The naked truth about bitcoin.

upon a time, stretching as far back as the 8thcentury, some people tried to convince other people that they could turn base metals into gold.It can’t be done.In 2009, along came someone, or some people, who called himself, or themselves, Satoshi Nakamoto, and went the alchemists one better. The mysterious inventor of the crypto-currency bitcoin—who appeared like aghost out of nowhere, never showed his face or revealed his true identity, and vanished two years later—apparently managed to convince some people that he had turned thinair into money.***We first met on a summer’s day in 2013, in a New York City hotel—the Satoshi Faithful and me—during a one-day bitcoin conference,held in a high-ceilinged, carpeted hall with 350 folding chairs, a stage along the far wall with a podium set up for speakers, a long table laid out for panel discussions and, behind that, a big screen to show power pointslides.Waiting for the morning session to begin, as everyone mingled there, and in an ante-room where coffee was served, it struck me that most of these people knew most of these people and, given their age, this could have been their five-year high school reunion.