Dorian Nakamoto Is Suing Newsweek

Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, the man Newsweek claimed was the mysterious founder of Bitcoin, has created a web page asking for donations in his fight to sue the magazine after he was allegedly “targeted and victimized by a reckless news organization.”

The site, NewsweekLied, is an effort to hold the magazine accountable for “confusing” the 65-year-old unemployed engineer and, according to the site, misquoting his friends and family. “In some cases, words were attributed to them that were never said. In the chaos, his mother believed that the authorities were planning on removing her from her home to put her in a care facility,” Nakamoto’s supporters wrote on the site. “His estranged wife and children were alienated by the story, which portrayed a person and situation different from their understanding of their husband and father.”

From the site:

The first time Dorian heard the word “bitcoin” was from his son just prior to the article’s publication, who called him after speaking to the Newsweek reporter. In an AP video interview in March, after the article’s publication, he clearly mispronounces “bitcoin,” calling it “bitcom,” and denies “communicating with bitcoins.”Dorian suffered a stroke in October 2013. His recovery is ongoing. He is separated from his wife, lives with his 93-year-old mother, and has been unemployed as an engineer for at least ten years. Though he continues to look for work, he is experiencing “severe financial distress,” in his own words, and has significant trouble meeting his basic needs. He cancelled his internet service in 2013 because he couldn’t afford it.

Donations, obviously, can be made by bitcoin.

It will be interesting to see how far this goes. Nakamoto never admitted to creating bitcoin, and the Newsweek story remained sufficiently vague, allowing the publication to argue that their fishing expedition was an effort at exploring a juicy story rather than identifying the actual creator of bitcoin. “Standing before me, eyes downcast, appeared to be the father of Bitcoin,” wrote Leah McGrath Goodman in her Newsweek piece.

It will be hard for Nakamoto to convince a judge to agree that “appeared to be” is the same was “was.”