There Is No Bitcoin Mystery

He asked me not to use his last name, current photo, or his location, and I promised him that. But the time has come to tell the rest of it. I should start by saying that my nephew, Dane is a genius, as was his father (my brother) and his grandfather (my father.) Many interesting things are born of genius. My brother...Dane’s father, Jason, was a gifted inventor who spoke four languages fluently before full adulthood; one of them, Japanese. So, technically, that’s where this all began.

Dane’s father died in 1999, when Dane was eleven years old; at which time he came to live with me. There was a box of Jason’s personal effects that I passed on to Dane when he was about thirteen. In the box there were plant specimens, the full skeleton of a squirrel, photographs, an old baseball mitt, and a large, black vinyl folder filled with various writings, and a journal.

I had flipped through some of the writings before, but except for the occasional note or poem, most of it was all pretty technical and some of it was handwritten in Japanese. Dane, however, came to spend a great deal of time with his fathers writings.

When Dane was seventeen, and finishing high school in the talented and gifted program, he took a job at a local Japanese restaurant. I still remember his excitement one evening when he came home with the translation of some of his fathers notes. One of them said, in part: “I wanted to name you Satoshi Nakamoto, but was vetoed by your mother, for what seem to be the most obvious of reasons, however I don’t believe that background predicts future possibility, any more than it may negate it. The truth is, my son, when I watch you growing up before me, I know what I knew even before your birth, which is, you will be the embodiment of my dreams. You will complete the puzzle that I have toiled many years upon, and together, you and I will be the masters of it. Futurum est nostrum, my son." (The future is ours.)

Dane talked excitedly of many things from his fathers writings over the next year or so, but I was busy working, and although I was interested certainly, I was more interested in the fact that my beloved nephew and his father could maintain a bond through these papers and journals. How could I possibly guess as to the magnitude of what my brother had left behind in these many hundreds of hand scrawled notes?

Dane moved to the city for college, some three hours drive away, and our communication was hit and miss for a couple of years. We wrote letters, there was the occasional phone call, and I visited once, the first year, when he was living in an old house that had been converted into apartments. We were all poor; I worked three jobs and he lived out of “A man, a can and a plan” cookbook. But we got by. His second year of college I was stressed out to learn that he had decided to save money by pitching a tent in a homeless camp. I tried to find some other resources for him but he refused, saying that he was choosing this for the time being. And he never missed a class.

Later, he told me that sitting in the tent with nothing but a flashlight and his fathers writings, was exactly what he needed. Without that intense scrutiny of all that Jason had left, he may not have found it. He began reading some of Jason’s poetry that seemed connected, then he noticed a mathematical pattern within the poetry.

At this point, Dane took a Junior level job for a software engineering company, which was a natural fit with his IT background from college. He purchased a laptop computer with his first earnings and returned to the tent. He carried his father’s folder in his backpack, wherever he went. He ended up meeting “Irwin” in a chat-room one evening in the tent, and began to share some of his findings with Irwin. A short time later, they met up in person, and a short time after that, Dane took Irwin’s offer up to rent a room from him in his rundown two bedroom mobile home. Irwin’s girlfriend, Mona also lived there and at times, Dane missed his tent. But it was Irwin who, night after bleary eyed night, helped Dane to identify the pattern in the poetry.

The pattern was block-chain.

Dane kept his findings to himself for the time being and asked Irwin to do the same. Early one morning, far before dawn, he awoke to the sounds of Irwin and Mona whispering, so he crept into the hall to see what was up; just in time to see Irwin shoving the laptop and Jason’s folder into a backpack and heading out the door. Dane hurriedly dressed and ran out the door, confronting Irwin and Mona. None of them owned cars, and Mona and Irwin took off running, with Dane in pursuit. They ended up at an underpass below a busy freeway and Irwin made a run up the concrete embankment, while Mona went to the other side, below the lanes of traffic. Dane followed Irwin, yelling at him all the way. He told me that he was yelling “Irwin, give me back my father’s papers”, over and over. Just then, Irwin seeing a break in traffic, flung one leg over the median while Mona was doing the same just across from him. Dane was close and took a lunge for the backpack just as Irwin’s other leg made it over the concrete divide between them. In all the excitement, nobody saw the truck.

The impact, such as it was, ended up knocking the backpack loose from Irwin’s torso and it skidded down the concrete embankment at the same moment Irwin’s body was propelled down the freeway. Dane grabbed the bag and ran. He was absolutely horrified at the entire turn of events and did not want to return to the mobile home. He ended up returning to the homeless camp that had been his home. The news never made mention of Mona.

A short time later, Dane confided in a coworker about all that had transpired. The coworker was a high ranking official at the company and he became like a surrogate father to Dane; introducing him to a trusted cryptologist and the rest, is...as they say...history.

Afterward: Dane finished his degree and has since purchased a small island. There are numerous inhabitants on the island and Dane employees each of them at a generous wage. I spoke with Dane about a week ago, ahead of telling his story, and he quipped that he has become a “Benevolent Dictator” of sorts, in his island paradise. Then he laughed. He’s a good hearted young man, so I’ve no concerns there. Regarding whether or not he is afraid of being “exposed”, he pointed out that he has always been pretty invisible...no social networking, no public email, no U.S. bank accounts, and so forth. “Let them try to find me” he laughed.