of a hunt for Satoshi that
would continue for years.
People on the chat channel
began debating the available
details about Satoshi and their
significance. It was noted that
Satoshi occasionally used
British spellings and words
like “bloody.” There was also
a fragment from a British
news story written into the
first block of Bitcoins created
by Satoshi’s computer.
A Bitcoin user in Japan
noted that Satoshi was a
common name in Japan, but
he argued that Satoshi was
unlikely to be Japanese given
that Satoshi had never used
Japanese words and had
always written his name with
the family name last, contrary
to Japanese tradition.
“Maybe this is a gambit to
trick us to think he’s not
Japanese,”
another
user
wrote.
“I like the pseudonym
theory the best. It’s so much
cooler for someone to have a
secret identity than just a
boring
name,”
someone
wrote.
“Jesus, this is a great
story. I’m amazed the NY
Times hasn’t picked up on it
yet,” another poster chimed
in.
In the early days, Martti
had never asked Satoshi any
personal questions but had
assumed
that
Satoshi
Nakamoto was probably not a
real name. Martti’s access to
the Bitcoin websites allowed
him to see that Satoshi was
joining the sites through a Tor
network that obscured his
geographic location and IP
address.
Gavin had asked Satoshi
some personal details in his
first e-mail, but Satoshi
ignored the questions and
Gavin never pressed for
more.
One regular forum user
asked Satoshi: “Suppose, god
forbid, you were no longer
able to program or were
unavailable due to unknown
circumstances. Do you have a
procedure in mind to continue
Bitcoin in your absence?”
Satoshi didn’t answer, but
others on the forum noted that
because Bitcoin’s software
was open source, available to
all
the
users,
Satoshi’s
involvement
shouldn’t
matter: “As long as the source
code remains open, that is
sufficient. If there is a need,
and enough interest, the
community
will
provide.
Trust in the community :)”
one developer wrote.
Satoshi was, in many
ways, just as powerless, or
powerful, as every other user
on the network. All the coins
were
on
the
communal
blockchain, but only the
person with the private key
corresponding to each address
on the blockchain could use
the coins in that address.
Satoshi could try to change
the software in some way that
would give him more control,
but doing so wouldn’t gain
traction unless a majority of
the network adopted the
changes.
Still, Gavin, who was
now perhaps the most central
figure in Bitcoin, knew that
the platonic ideal of open
source
software
was
somewhat more complicated
underneath the surface. While
anyone
could
propose
changes to the protocol, he
and
Satoshi
were
still
essentially the only people
who could sign off on
changes—and this gave them
an unusual amount of power
in the system. What’s more,
while Satoshi had written a
program
designed
to
eliminate the need for trust,
users of the technology still
had to have faith that it would
work as intended. On the
forum, Gavin wrote: “Trust is
Bitcoin’s biggest barrier to
success. I don’t think there is
anything we can do to speed
up the process of getting
people to trust that Bitcoin is
solid; it takes time to build
trust.”
At this point, though, the
primary cause for distrust was
not the lack of information
about
Satoshi.
Satoshi’s
anonymity,
if
anything,
seemed to increase the level
of faith in the system. The
anonymity
suggested
that
Bitcoin was not created by a
person seeking personal fame
or success. What’s more,
Satoshi’s absence allowed
people to project their own
vision onto Bitcoin.
Those who could cause
problems, though, were the
very
people
who
were
making Bitcoin grow. The
network was expanding, but
the people among its growing
ranks would also pose the
greatest threat to Bitcoin and
the trust it needed.
CHAPTER 6
September 2010
The Sony Vaio laptop that
was the nerve center of the
biggest
business
in
the
Bitcoin world in the fall of
2010—Mt. Gox—sat on a
square wooden table, under a
roof made out of dried palm
leaves. An oblong swimming
pool was just feet away.
The founder of Mt. Gox,
Jed McCaleb, had moved to
Nosara, a Costa Rican beach
town, less than two months
after starting the exchange.
Lonely in their isolated New
York estate, he and MiSoon
didn’t want to spend another
winter cooped up with their
two small children. In Nosara
they found a house near the
beach, with a Montessori
school for the children, an
opportunity for Jed to finally
perfect his surfing, and a hut
in the backyard where he
could work.
But the booming new
business was not cooperating
with their plans for a quiet
tropical life. Just ten days in,
he had seen his first day with
1,000 Bitcoins traded and
about ten days after that he
saw his first day with over
10,000
Bitcoins
traded,
meaning that over $1,000
changed hands that day. Jed
was making 0.5 percent from
each side of every trade, a
nice reward for something
that required little work. But
the flow of money in and out,
particularly from PayPal, was
causing headaches.
Jed suffered from an issue
common in any business that
takes credit cards or PayPal.
All the traditional payment
networks allow customers to
dispute charges and can take
money back from merchants,
like
Jed,
even
after
transactions go through. This
was one of the issues that
Cypherpunks had wanted to
address in creating digital
cash—owing to the anger
about how much power the
system
of
so-called
chargebacks gave to the
credit card companies of the
world. Bitcoin itself did not
allow charges to be reversed,
but if Jed sold Bitcoins via
PayPal to someone who then
disputed the PayPal payment,
Jed could lose the PayPal
money and not be able to get