The mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto might be writing a book. At least that is the impression people got from a cryptic message posted at a website which is possibly linked to the Bitcoin creator.
This literary piece will apparently contain two parts with the person saying, “I wanted to include it as a brief glimpse of history. Even for those that can’t read the full book, I wanted to make this available to everyone. A short story if you will, with some of the most brought up questions and answers.”
The unknown messenger is determined to enlighten people about the early Bitcoin days. In the meanwhile, the person is offering an excerpt and promises to post links with information about the book, should it be completed, in the coming month. However, the author also encourages you to complete a cryptopuzzle if you want to get names to both and other spoilers saying, “It is ridiculously easy for anyone to solve, regardless of age. No brute force needed.”
For that, you need to convert letters to numbers with numbers like 1 representing the letter B. The order is mixed order while the title of book broken into two parts is revealed at the end.
The mysterious writer stresses that the two-part series is still alpha and experimental and “there’s no guarantee the book will ever come to be, unless it becomes necessary and people want to know about me personally.”
He/she/they then proceed to explain that there were many who contributed to the project “many names of which were not included, individuals who for whatever reason have chosen not to go public and therefore out of respect, I did not include them.” It is also promised to include numerous new names and individuals appearing throughout the book in any case, “as it is a story about my personal life.”
The excerpt is available here and begins by noting, “I think that the question which is most often brought up about bitcoin is, why.” It is then said that Satoshi Nakamoto is not a real name and is something like “John Smith” in Japan.
The answer to the crypto puzzle is available at Bloomberg. A hint: the words are Japanese.
Satoshi Nakamoto is a widely praised figure and also a controversial one with intelligence services still looking for him. Thus, a recent blog post by motherboard says that “The CIA can neither confirm nor deny’ it has documents on Satoshi Nakamoto”. There also exists the Satoshi Nakamoto Republic which is devoted to erecting monuments to the legendary Bitcoin creator around the world.
