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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Maren Wiederhold
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Society & Social Sciences

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. NAKAMOTO

Benjamin Wallace

A Fifteen-Year Quest for the Secret Genius Behind Crypto

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.

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 1990s 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 is the New York Times bestselling author of The Billionaire's Vinegar. He has been a features writer at New York and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.

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Book Published 2025-03-18 by Crown

Comments

This is, by far, the deepest investigation into possibly the biggest mystery of the 21st century. I couldn't put it down.

The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto could be the best mystery story of the past twenty years. I'm not sure whether Ben Wallace should win a Pulitzer, be institutionalized for taking on this massive project, or both.

I have long relished Ben Wallace's storytelling talents, and in The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto, he delivers a tale that is somehow a blend of Agatha Christie and Soren Kierkegaard, unravelling a mystery while also exploring the nature of mystery itself. His search leads us into many dark corners of the nation-state of Bitcoin, a world and its people I was surprised, as a reader who willfully never gave much thought to crypto, to find absolutely mesmerizing.

The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto takes us on a wild adventure among the oddballs, geniuses, longevity fanatics, and anarchists of crypto in search of one of the most elusive and consequential figures of our time.

Benjamin Wallace's astonishingly obsessive deep dive into the financial world's greatest modern mystery will leave you amazed, enlightened and utterly breathless.

Apogeo Editore: Italian; Kawade Shobo: Japanese; Spoleczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak: Polish; Editorial Pinolia: Spanish; Pegasus Yayincilik: Turkish; NF: Ukrainian; Atlantic Books: UK/BCOM

Wallace is an elegant historian and a talented anatomist of the Satoshi affair, and The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto deserves a wide readership.