At first amateur glance, the bitcoin saga has enough mystery and drama to rival even the best of the adrenaline-filled Hollywood story lines of secret agency, global economic heist and large-scale conspiracy. On the one hand this is ironic, being that it is a plot line filled with computer scientists and others whose personal lives have long not been the envy of most. On the other hand, the Glorified Geek is a recurring theme in cinematic lore, the uber-intelligent (and not half bad-looking) altruistically led by a higher human calling. Still, the difference with bitcoin is that it's real.
There's the mystery, first of all (who's Satoshi Nakamoto?), the brilliance (the concept and bitcoin code), the New World Order-esque conspiratorial motives, and then there are the dead players--people who could've held information about the secrets and answers to the pressing problems facing bitcoin, but who have, alas, passed on, and taken their secrets with them to the grave (ostensibly).
Into this story was thrown Craig Wright. Outed against his will in December of 2015 as Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous bitcoin creator and writer of the "white paper" first published in 2008, Wright remained relatively quiet about the matter until recently, when he came forward to claim the pseudonym.
There are those who back him (Gavin Adresen, the leading bitcoin software developer, who never met or saw Nakamoto but had a substantial amount of virtual interactions with him, stated that he was convinced "beyond a reasonable doubt: Craig Wright is Satoshi"), and those who are severely doubtful (The Economist has had access to Wright and his proofs of identity and has spent time combing them over only to place themselves on the fence, if not entirely in the camp of the skeptics).
Nakamoto's identity aside (or perhaps, at the helm), there are other aspects of this cryptocurrency that move it into the realm of intrigue and risk. Take, for example, how you confirm your identity in order to complete a bitcoin transaction: use of a unique private key that corresponds to a public key that are mathematically linked. This means that unlike proving your personal identity with, well, yourself, you could lose your private key completely, as has been the case with some. In one infamous story, a man disposed of an old hard drive only to realize later that it contained the only copy of his private key, the crucial identifying factor needed to access his 7,500 bitcoins, worth over $7.5 million at the time ($3.4 million today).
Then there is the theorized impending death of bitcoin itself. It's no stranger to detractors and skeptics, with some comparing it to a glorified Ponzi scheme. There is even a website that aggregates articles proclaiming the impending demise of the bitcoin; currently there are 101 articles discussing bitcoin doom as of April 19, 2016.
It is only a matter of time (and maybe it's already in the works) before Hollywood capitalizes on the story of the bitcoin and comes up with one that is full of a darker, fast-car driving and strangely more glamorous side to this digital decentralized currency (a side in which cryptocurrencies are undoubtedly a black-tie and stilettoed affair). The fact that a glossy veneer would make this story suitable for the big screen doesn't detract from the global monetary implications it actually represents. In his blog post stating his belief that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, Andresen writes that, "It would be better if Satoshi Nakamoto was the codename for an NSA project, or an artificial intelligence sent from the future to advance our primitive money. He is not, he is an imperfect human being just like the rest of us."
Maybe it would be better. Or maybe it's all the same: a mystery that took an unexpected turn.