In April 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote to the developer who had taken over his project and asked for one thing. "I wish you wouldn't keep talking about me as a mysterious shadowy figure," he wrote to Gavin Andresen. "The press just turns that into a pirate currency angle. Maybe instead make it about the open-source project and give more credit to your dev contributors; it helps motivate them."
It is the last request on record from the man who built Bitcoin. Fifteen and a half years later, the community he left has a statue of him with a mirror for a face, a feast day for his silence, a running list of suspects, and a hoard of coins it watches like a shrine. It honored almost every wish he expressed in code. The one he expressed in plain English, it has disobeyed every day since.
In early December 2010, as WikiLeaks began to look at Bitcoin for donations after the payment companies cut it off, Satoshi posted to the forum: "It would have been nice to get this attention in any other context.
Continued at bitcoinhashpoint.com →