The Origins of Bitcoin - A Love Story

Chapter one – 2008, Outside of Kathmandu, Nepal

Anaisha fingered the fine fabric.

"This is the one," she said to herself just loud enough for the shopkeeper to hear. The woman couldn't understand a word of English but clearly interpreted the grin and sparkle in Anaisha’s eyes. “Geoffrey?” Anaisha voice raised so her husband would hear her outside the makeshift shelter. Anaisha’s husband appeared at her side, “Look at this,” she exclaimed indicating the fabric, “could you please tell her I need four yards?”

He translated the request and reply, “She said it’s ten thousand rupees,” he then became distracted by a passing vendor selling Dal Bhat from a push cart and stepped back out into the cold, sunny day.

Anaisha did the math in her head in an instant knowing the five U.S twenty-dollar bills in her bag would cover it and leave a generous tip for the old woman merchant. She nodded and smiled, the merchant’s face mirroring the enthusiasm. Anaisha pulled the notes from her bag and handed them to the textile maker who’s face fell.

“Hō'īna” she said shaking her head, “Hō'īna.”

Anaisha’s face knitted into confusion. “Geoffrey,” she called again, this time not so exuberant.

Again, like magic, her husband appeared at her side. Before he could speak, the older Nepalian woman rattled off in rapid fire why she couldn’t take the bills. His mouth was full off food but he nodded in understanding. He swallowed and turned to his wife.

“Only rupees,” he explained.

Anaisha’s eyes narrowed, “All of that and she said, ‘only rupees’,” she heaved a heavy sigh to gain her composure. “Help me. Certainly the bank will accept American money,” she was getting perturbed, “explain to her my money is good.”

“She said to look at the bills, if they are older than 2005 even the banks here won’t take them.: “Ridiculous,” Anaisha mumbled looking at the bills, all of them were older than 2005. She dug through her bag for the wallet that held her plastic. “Visa?” Anaisha implored.

The vendor shook her head defiantly with an added amount of sadness. Anaisha sighed with frustration, this was the exact fabric she needed, no, wanted. She had looked at dozens of prints but this was the one for her bridesmaid saree for her baby sister’s wedding. The dark green background with the delicate pink flowers would be the ideal color for her brown skin and compliment but not upstage the bride. She held up her American Express card, the old woman continued to shake her head.

“PayPal?” Anaisha could hear the whine and annoyance in her own voice.

“They only take rupees,” Geoff called from just outside the door of the hut as he finished the vendor food. He appeared back in the doorway wiping his chin, “That’s what she told me, only Nepal rupees, they don’t even take Indian rupees. She said the credit card charges cut too much into her profit and PayPal takes too long to get her money to her.”

“Dreadful, seriously?” Anaisha’s frustration was at its limit, “Its 2008 for crying out loud, who only accepts cash now days? Where’s an ATM? I’ll get Nepalian rupees.” she asked the woman who had taken the fabric and was wrapping in back around the bolt. The woman answered in Nepalese which Anaisha didn’t understand; her face plastered with disappointment.

Annoyed, Anaisha exited the stall to catch up to her husband scanning each property for a bank machine. Eventually, she adjusted her backpack to set on her shoulders comfortably and they continued down the dirt road together farther and farther from the perfect wedding day fabric. The surrounding scenery was breathtaking but Anaisha’s mind was distracted from the day’s events.

“It’s absurd!” she complained as they walked.

“Quit your belly-aching,” he chided, “Look around you, we’re in the middle of absolute no-where. I mean really, do you think there’s a national bank within fifty miles of here? Who’s going to come all the way out here to maintain an ATM? You’re being absurd.”

The fact her husband was right irritated her more. They had been hiking for three days from Kathmandu, staying in little guesthouse type huts along the way. The 30,000 rupees they had exchanged at the airport had been mostly depleted and there were down to credit cards and greenbacks.

Anaisha was distracted on the hike back to Nepal’s capital city. She watched her partner and thought how comfortable life had gotten since she had settled down with this lanky, white, north westerner from Oregon. His family had been in United States for generations. Starting in Boston and moving west as far as the land allowed. Anaisha, however was the first born American in her family. Her parents had migrated from Jammu in India in the late seventies hoping for a better life and more opportunities. Anaisha was born and raised in San Francisco by parents who forever seemed to not fit in. She found comfort in school and specifically math. She was the math bee champion every year throughout middle and high school. A full ride scholarship to University of California, Berkeley, kept her close to her parents and three younger siblings. The bonus of her college years was Geoff. He was a linguistics major who could speak several languange. He had found his way south from Clackamas County to the Bay area hoping to settle in a bigger city than Portland.

“Don’t worry about your sister’s wedding, it’s still a year away,” Geoff consoled, “I’m sure you’ll find the right stuff for your celebration saree.” She nodded absentmindedly and kept walking. After a few moments he added, “Okay, my little chutney, what’s really on your mind?”

Anaisha felt the tug of a grin when she heard the affectionate yet seldom used, nickname. Over ten years ago, when they had first started dating, she had introduced her very Euro boyfriend to a variety of Indian sauces, sweet, mint and spicy, that was a staple at every meal as she grew up. After that dinner she asked him which he had liked best. With a sheepish grin, he had said “I like you the best, you’re my little chutney.” Over a decade later and she couldn’t imagine anyone else by her side.

“I’m going to invent a global currency,” Anaisha replied.

Geoff chuckled to himself and nodded, “Of course you are, then you’ll go back and buy that fabric. Am I right?”

She ignored the last comment as she felt her features come to life, as a smile overtook her face. The idea she had hatched while hiking the miles back to the city came gushing out, “think about what a global electronic currency could do for a vendor like that textile saleslady like that.”

“Which country would back it?”

“There wouldn’t be, it’s global. I said that, right? I’m going to invent a global currency, it could be created by coding, but more complex than that, its own program creating its own worth.” She was gushing and rambling, it drove her nuts when she did that, her mouth overriding her brain. She consciously stopped talking.

“Yes, I get it, you could call it e-cash.”

Anaisha loved how he never stifled her, how he was always game for an adventure or new idea even if he didn’t totally see her vision.

“E-cash has already been taken,” she told him.

“It has? I’ve never heard of it.”

She rolled her eyes, “I’m sure there are lots of things out there you’ve never heard of.”

“So like PayPal?” he asked putting his arm loosely over her shoulder.

“Not really like PayPal, I mean Musk had the right idea but it’s got to be more than moving fiat money, in fact, it’s got to do away with currency-”

“So you’re going into politics?” he cut her off with a smirk.

“No, of course not, silly.” They walked a minute in silence before she added, “I’ve got the idea, the premise, but I’m not sure how to...”

Geoff stopped walking and pulled her towards him, kissing her deeply. He pulled back and gave her the sheepish grin she loved, “Not sure how to change the world?”

Chapter Two – Outside San Francisco, United States of America

Once home from their vacation, Anaisha began creating the code for her new currency. She called them coins because that seemed to be the easiest term to describe them.

“It’s like a super hard math problem the miner, that’s me, has to solve,” she pecked at the computer as she explained her creation to Geoff who had just wandered into the spare room they called the computer room, as the only furniture was a large desk with her tower computer. The green light from the screen illuminated her face, she kept her eyes on the jumble of numbers that line-danced across her screen and continued, “so once I get the answer, it’s like a couple dozen digits long, that then becomes the coin which is assigned to the buyer. Individually owned, no banks, peer to peer.”

“Are you already up? Or never went to bed?” Geoff yawned as he put a small tray with a teapot and two cups down in front of her. Their eyes met and she saw he knew the answer without comment.

“So, as I was saying, the mathematical answer could be spliced into smaller and smaller pieces like millions of pennies, so they can be used for whatever denomination.”

“Little bits?” he asked as he poured the hot water into the tea cups. The scent of the Jasmine filled the room as the hot water released the fragrance of the beverage.

“Little bits,” she said saving her work and turning her attention to him.

“Little bit coins,” he smiled handing her the steaming mug. She took it and blew the steam from the top. “You should get some sleep before work,” he suggested.

Anaisha nodded knowing he was right.

The rest of the year seemed to fly by, between her job at Broadcom, her relationship with Geoff, helping her mother and youngest sister with wedding plans and her obsession with creating a computer program to generate calculations large enough to produce something that could be used as capital, there was little time left for things like play or sleep.

Weeks earlier, Geoff had dragged an overstuffed chair into the computer room plus a small table. He brought Anaisha food, drinks and sometimes asked questions about her progress.

“New Year’s is next week, wanna do something?” Geoff asked one afternoon as she made herself comfortable at the desk.

“I want to get done with this,” she answered, “I’m so close.” Geoff’s face fell, Anaisha back peddled a little, “Let’s make reservations at Mastro’s and we can go into the city, okay?”

He nodded, “You’re close? Really?”

“Yes!” Anaisha said, “I found a set of cryptographic hash functions from the U.S National Security that’s basically a one-way compression function called SHA-256, or in other words, a mathematical algorithm that maps data of arbitrary sizes into a bit array of a fixed size. It’s deterministic which means its quick to-”

“Slow down, babe,” Geoff said making himself comfortable, “English, please.”

She smiled at him as she typed in her password, “It’s hacker proof,” she replied. “Once I get it started, it will start to create more coins on its own, making the miner’s job relatively easy.”

“So what you’re saying is anyone could be their own miner?”

Anaisha nodded, “Yes, if you had the right equipment and program. Each megabyte becomes a block, then the blocks work off each other and continue to grow so it will quickly fill a computer like this one’s memory bytes, the equations are insanely complex.”

“Like you’re going to need a new computer?”

“Well, I’m not sure yet. Yes, no, I don’t know. Actually, I think I’ll need multiple computers really. I don’t think one will be able to produce enough energy to mine,” she answered as she settled into her chair.

Geoff got up and kissed the top of her head, “Keep doing what you’re doing my little chutney, I’ll handle dinner.”

“Thank you,” she answered without looking up.

Several hours later she could smell garlic and butter, Anaisha’s stomach growled.

“Babe!” Geoff hollered, “Dinner’s ready.”

When she joined him in the kitchen she gave a surprise yip, “What’s this?”

“It’s an alien,” he replied dishing up her pasta and generously sprinkling it with parm cheese.

The Alien computers were well known for their large memory capacity and popular with gamers. “I picked it up at the pawn shop,” he said causally.

“This is perfect,” Anaisha answered with enthusiasm, “Oh my goodness, thank you so much.” She picked up the tower and headed back to the computer room with it.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he yelled, “Eat!”

As they laid in bed that night together, Anaisha whispered in her lover’s ear, “I did it, I’ve stored all our little bitcoins safely on my computer. The new alien is happily creating new ones while we sleep.”

“Mmmm… bitcoin,” he mumbled, “are you going to make us millions?”

“Billions,” she answered and kissed his neck.

Chapter 3 – New Year 2009

Anaisha and Geoff walked arm in arm along the boardwalk after their dinner. Fireworks were popping off three-hundred and sixty degrees around them.

“I’m getting scared,” Anaisha said.

Geoff looked behind them and then at her, “Is someone following us?” he asked in alarm.

“No, about my currency, I mean, it opens a whole Pandora’s box, don’t you think?”

“Like what do you mean?”

“Well, now I’m ready to unleash it into the world, the ramifications of it have really hit me hard. Like think of the illegal stuff you could do with money that isn’t monitored by a government or bank.”

“Here’s to hookers and drugs!” he laughed.

“Exactly,” her tone was much more serious, “one could buy a kilo of cocaine from Columbia, a child bride from Taiwan, no one would ever know because the user could stay one-hundred percent anonymous.”

“I see your point,” he said.

“Speaking of anonymous, I don’t want anyone to know it was me who created it. I’ve reached out to some fellow computer geeks but for the most part, I’m not putting my name on it.”

He nodded thoughtfully as the festivities continued around them.

By mid-January, they had hit up a few more pawn shops and acquired three more tower computers. Anaisha was ready for the roll-out. She had lined up dozens of math geeks and computer wizards to gift fifty of her bitcoin. She would send them their individual seed to access the coins and the series of codes to begin creating their own.

The computer room now was aptly named as it had five amped up computers and two fans to keep the room cool.

“I’m ready to make this thing real,” she told Geoff as she typed in a seeded password and the screen jerked to life, “I just need to figure out what to call myself.”

“Glad you mentioned that,” Geoff said, “I came up with an idea.”

Nothing to dampen Anaisha’s mood at that moment and she was eager to hear what he had to say, “Lay it on me,” she laughed.

“Satoshi Nakamoto.”

“Oh it sounds so Japanese!” she exclaimed, “Satoshi, I really like that word, it rolls off your tongue nicely, maybe we should call the pieces satoshis instead of bitty bits.”

“I like it too,” his voice had gotten quiet, she turned to see him staring at her, with the lopsided grin she adored.

“Where’d you come up with it?” she asked turning her attention to her partner sitting cross-legged in the overstuffed chair.

“It’s your name with the letters scrambled.”

Her face wrinkled with confusion, “There’s no K in my name.”

Geoff reached over to the desk and took a pen. He then wrote on a piece of paper, Satoshi Nakamoto = Anaisha Mokotton. It was his last name with her first. She stared at it, her Indian first name with his Eastern European last. He stood while she was processing the hand-written words, then from the corner of her eye she thought she saw him fall.

“Geoffrey, are you alright?” she turned towards him and saw he kneeling before her. He held a black velvet box with a solitaire ring.

“Let’s make this thing real.”