 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:42.840 That it makes me. It makes me sad that like 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:48.280 there was this kind of very pure and like super 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:51.720 interesting question of who's a Toci Nakamoto And now I 0:22:51.840 --> 0:23:02.760 just get like nauseated thinking about it. And there's one 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:05.840 other journalist that we talked to, though, Nathaniel Popper from 0:23:05.840 --> 0:23:09.080 the New York Times, who actually covers bitcoin but has 0:23:09.119 --> 0:23:11.720 only made a best guess at who Setosi is rather 0:23:11.760 --> 0:23:15.119 than writing this big expose meant to go on page 0:23:15.160 --> 0:23:18.200 one of the paper. It doesn't mean he hasn't been interested. 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:21.919 He's just been extremely cautious. There's some part of me 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:24.840 that's always on edge, waiting for the email that finally says, 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:28.160 you know, here, I am here, here it is right. 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:31.160 I doubt anyone could be more curious about the setoci 0:23:31.280 --> 0:23:33.920 hunt than someone like Nathan. But he says he hasn't 0:23:33.960 --> 0:23:36.560 believed the previous attempts for more than a few hours. 0:23:37.040 --> 0:23:40.080 You know, I remember when when Dorian, when that Newsweek 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:42.840 story came out, and I remember when the Craig Rights 0:23:42.880 --> 0:23:46.080 story came out. There were certainly a few hours where 0:23:46.359 --> 0:23:48.520 it was this open question. I thought, you know, maybe 0:23:48.600 --> 0:23:51.479 this this is it. But I think this is one 0:23:51.520 --> 0:23:56.120 of these cases where the kind of online mob very quickly, 0:23:56.840 --> 0:24:02.320 uh pulls together the evidence on sized and um, you know, 0:24:02.800 --> 0:24:06.040 people reached opinions pretty quickly. But Nathan told us that 0:24:06.119 --> 0:24:09.320 he does hope we'll find out who Satoshi is, and 0:24:09.400 --> 0:24:11.800 so you know, it wouldn't surprise me if we do 0:24:12.000 --> 0:24:15.040 find out at some point. And I'll say, I'm constantly 0:24:15.040 --> 0:24:20.240 getting emails from people who claimed to be Satoshi and say, 0:24:20.359 --> 0:24:23.160 you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna bring forward the evidence 0:24:23.200 --> 0:24:25.960 when the time is right. So what do you think, bred, 0:24:26.160 --> 0:24:29.000 do you think we'll ever find out who Setoshi is? 0:24:29.680 --> 0:24:32.600 You know, unless Satoshi comes out and move some of 0:24:32.600 --> 0:24:35.639 that original block of bitcoin. I think there's gonna be 0:24:35.720 --> 0:24:39.200 some ambiguity that the challenges that we've built up Setohi 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:43.040 into this legend. And yet people are fallible, They make mistakes, 0:24:43.160 --> 0:24:45.560 you know, they tell little lies that can get exposed. 0:24:45.960 --> 0:24:48.880 I think Andy Greenberg from Wired said of the best 0:24:48.960 --> 0:24:51.600 Julie when he told us we're going to need Setoshi's 0:24:51.640 --> 0:24:54.479 cooperation if we're ever going to settle this. What do 0:24:54.520 --> 0:24:57.120 you think, Yeah, I think you're right. I think we've 0:24:57.119 --> 0:24:59.800 just built up this character. And obviously, as a journalist, 0:25:00.280 --> 0:25:02.240 I'd love to be the one to break this story. 0:25:02.320 --> 0:25:06.199 But then as just a person watching this, this creation 0:25:06.440 --> 0:25:09.760 and seeing how someone has escaped, you know, any sort 0:25:09.800 --> 0:25:12.680 of tracking is just fascinating. And I don't really want 0:25:12.680 --> 0:25:15.600 Setoci to ever be found either. Right, there are a 0:25:15.640 --> 0:25:18.080 lot of members of the bitcoin community that want them 0:25:18.080 --> 0:25:20.960 to come back now, because there there's this division right 0:25:21.040 --> 0:25:24.040 in the community between kind of traditional bitcoin and something 0:25:24.040 --> 0:25:27.960 called bitcoin Cash, there's lots of animosity without getting too 0:25:27.960 --> 0:25:30.400 deep into the split, I mean, it's a tocy come 0:25:30.400 --> 0:25:34.040 back and establish some some order to this world. I 0:25:34.040 --> 0:25:35.879 mean there's pros and cons of that too, right, it 0:25:35.880 --> 0:25:39.480 would be nice to have someone come established order. But 0:25:39.560 --> 0:25:42.840