The Man Behind Crypto Is Worth Billions. Who Is He?

The Mystery Board Opens

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Which again is how Warren Buffett, the dead queen, and my old gym teacher all ended up on the same murder board.

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Somewhere out there right now is a stranger who's worth more than entire countries. Nobody's ever seen his face, nobody knows his real name. He could be dead, he could be in prison, he could be your Uber driver. We'll never know.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Sounds made up.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

It's not made up, it's the biggest unsolved mystery in the history of money. And today we're solving it.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Let me guess. Crypto?

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Crypto.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

I already know everything about crypto. There's nothing behind it. I've said this on the show before, and I'll say it again in the future.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

And let's see if your opinion survives an actual investigation. Somebody invented this thing, used a fake name, vanished. And today we have real suspects, real evidence, and we'll vote at the end to figure out who it really is.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Like Scooby-Doo?

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Exactly like Scooby-Doo.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Is there a van?

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Uh there's kind of a van.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

We get one of those cool vans?

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Mm. It's actually Mom's minivan. And there's been a juice box in there since March. I am not calling it the mystery machine.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

The mystery machine has a juice box in it. Write that down. The juice box is not evidence of anything. Everything's evidence today, Austin. That's the whole show.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

I already know who did it, by the way. It was a guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

That's not a suspect, Austin. That's a species.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

I'm narrowing it down.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I'm Emily, and we have a mystery to solve.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

And I'm Austin. I already solve it. It was a guy. Case closed.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Everyone gets one vote at the end of the show. Let's get to work. So here's everything we actually provably know. Clue one. A couple years ago, after unleashing this thing on the world, our investor vanished. He stopped posting, stopped emailing, and he walked away from a fortune. It would make him one of the richest human beings alive. And he never spent a centimeter.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

That's my old gym teacher.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

It's not your gym teacher.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

He also disappeared suddenly mid-semester.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

He got a different job at a different school, Austin.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Noting it regardless.

British Clues And A Vanishing Fortune

SPEAKER_00 2:30

So they were asleep?

SPEAKER_02 2:32

At the exact hours someone living in London would be asleep. If they were in Japan, that would literally happen mid-afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

British. I got it.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Clue three. They spelt things the British way in their own writings. And they hid an actual London headline in the very first piece of their system. Just like a signature.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

British, nocturnal, loaded, never spends it. I'm thinking it's the Queen.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

The Queen is dead, Brandon.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

We don't know that for certain.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

We absolutely know that for certain. That's the profile. Let's meet the suspects.

The Leading Satoshi Suspects

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Suspect one. Years before this currency existed, a computer scientist named Nick Sosbo invented something almost identical. He called his version BitGold. And researchers who studied his writing say his writing is a near perfect match for our secret inventor.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

So it's him?

SPEAKER_02 3:25

He's denied it repeatedly, directly, and on record.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Sounds exactly like something the real guy would say.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

That's not evidence, Austin.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Noting it regardless. That's not evidence, Austin. You don't get to do that bit too.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Suspect 2. A cryptographer named Hal Finney was the very first person on earth to ever receive a payment from our inventor. And he also happened to live a few blocks from someone who, and I'm not making this up, was named Satoshi Nakamoto.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

There's a real guy with that name?

SPEAKER_02 3:57

A completely different, unrelated guy. So hold that thought. It gets worse. Either this is the most suspicious coincidence in tech history, or it's the greatest plan ever devised.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Suspicious.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Very suspicious. Except journalists who dug through his private records concluded that he probably wasn't our inventor. And he passed in 2014, so we genuinely can't even ask him the question ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Rest in peace, suspect 2. Too suspicious to live.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

That's not what happened, Austin. Suspect 3. Years earlier, an inventor named Adam Back invented something called hash cash. Proof that someone did real computer work before the system even trusted them. So people couldn't spam it for free. That idea is credited by name in the original document that introduced this whole currency. He was also one of the first two people that our inventor personally emailed.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

So the inventor reached out to him, specifically?

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Which either means that he is the inventor or that the inventor respected him enough to seek him out and ask him questions.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

They all denied it. That's exactly what a criminal would do.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Or what literally anyone falsely accused of being a secret billionaire would do.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Exactly what a criminal would say.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

I'm ending this line of questioning.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

I've connected all three of them to your gym teacher. How? Wait, that's the name? That sounds made up.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

It is made up. That's

False Leads And Public Imposters

SPEAKER_02 5:30

the whole show. A magazine once ran a cover story claiming they found him. An actual man in California whose real legal name just happened to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Another one?

SPEAKER_02 5:40

A different, unrelated one, he denied it. And our inventor's dormant account came back online for the first time in years just to say that they had the wrong man and then went silent. Forever.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

He broke a five year silence just to clear his name and then he never spoke again. The biggest mic drop in computer history. Alleged.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Okay, second false lead. A man spent almost a decade saying he was the real inventor, and he started suing people for saying otherwise. A court finally reviewed all the evidence and concluded that he forged all the documents that he used to back up the story.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

So he lied, an actual court, about being a secret billionaire. I bet he got all the girls.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

For years.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Adding him to the board as the guy who tried too hard.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Two false leads down, which brings us to Me.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

It brings us to me.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Suspect 4. Ooh, Ronald McDonald. Go on. Think about it. He's already been running his own currency for decades. Little peel-off game pieces that make you feel like you're a millionaire but are worth absolutely nothing except at one restaurant.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Okay, that's a decent comparison.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

McDonald's money is not evidence he invented Bitcoin.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Same energy though. Suspect five. The Monopoly guy.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

He's a board game piece.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

A board game piece that spent 90 years selling people fake money for a made-up economy. Where a hotel on the street where nobody has ever heard of is worth $400. And everyone just agrees to believe it while the game is happening.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

That is unsettlingly close to something Warren Buffett's about to say to us.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

I've been paying attention.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

That one's not actually bad.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Suspect 6. Dream. Alright, for real. I'm dropping it. Hi. Why not? Dream's a very famous guy that makes Minecraft videos and he wears a mask. And his entire career before any of this was about mining. Mining like the mask puzzle mining?

SPEAKER_02 7:44

We are not accusing a real person of a felony just because he plays video games.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

I never said felony, I said founder. Very different energy.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

We're voting soon. Everybody needs to calm

The Two Pizzas That Became Billions

SPEAKER_02 7:55

down. Since apparently we cannot move on until we cover the pizzas. May 22nd, 2010. A programmer posts online offering 10,000 units to anyone who'll bring him two pizzas. Somebody takes the deal.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

How much would that be worth today?

SPEAKER_02 8:09

Let's just say if you did the math out loud, you would need to sit down first.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

I'm already sitting down.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Sit down further. It fluctuates, but sometimes those pizzas could be worth 1.2 billion dollars.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

For two pizzas?

SPEAKER_02 8:21

For two pizzas.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Were they at least good pizzas?

SPEAKER_02 8:25

Nobody's asked that question once in 15 years, and you're asking that now?

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Somebody had to. This has to be the most expensive lunch in human history. This is now the most important suspect on the board.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

The pizza's not a suspect.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

The pizza was the only witness there, Emily.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

May 22nd is an actual holiday on internet culture now. People call it Bitcoin Pizza Day.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Never trade your Bitcoin for pizza. Yeah, unless the pizza is really good. Then maybe reconsider reconsidering.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

That's the opposite of the lesson, Brandon.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

It's a lesson.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Before we get to what this thing actually is, let's call our next witness.

Warren Buffett Calls It Rat Poison

SPEAKER_02 9:02

The greatest investor alive.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Is it the Monopoly guy?

SPEAKER_02 9:06

It's Warren Buffett.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Close enough. Same energy.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Eight years ago, a reporter asked him about what he thought about cryptocurrency. And you know what he said? He called it rat poison squared.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Rat poison squared. Why squared? Regular rat poison wasn't insulting enough for him?

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Here's his real argument, and it's a good one. Back in 2011, he told shareholders that if you melted down all the gold on Earth, the whole thing would form a cube about 68 feet on one side.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

A cube of gold, the size of what? A house?

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Small enough to fit inside a baseball infield. And his point was that the entire cube, worth trillions, just sits there. Doesn't grow anything, doesn't run a business, doesn't pay you a dime. He calls that a non-productive asset. You only make money on it if someone agrees to pay more for it than you did.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

And crypto is the same deal?

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Same deal. No gold, no cube, just numbers on a screen that only means something if the next person believes they mean something.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

So the gold cube is just vibes?

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Buffett would say yes, actually. He's not a huge gold guy either.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Rat poison squared, but for shiny rocks too? Kind of like a board game piece selling made up property values.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

That is the exact comparison you made two minutes ago, and I don't like that it's holding up.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Adding Warren Buffett to the suspect wall.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

He's not a suspect, he's a witness.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

A witness with a motive, Emily. He hates this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

It doesn't make him Satoshi, it makes him a guy with opinions.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Noted. Adding him to the board regardless. Wait, hold

Bitcoin Explained Like You’re 10

SPEAKER_01 10:30

up. I've been nodding along to this ever since the episode started, but uh I don't actually know what this thing is. Can you explain it to me like I'm 10?

SPEAKER_02 10:38

Like you're 10?

SPEAKER_01 10:39

I contain multitudes.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Fine. You know how when in a group chat, if somebody says, I'll pay you back, everybody in the group chat sees that? And nobody can go back and delete it later because everybody saw the original message.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Now imagine that group isn't about lunch money, it's about all the money that everybody uses. Thousands of computers all around the planet keep a copy of the same running notebook. Every time money moves, every copy updates all at once. No one's the admin, no one can quietly edit their own copy after the fact. Because thousands of other copies would instantly disagree with them.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

So there's no bank?

SPEAKER_02 11:12

No bank, no government, just an enormous group chat that nobody can lie in.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Okay, that part's actually kind of cool.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

There's one more piece. There will only ever be 21 million of these. Forever. Like if a trading card company printed 21 million versions of the same card and then shut the factory down forever.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

So nobody can make more whenever they want?

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Nobody. Not a president, not a company, nobody. Now, here's the part that makes it genuinely wild. The thing doesn't go up and down like a savings account. It swings hard. One year it dropped by 80% in a year. Years later, it practically did the same thing again. It dropped down 75% in 12 months.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

80% of everything?

SPEAKER_02 11:53

Everything. Then it claws back up over the next couple of years. Then eventually it does the same thing again.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

So it's not a roller coaster. It's a roller coaster that occasionally catches fire.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

And then somehow people still get back in line for another ride.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Why would anyone want money that does that?

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Some people think the wild swings are an appeal, but other people think that that's why you don't want to put your rent money in it. Both of these people exist allowedly at the same volume, at the same time, all over the internet.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Adding mood swings as a clue for the coin and my uncle.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

And now, just like the cartoon promised, we open every box.

Volatility And The 21 Million Cap

SPEAKER_01 12:30

That's deeply unsatisfying.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

That's the actual true answer. Nobody knows. Some of the smartest researchers and journalists alive have spent over 15 years on this. And it's still a question mark.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

But we don't solve it today?

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Nobody solves it, probably ever. That's what makes it the biggest unsolved mystery in modern history. But we said we'd vote. Austin. You had three real suspects with actual documented evidence, and you chose the guy who just teaches at a different middle school?

SPEAKER_00 13:00

My gym teacher. I stand by it.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

And I assume you're voting for the clown, the game piece, or dream.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Actually, let me get this straight. Some guy, nobody's ever met him, invents a currency out of literally nothing. It's not backed by a government, it's not backed by gold, it's not backed by literally anything. And people put their life savings into it anyway. And I'm the unreasonable one for thinking it might be Ronald McDonald.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Okay, when you put it like that. He's not wrong. He's not right either.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

I'll take not wrong. I'm framing that.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

If I had to actually guess, I'd bet on suspect one. The writing match is the closest thing to evidence we've ever got, but who's to say?

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Final answer is the juice box.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

The juice box from the minivan?

SPEAKER_01 13:45

It's been suspiciously quiet the entire episode. Never once a theory, never once a comment. That's not innocence, Emily. That's discipline.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

It's fruit punch,

The Vote And The Hot Sauce Rule

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Brandon.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

That's exactly what Fruit Punch would want you to think.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

So a stranger built an untraceable digital money, used a fake name, disappeared, and then left the internet scrambling to figure out who they were. A digital coin with a limit of 21 million and price swings hard enough to make grown adults panic.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

And I said there was nothing.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

You did say that.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

It's not nothing. It's just not something I'd be willing to bet my life savings on.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

That's the takeaway, and since we've spent the whole episode being weird about it, here's the real takeaway instead of just vibes. BlackRock, one of the biggest investment firms on the planet, put out some real advice about this. If you want any crypto exposure at all, their suggestion is to keep it to 1 to 2% of your portfolio.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

That's it? 2%?

SPEAKER_02 14:40

That's it because this stuff swings so much harder than anything else in a normal portfolio. Even a small slice punches way above its weight. Think of it like hot sauce.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

I love hot sauce.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

A few drops, season the whole plate. Dump in the entire bottle, and you've ruined the whole dinner. Same idea here. A little bit can season a smart portfolio, but too much, and the whole thing is ruined.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

So don't marinate your whole life savings in the hot sauce.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Don't marinate your whole life savings in the hot sauce.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

And if anyone ever offers you a life changing amount of anything for two pizzas, get a second opinion first.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

From someone other than your gym teacher.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

We don't know that for certain.

Tell Us Who You Think Satoshi Is

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Now, to everyone watching, if you think you actually know who Nakamoto is, put your suggestion in the comments.