A reporter that has spent 15 years trying to solve Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity finally settled on a big clue, Satoshi’s use of the word “non-fencible.”
“[James A.] Donald showed up as the only person on any of the two decades’ worth of lists I’d scraped who had ever used the word fencible — in the sense of stolen goods ‘able to be fenced,'” writes Benjamin Wallace in New York Magazine. “This was a word Nakamoto had used once, in the expression non-fencible. And it appeared in a post by Donald on the cypherpunks list in October 1998.”
Wallace found this word to be so rare that it propelled his investigation to the point where he flew to Australia to try and track Donald, an old cypherpunk, down. He leaves with virtually no answers other than a theory that maybe it could have been him.
Like others who have spent years on the Satoshi mystery, Wallace misses the biggest clue from this of all, the likely reference to the cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. Satoshi was influenced by the novel and incorporated references from the book into the founding story as part of his artistic touch to make bitcoin part cyberpunk, part cypherpunk.
Some of the fence references in Neuromancer, excluding the fact that one of the main characters, Finn, is a fence are below:
“He stole from his employers. He kept something for himself and tried to move it through a fence in Amsterdam.”
“She just wanted a ticket home, and the RAM in his Hitachi would buy it for her, if she could find the right fence.”
“The one back there said they got onto her when she was trying to fence your RAM.”
“Finn’s an old connection of mine. Fence, mostly. Software.”
“The Finn was a fence, a trafficker in stolen goods, primarily in software. In the course of his business he sometimes came into contact with other fences, some of whom dealt in the more traditional articles of the trade. In precious metals, stamps, rare coins, gems, jewelry, furs, and paintings and other works of art.”
“Smith was also a fence, but in balmier seasons he surfaced as an art dealer.”
“So what happened with your fence?”