Satoshi Nakamoto gave Bitcoin to the world in early 2009. His creation has since sparked a global rebellion against banks and governments, while its value has soared to well over $1 trillion—or as much as the combined market caps of Tesla and JPMorgan. Satoshi also left us a mystery. Who is this mysterious person who vanished into the mists of the internet? And what became of his massive Bitcoin fortune?
The search for Satoshi has now gone on for more than a decade. It has produced spectacular misfires, including Newsweek’s infamous 2014 cover story that claimed to find Satoshi hiding in plain sight in Los Angeles. The discovery was wildly wrong—Newsweek had instead found a confused older man whose last name happened to be Nakamoto—but the episode would become another piece of Bitcoin lore. It also served as a textbook example of the perils of confirmation bias.
