The origin story of Bitcoin is one of the most fascinating legends ever told. Unlike many legends of the past, this story takes place in the modern digital age, where everything is tracked and logged. Satoshi’s communications are publicly available to read, and yet the details around the inventor’s identity are still shrouded in mystery.
The Cypherpunks
Before there was bitcoin, there were the Cypherpunks.
The Cypherpunks were a group of digital liberty advocates — computer scientists, cryptographers, and anarchists who were terrified of a future Orwellian surveillance state. They decided to take freedom into their own hands, creating technology no government or corporation could stop.
A Cypherpunk is an activist advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change. They believed that if you take away the state’s monopoly over the means of economic interaction, you take away one of the principal ingredients of the state’s power.
And independent money was their holy grail.
The Cypherpunks had been diligently working towards the perfect digital money for decades. David Chaum, Adam Back, Hal Finney, Wei Dai, Nick Szabo — each contributed a piece of the puzzle. Their aim was to free humanity from the regulation and control of banks and middlemen, to move money without permission and without censorship. The separation of money and state.
But they were stuck. As Timothy May wrote in The Cyphernomicon in 1994: “Can a digital coin be made? The answer appears to be no. Software is infinitely copyable, which means a software representation of digital money could be replicated many times.” They couldn’t solve the problem of digital scarcity — how to make something digital that couldn’t simply be copied.
Standing on the shoulders of these Cypherpunk giants, a mysterious figure had a breakthrough.
October 31st
The date is October 31st, 2008.
An epic, worldwide financial crisis threatens to destroy the entire global economy. The world’s governments and banks are barely managing to postpone the consequences, flooding the economy with hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts. Global debt reaches record levels.
Against this backdrop, on a Halloween night, a mad computer scientist quietly publishes the instructions to a new kind of money. A digital money, an unstoppable money, ruled by no human being. An invention they call bitcoin.
A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.
— Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin whitepaper
The choice of date was no accident. On October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses onto the doors of the Castle Church of Wittenberg — a document that challenged the corruption of the Catholic Church and sparked the Protestant Reformation, one of the most significant upheavals in Western history.
Where Luther took offense with plenary indulgences — the Church selling forgiveness of sins to fund the lavish lifestyle of the Vatican — Satoshi took offense with bank bailouts, central banking, and the debt nature of money. Both carefully chose this day for its symbolism of death and renewal. Both saw the bondage that had constrained the people, and both suggested getting rid of the central authority to “forgive us of our debt.”
Luther’s ideas spread through the newly invented printing press. Satoshi’s ideas spread through the internet. Both changed the world forever.
The Mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi Nakamoto.
No one ever meets this person. No one even knows if they are a single person or a group. No one ever hears their voice and no one ever sees their face.
That’s because there’s no one actually named Satoshi Nakamoto. It’s a pseudonym, a disguise, a mask. Like a real-life superhero, they conceal their identity from the world. All communication was done digitally through forum posts and email. Through meticulous planning, evasive linguistic tactics, and unpredictable posting times, Satoshi left no traceable personal clues in their writing.
In the whitepaper published on that fateful Halloween, Satoshi presents a solution to a computer science dilemma — a problem once thought impossible to solve. Simultaneously reinventing one of the oldest technologies in human civilization, and solving a multi-thousand-year-old trust problem with the first accounting innovation in over 0 years, Satoshi created a trust machine that runs on its own without human involvement.
Satoshi discovered a way to put physics into the internet. To recreate the thermodynamic law of conservation of energy within cyberspace. A new form of time, a decentralized clock that ticks for eternity. A way to give everyone on earth access to immutable money — a revolution in property rights.
The invention of bitcoin marked a fundamental breakthrough in cryptography, computer science, information theory, economics, and fintech. An invention with profound consequences for the history of mankind.
January 3rd: The Fair Launch
On January 3rd, 2009, the Genesis Block was mined.
Satoshi didn’t premine. There was no venture capital, no insider allocation, no tokens set aside for “devs” or marketing. Satoshi gave everyone a two-month heads up before mining the first block, reaching out to the only other people who would possibly be interested — the Cypherpunks — via a public email list.
Embedded in the Genesis Block, etched into the code for all eternity, was a message — a statement of purpose and a proof of no premine:
“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”
The code to mine bitcoin was available on the day Satoshi began mining. It even had a one-click miner built in. Several individuals started mining immediately — Hal Finney was mining just one day after launch.
This is what Bitcoiners call the immaculate conception. As Nic Carter put it: “Bitcoin benefited from an extremely rare set of circumstances. Because it launched in a world where digital cash had no established value, the coins circulated freely. That can’t be recaptured today since everyone expects coins to have value. Not only was it fair, but it was historically unique in its fairness.”
No other cryptocurrency has ever achieved or will ever achieve this kind of clean launch. The window is closed forever.
The Disappearance
For a couple of years, this mysterious computer scientist worked with volunteers to bootstrap the project — fixing bugs, tweaking the code, answering questions on forums. And then, without notice or announcement, Satoshi disappears. Like a ghost.
It’s a departure without a display. Satoshi doesn’t broadcast the exit. The emails just stop. The forum posts go silent. Eventually, a final message to one developer: “I’ve moved on to other things. Bitcoin is in good hands.”
Satoshi is never heard from again.
By disappearing, Satoshi left behind ultimate fame, power, and fortune. It’s estimated that Satoshi controls approximately 0 bitcoins — and yet the coins have never been touched. Not once. Not when bitcoin was under attack and looked like it needed help. Not when those coins reached a value of a billion dollars. Not ten billion. Not a hundred billion.
Satoshi’s treasure sits untouched as a monument to selflessness — the largest pile of bitcoin in the world, visible to everyone on the public ledger, yet completely untouchable. It lies there as a testament to the power of the individual, proving that anything is possible. And it lies there taunting those who are driven by greed, proving that humans are capable of throwing it all away for the good of humanity.
Unlike every other founder in history, Satoshi never cashed out.
The Trials of Bitcoin
Abandoned by its creator, is this digital money project now doomed?
Quite the opposite. Despite having no leader, no employees, no funding and no marketing, bitcoin roars to life. Its thunder is heard around the world.
But the road has not been smooth. Bitcoin is a story of incredible resilience. They rejected it on the mailing list, banned it at corporations, tried to install a dictator, fire the developers, copy it, co-opt the miners. They painted it as poison, waste, drugs, gambling. They blocked banking, funds, trading.
In 2014, Mt. Gox — then the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange — collapsed after losing over half a billion dollars in bitcoin. Many feared it was the end. Bitcoin survived.
Governments have repeatedly tried to ban it. China cracked down multiple times. India threatened prohibition. Jamie Dimon urged Congress to “close it down.” Bitcoin survived.
In 2017, the biggest attack in Bitcoin’s history came from within. A handful of the most powerful industry actors — representing over 83% of global mining power, more than 50 companies, and more than 20 million wallets — allied to change Bitcoin’s rules. It was an alliance between Chinese miners, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street. Despite the odds, a handful of grassroots activists defeated this corporate coalition. The lesson: neither miners nor corporations control bitcoin. Users do.
The year 2022 brought the collapse of FTX, the conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried, and Binance’s record $4.3 billion fine. The entire crypto industry looked like it was on the ropes. Bitcoin didn’t just survive — it came out swinging, reaching new all-time highs.
Each shock bitcoin survives boosts confidence in the network and draws in more users, further increasing resilience in a virtuous cycle. This is the Lindy effect — the longer bitcoin exists, the greater the confidence that it will continue to exist. Bitcoin has now weathered four 80%+ price drawdowns, massive exchange hacks, “bans” by large sovereigns, and contentious hard forks. It’s been declared dead hundreds of times.
And yet it’s still here. Tick tock, next block.
We Are All Satoshi
We will probably never know who invented bitcoin. And that’s the point.
The moral of the story isn’t to speculate on who Satoshi is, but to understand that it doesn’t matter. Satoshi gave bitcoin as a gift to humanity. There’s no one in charge now. Bitcoin belongs to everyone. We are all equal participants in the network.
The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto will continue to incite awe and astonishment as people first learn about bitcoin’s humble origins. Classes will be taught on bitcoin, and the chapter dedicated to Satoshi will inspire generation after generation.
It is a self-running software program designed to last forever. Its continued operation relies only on the eternal and unchanging laws of math and physics. It is the largest supercomputer on earth. It can’t be shut down, it can’t be hacked, it can’t be changed, and it can’t be controlled.
We are all Satoshi.