Bitcoin's Biography: Satoshi's Ghost, Silk Road, and Digital Gold

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In 2013 someone threw away a hard drive holding the private keys to 7,500 bitcoins, and no government, manufacturer, or hacker can ever get them back. That unforgiving design is the subject of this episode, which treats Bitcoin itself as the biography, since its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto vanished from the internet in 2010. The story begins with the failed cypherpunk experiments that came first, from David Chaum's e-cash to Hashcash, Bit Gold, and B-Money, and the two problems that sank them: Sybil attacks and double spending.

Satoshi's nine page white paper, published on October 31, 2008, solved both by tying voting power to burned electricity through proof of work. From there the network moved through a pizza order, a dark web marketplace, the collapse of Mt. Gox, and into brokerage accounts and government reserves. The episode asks whether a system built as peer to peer cash failed its mission or simply found its real purpose as a scarce store of value, capped forever at 21 million coins.

• The genesis block of January 3, 2009 carries a headline from The Times of London: Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.
• On May 22, 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoins for two Papa John's pizzas, the first known commercial exchange.
• Silk Road users assumed Bitcoin was anonymous, but the public ledger let the FBI trace funds, arrest Ross Ulbricht in 2013, and seize roughly 30,000 bitcoins.
• After the SEC approved spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024, the price crossed 100,000 dollars that December, while 2021 data showed 0.01 percent of addresses holding 27 percent of supply.
• Analysts estimate Satoshi mined roughly one million bitcoins that have sat untouched for over 15 years, a dormant fortune hanging over a network designed to have no king.