Myths Matter: After Banksy, Satoshi Nakamoto's identity may be out and that's not entirely a good thing

There were two great identities secret in the world. One was Banksy, who had for decades been surrep­titiously making graffiti on walls. He was outed re­cently by Reuters in an investigation. The second is Satoshi Nakamoto, who through a 9-page paper published online in 2008, created the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. For a couple of years he fine-tuned it and then disappeared. Since then, the tech world has been speculating endlessly as to who he was. This week the New York Times, in an investigation, has claimed to have found out his identity, a British cryptogra­pher named Adam Back.

Back posted on X that he was not Satoshi and the article was just misguided confirmation bias. In the article, the writer first suspects Back because of a reaction when asked if he is Satoshi during a documentary. He then joins the threads, from Back’s language to his presence in the online networks Satoshi frequented to the many common crypto ideas and projects that overlapped between the two. Back came out with concepts that were used in Bitcoin years before the cryptocurrency was moot­ed. And yet, his identity as Satoshi is not conclusive because conspiracy theo­ries work exactly like this: you find overwhelming correlations but certainty is always just beyond reach.

The larger question is the point of it. It is not illegitimate as a journalistic enterprise to go in search of Banksy’s or Satoshi’s identity, but what greater good is there beyond slaking the thirst for curiosity? In both cases, the mystique is what makes the story so appealing. To see Banksy as an ordinary middle-aged man sucks the blood out of how he was imagined as a guerrilla artist. And Satoshi, as someone who profited from Bitcoin, takes the shine out of a super program­mer who changed the idea of money from pure principle.

These secrets are even necessary in a world drowning in social networking where exhibitionism is a central tenet of living. We are constant witnesses to everything and everyone through devices in our palms. Myths survive because they are glorious, unreal stories speaking of grand ideas that lend meaning to the ordinary. To destroy them is a form of sacrilege.