In 2008, an anonymous idealist published a paper under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto which described a digital currency or online payment system; the system was introduced as open-source software in 2009. Four years later, the value of all bitcoins was in the billions of dollars. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; the management of transactions and the issuance of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Because bitcoin is public by design, it is not owned or controlled by any government or bank.

At the center of Bitcoin lies the greatest unsolved mystery of the digital age. Who created it, and who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Finding Satoshi presents the conclusion reached after a four-year, evidence-based investigation, drawing on original reporting and rare access to key figures in crypto to uncover the human ideas, motivations, and philosophy behind the code that reshaped global finance.