Shameless plug: Satoshi No No

What would you do if you became an instant Bitcoin billionaire?

If you were the inventor of Bitcoin, you’d simply disappear. In 2008, he invented the world’s first digital cryptocurrency, publishing his seminal paper under the fake name “Satoshi Nakamoto.” For the next two years, he built an open source team to develop the Bitcoin software. Since then, bitcoin has grown in value exponentially as people worldwide have realized that its fundamental design is reliable and resistant to government control.

Most of Satoshi’s coins, now worth billions of dollars, are still there, sitting in his digital wallet, and haven’t been spent. But why? Who was behind the mysterious Satoshi pseudonym? Why did he launch this digital money revolution? And where has he gone?

Chip is an IT worker with a cloud services company in Boston. His job is tedious and boring. On the rare occasions when he is allowed to show initiative or excellence, his manager drags him back down to Earth. One day, Chip makes a chance discovery that will change his life. He finds a hard drive containing the key to the bitcoin genesis block — the key to Satoshi’s fortune, and possibly his true identity.

But bitcoin is not completely anonymous; there are ways to track each transaction. And now, Chip has caught the attention of many powerful people — some curious, and some sinister.

Yes, that's certainly possible. But to me, it seems unlikely. When Satoshi announced in 2011 that he was stepping away "to pursue other interests," Bitcoin was already big enough that his coins were worth between $1M USD and $30M USD, depending on the time of day. It was easy to envision it gaining even more value over time. I have to assume that someone holding that much wealth would take steps to pass it on to his heirs in the event of his (or her) untimely death.

Then again, the theory of my novel is that he simply neglected to keep good care of his wallet, and lost it. So if we assume that he was brilliant but careless, then it's entirely possible that he simply died with the private key memorized or written down on an old scrap of paper that was thrown away.

As unbelievable as it may be, it seems increasingly likely that the real Satoshi Nakamoto has misplaced his original wallet or its passphrase. While it's possible that he has been waiting patiently for 12 years, watching Bitcoin's value rise, and biding his time, that seems increasingly unlikely. By now, he could have cashed out at least a small fraction of the estimated $50 billion USD worth of his original coins. Or he could have signed a message using his private key, proving to the world that he still exists. The fact that he's been completely silent suggests that he either:

- has lost his original private key or wallet (he wouldn't he the first crypto nerd to fail at opsec), or
- is independently wealthy and not interested in his fortune, or
- strongly believes the value of Bitcoin will continue to rise and therefore sees no need to cash out even a little, or
- has already sold the wallet/key to someone else in some contractual arrangement; of course, that buyer would have had to trust that he didn't retain a copy.

Craig Wright has never offered a shred of proof that he is Satoshi, despite it being easy for him to do so, if he were telling the truth.

Shameless plug: It's starting to look like the scenario my novel is as likely as any!