A thrilling, absorbing investigation into the mystery of the identity of Bitcoin’s creator and a deep dive into crypto’s utopian origin story from New York Times bestselling author of The Billionaire’s Vinegar.

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. NAKAMOTO
by Benjamin Wallace
Crown, April 2025

In October 2008, someone going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto posted a white paper outlining « a peer-to-peer electronic cash system » called Bitcoin to an arcane listserv populated by Cypherpunks. No one in the community had heard of Nakamoto, and just as people were starting to wonder who he was, he vanished. As the years passed, and the scope of Nakamoto’s achievement became clear, the truth of his identity grew into the greatest unsolved mystery of our time.

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. NAKAMOTO traces Benjamin Wallace’s decade-long attempt to unmask the figure behind the currency and the world it wrought. Nakamoto’s Bitcoin at first seemed destined to fulfill the dreams of fringe 1990 utopians for a currency set free from governments and big banks. Yet after he disappeared, his creation took on a strange new life in the financial markets, where rampant speculation fueled a vision of crypto as a potential windfall, inviting charlatans and scammers and opening a vast gulf between Bitcoin’s idealistic origins and its troubled reputation.

With the same propulsive-narrative that made The Billionaire’s Vinegar an instant success, Ben Wallace presents a page-turning work of investigative journalism that takes readers through a rogue’s gallery tour of Nakamoto suspects -from benevolent geniuses like cryptographer Hal Finney to difficult ones like the reclusive polymath James A. Donald and more. With the forensic skill of Sherlock Holmes and storytelling verve of Arthur Conan Doyle, Wallace follows the trail of computer code and personal writings to the heart of the Nakamoto mystery while interrogating the very nature of mystery itself.

Benjamin Wallace, a New York Times bestselling author, has written for GQ, the Washington Post, Food & Wine, and Philadelphia, where he was the executive editor.