Newsweek Returns to Print and Sets Off a Bitcoin Storm

After being out of print for 14 months, Newsweek wanted its return to the newsstands to land with a splash. So it put out an issue with a darkened cover featuring a theatrical silver mask, and made an explosive claim: It had uncovered the mysterious founder of the digital currency Bitcoin.

Within hours of publication, however, the story seemed to swell from a splash to a runaway tsunami of attention, much of it negative. The man Newsweek identified as Bitcoin's founder, Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, a reclusive train collector from California, gave a two-hour interview to newsandtalking.blogspot.com saying that the story was wrong.

Reporters and commentators quickly questioned whether the writer, Leah McGrath Goodman, had produced the definitive proof her magazine had promised, noting that the central quote from Mr. Nakamoto appeared to fall short of a clear confirmation.

Amateur sleuths on the Internet tried to challenge the evidence in the face of a heavy dose of hostility aimed at the author directly.

Newsweek's editor in chief, Jim Impoco, on Friday offered a vigorous defense of the article. 'We are absolutely standing by this,' he said in a phone interview. He added that the idea that the story hung on the brief confirmation from Mr. Nakamoto was wrong. 'It was an exhaustive investigation,' he said. 'We brought in help from M.I.T. All leads led to him.'

Ms. Goodman on Friday seemed surprised at the ferocity of the attacks against her. On 'CBS This Morning,' she insisted again that Mr. Nakamoto had definitely confirmed to her that he was a founder. Referring to a bizarre scene on Thursday, when reporters who were camped outside Mr. Nakamoto's house formed a caravan to follow him down the highway to the A.P. interview, she told CBS: 'Seeing him flee the scene and now deny it, I have to say it is mystifying to me.'

The article describes a brief conversation outside Mr. Nakamoto's house witnessed by two deputies from the sheriff's office, in which Ms. Goodman asked him about Bitcoin. 'I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it,' she quotes him as saying. 'It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection.'

Mr. Nakamoto told The A.P. that he had misunderstood what she was asking him.

In an emailed statement to The New York Times, Ms. Goodman wrote in part: 'My conversation with Mr. Nakamoto followed two months of team-based research that connected the dots to him - and only him - in multiple ways. I can definitively say that in our conversation, he made clear he understood we were talking about Bitcoin.'

Adam L. Penenberg, a journalism professor at New York University and editor of the digital newsletter PandoDaily, was among the skeptical commentators, tweeting: 'High risk, high reward, disastrous if you're wrong. Putting it on the cover with such flimsy proof was a poor editorial decision.'

In featuring the Bitcoin story, Newsweek was engaging a particularly passionate audience. Bitcoin, a virtual currency that is meant to allow smooth financial transactions across borders without government involvement, has a zealous group of devoted technologists, speculators and libertarian ideologues. It has also recently made headlines in several areas - for its big-name investors like the Winklevoss twins, and, most recently, the spectacular bankruptcy filing of a trading exchange, Mt. Gox, with more than $450 million worth of coins reported to have gone missing.

And as Bitcoin has gone from a fringe digital experiment to a mainstream digital experiment, the search for its secretive creator, or creators, has become something of a holy grail. There are few leads to go on - other than the name, 'Satoshi Nakamoto,' similar to Mr. Nakamoto's own name, and some writings online, including a white paper from 2008. Still, publications like The New Yorker, Fast Company and Vice have spent significant reporting time trying to reveal the Bitcoin inventor's identity. The New Yorker's piece was typical, concluding: 'The currency is both real and elusive - just like its founder.'

In her article and in later interviews, Ms. Goodman (who goes by the twitter handle @truth-eater) said she had delved into databases and even worked with a team of forensic investigators to track down Mr. Nakamoto's identity. She said she got his email address from a company where he bought his model trains.

The disclosure of the lengths she went to investigate Mr. Nakamoto seemed only to enrage Bitcoin fans. Many on the web, and in particular on the social news site Reddit, expressed sympathy for the toll this has taken on Mr. Nakamoto, whether he is the creator of Bitcoin or not, and were outraged that Newsweek saw fit to invade his privacy.

'I hope the media realizes just how low they've gone this time, and though I don't take any satisfaction in saying this, I hope the public backlash on them is breathtakingly vicious,' wrote a commentator with the handle ferretinjapan.

On Friday, Newsweek issued a plea for restraint, saying in a statement that it 'encourages all to be respectful of the privacy and rights of the individuals involved.'

In the statement, the magazine also said, 'It is natural and expected for a major news revelation such as this to spark debate and controversy' and said it was 'committed to furthering that spirit of open discourse.'

Ms. Goodman, in a phone interview, suggested that people would have to draw their own conclusions from the material she presented. 'Everyone wants a smoking gun,' she said.

Later she added, 'If people are like 'I want more, that is not enough,' I don't know what to say. I want more as well.'

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