Faketoshi: Fraud, Lies and the Battle for Bitcoin's Soul

by Mark Hunter, Arthur van Pelt

In 2011, two years after the launch of Bitcoin, its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, quietly departed the scene. Many thought Satoshi was gone for good, but in 2016, he returned, telling a shocking far from leaving on his terms, he had been forced out, and now he was back to reclaim what was rightfully his.

Except this wasn’t Satoshi Nakamoto. This was an Australian IT security consultant called Craig Wright.

And he was a complete fraud.

Wright’s epic ten-year Satoshi hoax, which was supposed to net him and his backers billions of dollars but ended up costing them a small fortune and their reputations, began with a simple to use Bitcoin to con the Australian Taxation Office out of millions of dollars. In this opening book of the ‘Faketoshi’ trilogy, Mark Hunter and Arthur van Pelt reveal the skulduggery, deception and systematic fraud Craig Wright perpetrated on institutions, colleagues and friends alike in pursuit of riches and how it all led directly to his biggest lie of all.

If you thought The Missing Cryptoqueen was as crazy as crypto could get… think again.

278 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 1, 2025