Banking on Bitcoin Page #9

The day that "newsweek's"

story came out

naming Dorian nakamoto

as the creator of bitcoin,

I got this email

from an old acquaintance

that was titled

"what are the odds?"

And it laid out the fact

that hal Finney

lives less than

two miles away from

the known address

of Dorian nakamoto

where "newsweek" had found him.

And hal Finney is the number two

ever user of bitcoin,

who received the first

bitcoin transaction.

He worked on an early prototype

of an anonymous currency system.

He was a cypherpunk.

So how could it be that the

purported creator of bitcoin

and this known, confirmed,

second-ever user of bitcoin,

hadn't ever collaborated?

That hal Finney, who was less

than two miles away

from Dorian nakamoto

hadn't helped to create bitcoin?

Or maybe he really was

the creator of bitcoin.

Maybe hal Finney

was satoshi nakamoto.

When you look at

the bitcoin white paper,

it made reference to

a lot of the earlier projects

that fed into bitcoin.

But it's very notable that the

one project it doesn't refer to

is Nick szabo's bit gold,

which is perhaps

the closest precedent

and the closest parallel

to bitcoin.

I mean, bit gold

is so close to bitcoin,

it's hard not to think

that, you know,

maybe Nick is satoshi.

A lot of people will say

"nakamoto must be szabo."

"Nakamoto

must have been Finney."

But I don't think

he was trying to leave

any breadcrumbs out there

for anybody to follow.

I told my editor about it.

He agreed that

"you found satoshi nakamoto."

So I got on a plane

to Santa Barbara

and I drove out

to hal Finney's house.

But at this stage,

he was already

completely paralyzed by als,

this really awful,

debilitating terminal illness

that slowly shuts down your body

while leaving your mind

completely intact.

And the time when he started to

fade in his physical abilities

did roughly coincide

with the time

that satoshi nakamoto

started to disappear.

Now maybe the reason

that satoshi nakamoto

had chosen to fade away

was because hal Finney

was physically fading.

There have been a number

of stylometric studies

and you see so many

of these similarities

between satoshi's writings

and those of Nick's,

including these little things

like having two spaces

at the beginning of a sentence,

and phrases and spellings

that nobody else uses.

So I talked to hal as much as I

could, mostly in a kind of

one-way interview because he could really

only respond with yes and no answers,

and he denied being

satoshi nakamoto.

You could tell that he was

amused by the whole idea

that I thought

he was satoshi nakamoto.

One of the really

remarkable things

from Nick szabo's writing

in those months before bitcoin

was publically launched

is that Nick,

in responding to some comments

about a post he had made

about bit gold,

actually asked the other people

who were reading him

if anybody wanted to help him

code this idea up

into real software

that could work.

It was never turned

into a reality,

but when you look at bit gold,

it's hard not to be struck

by the similarities

between it and bitcoin.

It's possible.

Hal could've been the coder.

I don't know.

You know, this idea that...

That hal Finney could've been

the kind of ghost coder

for bitcoin...

I guess it's possible.

Other people kind of

speculating on reddit

or other parts of the Internet

thought that maybe hal Finney

had used Dorian nakamoto

as a patsy.

If he were ever traced

back to Dorian nakamoto,

it seemed like this guy

was the creator,

and hal Finney would be

sort of immunized from it.

Everyone else who was

involved in the projects

leading up to bitcoin

has released

their communications

with satoshi from this period.

Nick has avoided doing that,

and essentially went silent

in those critical months

after bitcoin was released.

You know, when you talk

to people face to face,

and they tell you these things,

you can get a sense

if they're being honest.

If hal Finney actually

had a secret

billion-dollar cache

of bitcoins,

he wouldn't have been able to lie

to me so effectively about it.

In the end, the reasons to believe

that this was all just a coincidence

began to outweigh

the coincidence itself.

It's almost like an eel.

There's something there,

you can see it,

but as soon as you touch it it just

slides right out of your hands

and you're left with nothing.

Anybody who is of any note

in the cypherpunk movement,

and even outside of it too,

has at one time or another

been called satoshi.

Hal Finney denied it.

Nick szabo denied it.

They've all denied it.

Maybe one of them is satoshi.

Maybe all of them are satoshi.

It really is a mystery.

That's the original ticker

from next door.

All right, so we're over here.

Bitcoin center, 100 feet from

the stock exchange, over here.

And, uh...

You know, some of you guys

took a hit last week,

last couple of weeks.

Lot of the big guys,

they got their foothold

in the business

that they weren't a part of

in the beginning.

I don't know what's going on.

But, uh, I don't know.

I wouldn't write off

bitcoin that easy.

I know that bitcoin

is gonna change the world.

It's changing the world already.

And we have to stand tall

and proud

as bitcoiners

and early adopters.

They don't know anything

about new technology,

but once it starts making sense,

they throw their dollars

behind it.

You know, unfortunately,

early adopters

make the roads

that we all travel down,

and they are usually paved over

in the process.

The first guy

through the door gets shot.

You know, but somebody's

gotta go through the door,

but they're gonna get shot.

Charlie shrem, Ross albricht,

Julian Assange,

they got shot

coming through the door.

But we're all utilizing

the freedoms

and technologies afforded to us

because they knocked

the door down.

Hey, Michael.

Can I put you on

speakerphone for a minute?

If I know how.

Hey, Michael, can I ask you,

where did you buy bitcoins?

Yeah.

Did you lose... how much...

Do you still have them?

You put into it.

Can you use it?

Do I want to buy it?

No, not today.

Though it is going to be around.

Did you ever use it

to buy anything?

- Michael.

No, okay.

They should go back to,

you know,

day one and just start all over.

Forget about bitcoin,

call it something else.

I think it's been

so tarnished now

with this...

With the silk road...

You know, I just think,

you know,

that all that stuff about

$400 million disappearing

and... you're just not

gonna get off the ground.

Nobody's gonna...

You know,

like Warren buffet said,

"stay the hell away from it."

To put all the cards

on the table,

I'm gonna be leaving the

department in the coming weeks.

And if you asked me back

when I took this job in 2011

what I thought we'd be

working on during my tenure,

digital currencies would not have

been at the top of the list.

So Ben lawsky created

this thing call the bitlicense

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