Who created bitcoin? No one knows for sure. Journalist Ben Wallace joins Vanessa to discuss The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto, his deep dive into the search for bitcoin’s elusive founder. From conspiracy theories and mistaken identities to lost fortunes and billion-dollar mysteries, we break down the wild world of meme coins, crypto scams, and the gambling culture of the internet. Click ‘Subscribe’ at the top of the Infamous show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices A Campside Media & Sony Music Entertainment production. To connect with Infamous's creative team, plus access behind the scenes content, join the community at Campsidemedia.com/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Ben Wallace and what is his connection to Bitcoin?
He also wrote a book called The Billionaire's Vinegar, which is a great rare wine mystery tale. And he is out now with something that is extremely of the moment, which is a book about... the guy or guys or girls, we don't actually know, who invented Bitcoin, the mysterious Mr. Nakamoto. So thank you for being here, Ben Wallace.
Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
I do not think of you as a tech guy, but you have this book out now, which is about the invention of Bitcoin and who actually did it. And it's an anonymous person. It's like Guy Fawkes. Nobody knows who this person is, which is insane.
Exactly. And sometimes when people are writing about Nakamoto and they want to depict him, they actually use the Guy Fawkes mask.
So tell me how this all started.
Sure.
Because, I mean, you are, like, good at computers? Not even.
Not even. I was a sort of Luddite English major, really late adopter in general. Like, I was very skeptical of the internet for much of the 90s and was like, why is everyone making such a big deal about it? So it was somewhat... random that I got this assignment.
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Chapter 2: What is Bitcoin and how did Ben Wallace get involved with it?
And in 2011, an editor at Wired asked me if I'd like to write about this thing called Bitcoin, which had just been making the news because of its association with Silk Road, which was this black marketplace on the dark web. It was the first thing like that of its kind. And I had never heard of Bitcoin. I'd never heard of Silk Road. What really hooked me on it, besides the fact that Bitcoin sounded
you know, really kind of mind-bendingly interesting in being this money unlike any other money that existed up to that point. But also there was this mystery about who had invented it. I don't know, it was just very unusual for someone to invent something that was already getting a lot of attention, but who had taken no credit for it.
I do have a friend who said, I'm going to start this meme coin. We're all going to get rich. And she did have me also buy $100 of it, but then she got bored of it. But that's like as far as I go with crypto. What is crypto exactly? I assume it's a synonym for Bitcoin. They're both the same thing.
It's a less easy question to answer than you might think. And there's a reason why I think people are somewhat intimidated by the subject. I mean, very basically, it's a digital currency, right? So it's a kind of computer money. But unlike most monies, it's not minted by a government or a central bank. Its supply is not controlled by a government or a central bank. And it exists only digitally.
And it's controlled by a crowd, by a peer-to-peer network of volunteers. I mean, anyone can join the Bitcoin network and be a part of this process.
But it doesn't, it's not tethered to anything. It's not tethered to like the US dollar. It has no real value. But I guess you could say nothing has value.
Well, exactly. That's why I found it really mind bending because it gets you into the philosophy of like, what is money? What gives something value? And when I was working on this book, I mean, my father-in-law, said to me, you know, well, why is Bitcoin worth anything? And I said, why is gold worth anything? And he said, why does everyone answer this question with another question?
But I actually think the gold comparison is relevant, both because Bitcoin now kind of is more of a digital gold than a money people use for practical purposes, but also because like gold, it's valuable because people have decided that it's valuable.
Did you have any of it?
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Chapter 3: Why is the identity of Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, important?
And for some reason, no one says anything except Ryan. And Ryan's like, I'll get you lunch. So Dorian Nakamoto says, I'm going with this guy. So they get into Ryan's powder blue Prius and start making their way to a sushi place because Dorian said he wanted sushi. And
all the other reporters start following him in their cars and they're like live tweeting like hashtag Bitcoin Chase, hashtag Satoshi. And Ryan and this guy Dorian get to a sushi place in Arcadia. They end up having to leave. They go to the AP offices where Ryan debriefs him.
And both in the car before they got to the AP offices and in the AP office, it became very clear that Dorian Nakamoto was not Satoshi and really barely knew what Bitcoin was.
OK. And so everybody's like, my bad.
Well, no, I mean, everyone was like Newsweek's bad because Newsweek Newsweek continued to maintain that, like, you know, this was Satoshi. And like, obviously, other reporters are jealous and, you know, like historic scoops like this are typically debated at first and things like that. And it was it was just ludicrous. And just it was really a debacle for Newsweek.
When a young woman named Patty vanishes without a trace, her best friend launches a desperate search, and the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers. Her social media presence showcases a picture-perfect life, and she promises her followers a spiritual awakening. All they have to do is follow her lead.
But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. From Wondery, Don't Cross Cat is a chilling investigation that asks the question, if an influencer promised you a dream life, what would you sacrifice? Based on the Brazilian true crime saga that captivated a nation, Don't Cross Cat is a story of ambition, control, and the lives destroyed by empty promises.
What starts as an investigation into a missing persons case explodes into a story of manipulation, coercion, prostitution, and human trafficking, all orchestrated behind a curated social media facade. You can binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.
Spring has sprung and I am dying to get out of town. I'm actually going away this weekend with some friends, and I recently bought my partner a new Quince carry-on that I might just be borrowing for this trip.
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Chapter 4: What was the Newsweek debacle regarding Satoshi Nakamoto?
The main elements of his Satoshi mystery are why did this person or people use a pseudonym? Why did they disappear? And why have they not touched the fortune, right? Because you can see on the Bitcoin blockchain, these coins have never been moved from the wallets they're in.
What if he's dead?
That's a very real possibility because that would explain why the fortune has never been touched. And in fact, that's one of the main interpretations of the fact that the fortune has not been touched is he must be dead.
I mean, another interpretation is Satoshi is this quasi-religious figure who's so selfless that it's more important that the project have credibility than that he personally enrich himself.
Maybe it's just somebody misplaced it.
Yeah. Yeah. If you lose your keys, which are basically really the equivalent of a password. And that is another theory. And it's not an unrealistic theory. I talked to a lot of very smart, experienced software people and even cryptographers who say it's just not that hard to lose your keys. That easily could have happened. And they
Several of these people said, you know, it could have happened to me. I mean, there have been multiple cases of people losing their keys or accidentally throwing out a hard drive that had crazy amounts of Bitcoin on them. There's a guy in Wales famously who's been trying to get the place where he lives to let him dig in the landfill for, I think, seven or eight years now, maybe even 10 years.
Maybe I think he's suing them now just to get permission to excavate this landfill because he wants to find his lost hard drive.
That's really funny. I mean, I think I've lost a couple of hard drives along the way. I'd like to look in there for two. So, okay. So basically we now understand what Bitcoin is. An NFT I know is a digital piece of art that people buy and trade. Now there's this new thing called the meme coin. And the meme coin is just like, you're a person who has fame and you tell your followers like, hey,
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Chapter 5: Who are some of the candidates suspected to be Satoshi Nakamoto?
I mean, we've always had speculation bubbles, right? Like the tulip bubble, you know, in Holland and the 1600s and ancient Rome and all these places are always had speculative bubbles. But there's something here that it feels so anti-internet to be so shadowy about it. You know, like every single person has a footprint on the internet. Nobody is anonymous.
And suddenly now where money's involved, you can be like sort of anonymous with this.
Yeah. And I mean, and that's kind of baked into the ethos of it. I mean, a lot of the early adopters of Bitcoin were libertarians or privacy people who wanted there to be a money that, like cash, cannot be traced. And that's true. certainly can be abused and is abused, but I don't think in principle is a bad idea, right? I mean, we don't begrudge people using cash.
The difference is that unlike cash, Bitcoin, you don't have to like stuff five suitcases full of dirty dollar bills to do a black market transaction. You can just instantly and almost invisibly send it around the world.
The other question is if America is just becoming a place where people do a lot of gambling, right? Like their online gambling, which is something that used to not be legal, is all over the place now. People also do quite a bit of Bitcoin trading. People do sports betting in a way that they didn't before.
Meme stock trading. Yep.
Meme stock trading. And if we're just like an addicted country, are we like addicted to gambling? And is this part of it?
I mean, I think certainly a big piece of crypto is part of that. Yes.
I mean, there's this sort of influencer culture that's very much about raising up the people who manage to get all of those clicks. And kids think, oh, OK, I can do that, too. But in fact, we're going to become like a nation of drop shippers. Yeah. There's just not a lot of ways, particularly with encroaching AI, to really live out that American dream. I mean, I don't know.
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