Not Bitcoin founder Dorian Nakamoto is suing Newsweek

Dorian Nakamoto is trying to hit back at Newsweek and needs your help. Nakamoto is trying to sue the magazine after it published a cover story alleging that he was in fact Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin.

The engineer alleges that he’s been “targeted and victimised by a reckless news organisation”.

The cover story, ‘The Face Behind Bitcoin’ by Leah MacGrath Goodman, appeared in Newsweek earlier this year. After it was published though, Nakamoto unequivocally denied being Satoshi Nakamoto. Despite this, Nakamoto says he constantly had to evade reporters camping outside his home and intruding on his private life. That’s not an easy scenario for an engineer that, up until the Newsweek article, had lived a life of obscurity to deal with.

It’s still a little ironic though that Nakamoto using crowdfunding to pay for his legal fees. He’s created a website called NewsweekLied, asking for donations to assist in paying for his legal fees.

The site writes that:

In the course of her reporting, Goodman obtained Dorian’s private email address through deception, lied to Dorian in emails, published details of his private life, including his health, employment, and financial troubles, published pictures of his home, indirectly making public his address, and published altered or invented quotes from Dorian and his family”.

The site also notes that Goodman was previously sued for defamation in 2011. Goodman, the site claims, was sued for “significant factual errors and misquotes” in a book she wrote. The book in question The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World’s Oil Market was published by HarperCollins and saw an energy trader featured in the book claim that Goodman had taken his quotes out of context.

NewsweekLied states its objective quite emphatically:

Dorian’s Legal Defense Fund is a separate effort, authorized and endorsed by Dorian, to raise money to hold Newsweek accountable for their article. A lawsuit against Newsweek will be very expensive. Dorian does not have the resources to pay the costs of such a suit, let alone attorneys’ fees. Monies raised by the Fund will be used to further Dorian’s legal claims against Newsweek; anything remaining will be given directly to Dorian for his expenses.

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.

According to the site, Nakamoto first heard of the word “Bitcoin” from his son just prior to the article’s publication. Nakamoto is currently unemployed and has not worked as an engineer for at least 10 years now.

Newsweek has never taken down the story, so it will be interesting how it fights the lawsuit. The fact that Goodman claims to have no interaction records between her and Nakamoto means that things aren’t looking good for the publication.

Nakamoto’s attorney, Ethan Kirschner, confirmed that his firm is responsible for the website and the fund.

Donations to the fund can be made by credit or debit card, or in bitcoin.