On July 29, 2015, installment 1 of Hacktivist 2, a graphic novel authored by Alyssa Milano, was introduced to the public for sale. According to co-writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, who had been introduced to Milano by the publisher for the original, they were surprised that there was going to be a sequel in the first place.
“We never thought that we would have [a volume 2] if I’m being super honest,” said Lanzing during a Comic-Con interview on August 5, 2015 with Milano and Kelly. “We thought we had one volume, we had one story to tell and we told it–”
“And it was super important that volume 1 stood on its own for that reason because none of us really thought–” added Milano who cut herself off before handing the microphone back to Lanzing.
Like the original, the backstory for the sequel supposedly had to do with Milano’s passion for activism and global events. This time, however, the three suspected that Milano might get “splashback” for the “ruckus” she caused with the storyline.
“We couldn’t continue this story without taking those risks, we couldn’t, and we’re probably on every NSA watch list,” Milano said.
In the context of an actress hyping a comic series at Comic-Con, there is little reason to figure that Milano was taking any kind of actual risk with this story, which at surface level boils down to a hacker trying to recapture control of his hijacked pseudonym and return to the helm of the social network he co-founded. That is except the main character of the story, as publicized in the first one, is based on Jack Dorsey, who was the godfather of Milano’s son.
Background on Hacktivist 1
For background, book 1 starts at the dawn of the Arab Spring in Tunisia where Ed Hiccox (Jack Dorsey) is the co-founder of a social network (called Yourlife) whose influence on foreign affairs is noticed by the CIA. In that book, the CIA blackmails “Jack” by leveraging their knowledge of him being behind a famous pseudonym. If he doesn’t hand over control of his social network to the CIA, the American authorities plan to charge him with a litany of crimes connected to his alternate identity that will lock him up for 20 years to life. After “Jack” is forced to take the deal he disappears.
When Alyssa Milano originally approached a publisher about this story idea she was introduced to Lanzing and Kelly to help her nail it down, and this is what they said of it:
“We sat down with Alyssa from the very first meeting from the very first moment it was clear that she was in this for the exact right reasons. She was here because she had a story that she was dying to tell, that was burning up inside that she had to get out there…..”
As I’ve written about previously, the story is a masked tale of Jack Dorsey being both a co-founder of Twitter and Satoshi Nakamoto. In the real world, Satoshi’s last activity on the Bitcointalk forum was on December 13, 2010. The real life Twitter was hit with a secret government order relating to WikiLeaks on December 14, which included a gag stipulation so that they couldn’t tell anyone, and the real life Arab Spring in Tunisia began on December 18, 2010, which is when Hacktivist begins and “Jack” is blackmailed over his famous pseudonym. Jack Dorsey penned the intro Note in the book and Milano went on a press tour to state that the main character was based on Jack.
Nobody in the real hacker world paid Hacktivist any mind because it was thought that Jack’s secret identity in the story was supposed to mirror the hacker collective Anonymous, which is what she repeatedly alluded to even though she insisted at the same time that her version of Anonymous was really just one person and that person was Jack Dorsey. Critics who paid attention to Milano’s stint as an author on hacking and hacktivism concluded that she just didn’t understand the subject matter so that the book itself just didn’t make sense. Nobody thought it at all unusual, however, that Jack Dorsey signed off on a book in which the CIA blackmailed his character to take control of the fictionalized version of Twitter.
Hacktivist 2
In Hacktivist 2, the world mostly assumes that “Jack” is dead. His pseudonym, which in this book is .sve_urs3lf (two characters share the name actually), not Satoshi, has become famous the world over. The problem is that in the void of “Jack” being able to use the name himself anymore, a group of likeminded folks step in and hijack the pseudonym for themselves and for purposes that “Jack” did not want. Since the first installment of Hacktivist 2 debuted at the end of July 2015, the storyline would have to take place between Satoshi’s exit from the real world in April 2011 and 2015. That just so happens to capture the beginnings of the Blocksize War that roiled the bitcoin community in real life.
The sequel is more overt than the first in its symbolism. “Jack” returns but as a heavily bearded scruffy looking homeless man on the run who is stirred to action to reclaim ownership of his pseudonymous identity from those he believed would carry on his legacy properly.
“I approached them anonymously,” Ed (Jack) says in the story. “I pushed them a software update, embedded in which was my [ID], I thought I could help them, equip them.”
“Jack” finds that the leader of the group developing his software is very creative, however, and that those working on it, which many view as his proteges, are now invoking the pseudonym’s name as being on board with things that he didn’t want. Hacktivist 2 calls the leader of this renegade group The Tower and the leader’s logo looks oddly similar to that of Gavin Andresen’s Bitcoin Faucet. For reference, Gavin Andresen is whom Satoshi in real life tasked with spearheading Bitcoin’s development in his absence, and Gavin ended up becoming a Big Blocker, which led to the Blocksize War.
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“They aren’t my proteges,” Ed (Jack) says. “They had no idea who I even was.”
The group running the software’s development start to distribute it to the masses and it’s found in “Bitcoin mines,” (which it says literally) and this garners the attention of the NSA.
The story devolves into people trying to figure out who is the real .sve_urs3lf (Satoshi) as “Jack” fights back for control and public vindication.
The book concludes with “Jack” returning to the helm of his social network while primed to take back control of the .sve_urs3lf pseudonym and legacy.
Hacktivist 2 was released in six installments, with installment 1 of the story being released on July 29, 2015. Installment 6, the conclusion, was released on December 16, 2015.
In real life:
July 1, 2015 – Jack Dorsey returned as interim CEO of Twitter.
July 29, 2015 – The first installment of Hacktivist 2 is released.
August 15, 2015 – Satoshi Nakamoto allegedly returns with a message which coincidentally mirrors the plot of the book and calls out Gavin Andresen by name.
“I have been following the recent block size debates through the mailing list. I had hoped the debate would resolve and that a fork proposal would achieve widespread consensus. However with the formal release of Bitcoin XT 0.11A, this looks unlikely to happen, and so I am forced to share my concerns about this very dangerous fork.
The developers of this pretender-Bitcoin claim to be following my original vision, but nothing could be further from the truth. When I designed Bitcoin, I designed it in such a way as to make future modifications to the consensus rules difficult without near unanimous agreement. Bitcoin was designed to be protected from the influence of charismatic leaders, even if their name is Gavin Andresen, Barack Obama, or Satoshi Nakamoto. Nearly everyone has to agree on a change, and they have to do it without being forced or pressured into it. By doing a fork in this way, these developers are violating the “original vision” they claim to honour.
They use my old writings to make claims about what Bitcoin was supposed to be. However I acknowledge that a lot has changed since that time, and new knowledge has been gained that contradicts some of my early opinions. For example I didn’t anticipate pooled mining and its effects on the security of the network. Making Bitcoin a competitive monetary system while also preserving its security properties is not a trivial problem, and we should take more time to come up with a robust solution. I suspect we need a better incentive for users to run nodes instead of relying solely on altruism.
If two developers can fork Bitcoin and succeed in redefining what “Bitcoin” is, in the face of widespread technical criticism and through the use of populist tactics, then I will have no choice but to declare Bitcoin a failed project. Bitcoin was meant to be both technically and socially robust. This present situation has been very disappointing to watch unfold.
Satoshi Nakamoto”
October 15, 2015 – Jack was made permanent CEO of Twitter.
December 16, 2015 – The last installment of Hacktivist 2 is released, where “Jack” returns to his social network and has come back as .sve_urs3lf.
January 16, 2025 – While Jack Dorsey was on a podcast he used a familiar phrase to characterize Bitcoin if it was not used in a specific way, saying that he would consider it a “failed project” if it was not used as peer-to-peer electronic cash. “Failed project” is the same term Satoshi used in his 2015 comeback email.
For full disclosure, Hacktivist 2 and Hacktivist 1 create their own playful narratives that would mask the true message behind each story, which means that not everything in each can be interpreted literally. Indeed, characters die and things blow up as one would expect in any comic series. The symbolism is what I have inferred based upon my belief and large evidence indicating that Jack Dorsey is Satoshi Nakamoto. You could read either story and reach your own conclusion. While Alyssa Milano has insisted that the main character is based on Jack Dorsey and that Yourlife is the story’s version of Twitter, she has not suggested it has anything to do with Bitcoin or Satoshi to my knowledge.