Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - April 17th, 2026

22:17And so I don't think, you know, I haven't and I don't think anybody else has heard from him. The extent of my communication was, you know, a small flurry of emails in fall 2008 and spring 2009. So, you know, there were other people who exchanged a lot more emails with Toshi. And actually, I released my emails eventually much more recently in the COPA trial versus Craig Wright, where there's a not-for-profit, you know, defending the Bitcoin developers versus Greg Wright's claims. And so as part of that, I was asked if I could share the emails because they might be useful. And so they're in the court record.

23:00People can look at them. It's just a handful of emails. Well, since so many people think you are or ask you if you are, and you know so much about the industry, and one of the reasons people think you are, and indeed the New York Times investigation, because you were essentially playing with a lot of the technology or even inventing a lot of technology that Bitcoin is based on. Given what you know, do you think you know who Satoshi Nakamoto is? No. I mean, it looks like the people who were involved in these earlier discussions or who are involved in the Bitcoin technology today have various reasons why in probability it's not them.

23:44And so, you know, I put it to Colin Hoback, the producer of the HBO documentary in the last few years, that it's probable that Satoshi is somebody that nobody knows, you know, that he's not talking to documentary film crews, he's not talking to investigative journalists, he's not going to conferences speaking under his own name. And so, you know, then he's not going to be identifiable or suspected. And so, you know, given the history that he hasn't participated in the forums, like 15 years, hasn't been heard from in that period of time, I think it's probable we'll never know at this point because there's no new information to analyze, if you see.

24:27Carol Massar:What do you make, though, before we move on? You know. Are we going to move on ever? We might not. I don't know wherever you want to go. This is fascinating. Listen, you can understand our fascination with it. How do you respond to the evidence that is laid out by the New York Times and John Carreyrou? I mean, he talks, he makes these comparisons that you and Satoshi were both associated with the cyberpunks back in the 1990s. You both had the idea to create a kind of electronic cache based on a decentralized network of computers that he says is the basis for Bitcoin. and that there's other similarities and evidence, like your doctorate in distributed system and your use of the programming language C++, which Satoshi used to code the first version of the Bitcoin software.

25:09Carol Massar:Is it all just coinkydink, as we say, coincidental? Or, I mean, is it? Well, I mean, so maybe people would not be necessarily aware, but in the late 90s, So the proof of work system that I'd proposed in 1997 was on the Sifepunks list. And there was a previous somewhat centralized electronic cash system by Digicash. And that failed because it was centralized, basically. So there was an initiative by, you know, the sort of applied research people on the Sifepunks list to try and figure out how to make decentralized electronic cash. and so you know there were people trying to do it i was one of them and i think we got you know we got so close but so far right so if you looked at the discussions which john has done which erin winded with his genesis book read all those odd emails you could see that a lot of the ideas were there and that you know that's not a secret that's that's something that was happening in the open people were excited by electronic cash and trying to make a proof of work based electronic cash because proof of work looked like a key building block to make it decentralized because then you wouldn't need a bank account to get money in and out of it you just mind the coins so that idea was there but there were gaps it was hard it's complicated to make it work and you know so it It wasn't until Satoshi, you know, started emailing people and released Bitcoin ultimately in 2009 that the remaining shortfalls were fixed.

26:53And so he had some new key insights and made it happen where we didn't quite figure it out. So that's why there's a connection, right? And I think a lot of it is just down to, you know, there was that explicit connection, right? Which is we were specifically trying to figure out how to make a Bitcoin-like thing. and we didn't quite do it. So you can see the similarities because we were in the same space. And then the other thing is, if you're trying to figure out who could have done it, you're going to select people with the relevant skillset. And so they're going to be programmers. They're going to know about cryptography.

27:28They're going to have very similar educational background. And so there's going to be similarities in the way they talk about things. And perhaps Satoshi went and read those old descriptions of how we were trying to make it work and figured out the gaps, right? So there may be some shared reading as well. We're speaking with Adam Back, the co-founder and CEO of the blockchain infrastructure company Blockstream. He's also the man at the center of this New York Times investigation this week who is alleged to, based on evidence, be Satoshi Nakamoto, something that you described. I want to keep going along this evidence that the New York Times presented.

28:08um john kerry ryu said that there's evidence that you and satoshi aren't in the same place at the same time at least according to these uh messaging boards he writes when satoshi appeared mr back disappeared satoshi goes away a few weeks later you talk about bitcoin is that all just a coincidence too that part yeah there's a coincidence um i had uh co-founded a startup before Blockstream called PyCorp, and it later got acquired by EMC. And then, you know, we were part of the consumer division. I was very busy learning about and analyzing another startup they'd acquired called Mosey. And so it was just a kind of intense period in, you know, startup land, doing very interesting things, not cryptography, but distributed storage.

29:01and so i was kind of inactive on the siphonics list and i think the siphonics list i kind of died down a bit it wasn't as much traffic and then you know of course i was aware of bitcoin since the beginning was the prehistory right we're getting the first email and so you know he's alluding to the second thing which is satoshi eventual left and then a few years later I joined the Bitcoin talk forum. And really what I did when I saw Bitcoin is I saw that Stoshi had solved the problem, but I had a question, which is, will people use it? Will it have a price? Will it get momentum? And for a while there, a few years, there was literally no market and no price and almost no transactions, no users.

29:47And so I was just looking at the news and once in a while there'd be some news that came up so i think in 2013 it crossed a dollar and then it crossed a hundred dollars and i was like wait a minute there's 10 million coins mined a hundred dollars that's a billion dollars so it's hard to say that there's probably a bootstrap so then i got busy trying to learn the rest of the details and joined the forum so that's when he's like oh adam appeared but i think satoshi had you know stopped participating already a couple years before that so adam there's there's you know a lot of people are arguing there's not proof that you you know definitive proof that you are satoshi nakamoto you you deny it is there a way you can prove that you're not like what do you tell you know what is what is your evidence when when people say i just i know you are him or you you know i know you you invented bitcoin what's the proof that you didn't yeah i mean i put some thought into this over the years because it's a recurring question so uh very very early on some colleagues of mine emailed me and asked me if it was me basically and I was like no no like uh it it doesn't you it doesn't have very much privacy I would have used this paper the standard and tashmar uh paper uh which actually works in a decentralized electronic cache um and then another thing as I got more familiar with it is that there are some small sort of cryptographic serialization formatting mistakes which I wouldn't have made because I was familiar with those mistakes that other protocols have made.

31:20That was kind of my specialization, right? And the last thing that I thought might be convincing is that there are IRC channels. And so when I was learning, catching up with the details about Bitcoin, I read the information and then I went and asked the developers on IRC channels to explain things. And some of those channels have scroll back and logs. And so you can see the kind of learning process of me asking questions that Satoshi would obviously know the answer to being the person who designed the system. Unless you were trying to be sly, I'm just going to say. Well, I mean, yeah, John didn't seem very convinced, but I thought it was convincing.

32:05And so I think it really depends on the audience because if they're a very technical audience, that's meaningful to them because they're programmers and so on.

32:13Carol Massar:Hey, one thing we wanted to, keeping aside the identity of who Nakamoto is, his wallet has about 1.1 million Bitcoin valued at around, I think, 73 billion, 5 % kind of the total supply of Bitcoin that's out there. And it hasn't been touched for years. Right. If those ever moved, though, Adam, it would have enormous impact on the price of Bitcoin. Enormous. Is that a governance risk problem for the Bitcoin community that really hasn't been addressed yet? Well, I think that there would be an incentive for any party holding a lot of Bitcoin to not hold the price because they have a lot of skin in the game.

32:59So like with a big managed fund or a big treasury, they would try to sell slowly via OTC to realize the best price. So I think you can sort of assume that people don't want to hurt their own savings, right? So that's one factor. And Bitcoin has absorbed, you know, large shifts in Bitcoins between new waves of investors. You know, the ETFs currently hold a lot of coins on behalf of, you know, many, many subscribers, right? The Ibit ETF, the new Morgan Stanley ETF a couple of days ago, already absorbed almost a whole day's supply in the first day. So there's a new buyer in town. So I think, you know, Bitcoin has absorbed, you know, things like 80 ,000 Bitcoin sold in an afternoon by, you know, somebody liquidating apparently an inheritance or an estate or something.

34:01It wasn't super clear, but there were some hints given by the institution that sold it on behalf of the client. So, you know, the liquidity is there that quite a lot of Bitcoin can be sold. You know, it caused a short dip, but it wasn't very dramatic. And, you know, Bitcoin's getting more liquid and more deep markets over time because you've got more professional money managers. The Bitcoin users, you know, the Bitcoin investors tend to be, they would like to buy more Bitcoin if the price falls, but they tend to be a bit all in. So they don't have the firepower to buy more. Right. Whereas the sort of fund managers, they're looking at analyst reports.

34:43If they see that Microsoft is a buyer at this level, they'll sell something else from Amazon and they'll buy it, right? So when they have an allocation, they can reallocate.

34:53Carol Massar:Yeah. And you're obviously one of those people who is all in on it at Blockstream. It's an infrastructure company, but also a digital asset treasury company. So it accumulates Bitcoin in a similar way that MicroStrategy does. But it raises the question, since you've been in this space for more than 30 years and been thinking about this, at least the concept of digital money for so many decades. I'm wondering if Bitcoin, as it stands right now, has achieved what you thought digital money could achieve. And the reason I ask this is because it's not necessarily used, at least for a lot of people, as a currency to pay for things, especially in the United States, especially in the quote-unquote developed world.

35:32It's more so used as people think it will go up in value so they buy into it because they think it's a good investment. Is this the solution that you were looking for 30 years ago?

35:46Well, that is one of the differences between the late 90s discussion on the Cypherpunks list, which is almost more like a stablecoin, right? Because the Digicash centralized system that I'd felt was literally a stablecoin. and the solution to not needing a bank account of mining the coins now we didn't quite figure it out but satoshi's solution is that the market will tell you what the price is and the system just ensures a steady supply of new coins per day per hour and so on and so you know from that point of view bitcoin is not a stable coin so if you see you know growing popularity and you foresee more people are going to buy it in the future, then it starts to become a store of value, a scarce asset.

36:37And so it became an asset class, right? So Bitcoin is actually more, it's both electronic cash and an investable asset class, which is pretty novel in terms of technology that you can invest in an asset in the technology.

36:50Carol Massar:So Adam, 30 seconds left. Wall Street's embrace of Bitcoin. It feels like it kind of contradicted the idea of having this decentralized system. Are you okay with that? Well, I think it's the same with the internet stocks. You know, the internet kind of changed the balance of power in the world. Establishment didn't always like that. But, you know, fund managers, mutual funds were investing in internet stocks because they could see the users wanted it. So, and I think the other thing is with the ETFs, they're a form of accessibility, right? So for many people, the IT complexities of managing your own wallet, maybe that's not for them or they want to start gently.

37:29and they're more familiar with making investment decisions by talking to their broker or financial advisor. And so the ETFs just make it easier for them to do that. So I think it's all about access. And the mature use of Bitcoin is going to pervade society. Now you've already seen it in treasury stocks and now some states in the US, some countries, the Swiss National Bank, Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund. So I think it's a sign of success as you get further adoption that it permeates into more public companies, private companies, individuals, different types of organizations.

38:07Carol Massar:Well, Satoshi, no, I'm just kidding. Adam, so nice to have you with us. I like that. You're a good sport. And I hope you'll come back because we'd like to continue this conversation and just kind of understanding how things are being changed, disrupted, if you will, and love to talk more about Blockstream. Adam back. Thank you so much. He is Blockstream co-founder and CEO. joining us right here on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.

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42:02Carol Massar:It's a name that has become a bit of a fixture in many homes all over. The story behind it started in a much humbler place, a kitchen table back in Iowa. Monica Nassif looked at a cleaning aisle dominated by harsh chemicals and decided it was time for a change. She decided to build a brand not just on efficacy, but on the values of the woman who raised nine children on a farm, her own mother. Monica is the founder of Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day and the author of the book, I Bottled My Mother, The Mrs. Meyer's Story, Grit, Grime, and Growing a Business. Thank you. Delighted to be here. You have an amazing story, but it starts with your mom.

42:40It starts with my mom. You just told us she's still alive. She's 19. She's 93.

42:43Carol Massar:She's still alive, going strong, lives in her family home. She's still bossing me around. She raised nine children. How did you bottle your mother? Well, we bottled all of her values. Frugality, she loves her garden, she raised nine kids in 10 years, and her parenting advice was, I'm raising adults, not children. And so she just had this Midwestern strong work ethic. So as we created this other brand to kind of knock off our first brand, Caldria, we decided, what would that represent? How could we take out Caldria? And we thought, oh, a brand with strong Midwestern values. So I called my mom and said, hey, mom, could we name you after a brand?

43:24Carol Massar:And she goes, what's a brand? I said, well, just say yes, because we got to get going. We got things to do. Tell us, though, about this marketplace, though, is crowded. It becomes increasingly crowded. And you guys went a different route. And I told you before we got started, my daughter, who is now 23 years old, when we had her nursery, we started using, because your product is, right? I'm right. Oh, yeah, for sure. You're right. I was like doing the math if I'm wrong. But we were using your products because we wanted no chemicals in our room. We were, and we've been using it since. So tell us about how you approach the marketplace.

43:59Carol Massar:You know, I approached it really differently. You know, before we came on the scene, it was problem solution. Dirty window, Windex. Dishes, Dawn. Yeah. You know, kind of one trick ponies. Very, I mean, great performance, great products, great brands. But I thought of the home as like personal care for the home. Like, what if you could clean everything in lavender or lemon verbena or basil, your window spray, your dish soap, your hands, you know, laundry, everything. And customers loved it. So I just kind of turned the market differently and thought about it more as a fashion and personal care business than a cleaning business.

44:34Carol Massar:And also thought, okay, what's great about the green brands? They're green, to your point earlier. They're safe. What is it about the big P &G brands? Performance, price, right? But I thought, what if you take both of those things and then add great packaging, a great personality, and bring it to the consumer? And she loved it. She really did. You know, it's been almost 20 years since you filled this company. Yeah. And I'm wondering, as you see the company as part of SC Johnson, no longer under your umbrella, has it changed? I think it's changed a little bit. they've introduced a lot more fragrance.

45:16Is that the biggest change in the last 20 years? Craig, I feel like the bottles are the exact same they've been.

45:22Carol Massar:I think the bottles are the same. They've changed some tops and caps and some of the illustrations on the packaging. But for the most part, it's pretty much the same. Do you think it still encompasses the values that you achieve with building this yourself? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's, if you build a brand right, in terms of we were dominant in our category. No one was offering this many products for cleaning the home in a singular fragrance. That still holds true. I mean, they're doing that really quite well. Well, S.T. Johnson wasn't the first company that sort of came knocking.

45:55You had venture capitalists and private equity who were interested in the company. Why did you sell when you were only 53 years old? And the brand, I think, to a lot of people was still relatively young.

46:08Carol Massar:Yeah, we grew so fast. We were also capital constrained, I'll be honest. And at the time, what was happening is all the organic brands were being acquired by strategic partners, by VC, by private equity. And from day one, from our first trade show at the houseware show in Chicago, I'll never forget, we had private equity VC and SC Johnson in our trade show booth. Wow. Because it was such a different category and a different brand. And I asked every one of, every private equity, every VC person that walked in the booth, hey, what can you do for us that we can't do for ourselves? And you know, there weren't a lot of interesting answers.

46:45Carol Massar:But S.E. Johnson said, we can scale this. And you know, when you put your heart and soul and your mother into something, you really want somebody, I thought it had global presence. I really did. I really did when I started. Well, to Tim's point though, I was going to ask you without even thinking about like changes they've made but like seller's remorse and the reason i ask is is i've talked to people whose names are on brands well-known brands that you would know and have sold and the regrets they have and they were just at a point too where i think it became too big it was all consuming of their life and they're just like i kind of need to get out but then a few years later and realizing especially when it was their name or their mom oh i know like you it's not yours anymore.

47:30Carol Massar:No, it's bittersweet. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely seller's remorse involved. No question. You know, but at the same time you think, okay, what am I personally really good at as the founder? I can build a brand, I can sell, I can hustle, but you know, that starts to get worn out too. I'm going to be honest, you know, it's a hard, it's a hard life. Do you think you could build the brand today? It's such a different space. And I think there's so much more consumer awareness about this stuff you were really to it we were very early it feels like it's table stakes now to make sure a product that you put on your hands or you use to clean your home or you have in your home like you were doing with your daughter more than 20 years ago yeah it seems like table stakes to make sure it doesn't have any harmful chemicals no i think you're absolutely right could i build a brand again not a brand this one oh i don't know probably not i bet you could build a brand again but i'm wondering about the timing yeah this one like no the timing was lightning in a bottle.

48:22Carol Massar:The timing was perfect. Yeah, it really was. We were kind of pre, you know, because here are the changes in the consumer's home. She started making changes to her diet, organic food. She started making changes to personal care. She started buying all these upscale culinary items, Nespresso, KitchenAid mixers. And I thought, why are cleaning products so behind? Yeah, we used to call them jewelry for the counter. You know, she wants to leave that hand soap and dish soap by the sink right next to her gorgeous KitchenAid mixer. No one was thinking like that. You know, I grew up in retail. I used to work for Target.

48:53Carol Massar:So I kind of understood how that upscale consumer thought about her home. And I thought, gosh, she's got to keep step with what's happening in the world. What do we need to know about your mom? My mom. She's 93. She's going strong. She just went on a safari in Africa with my brother, Tim. You know, she walks to church every day. She believes in fresh air, frugality, faith, family. She has a great sense of humor. And she raised us to be confident individuals. Yeah. You know, by kicking us out of the house early, I'm going to be honest. Go get a job. She never once asked, hey, Monica, what are your grades?

49:31Carol Massar:It's Monica, do you have a job? Really? Yeah. Yeah. She was all about working. Because you think about generational, and I always think about this. Grew up a mom who was, she was born in 29. She's not with us anymore. But, you know, growing up, and I'm one of seven kids, and even though we're all kind of close in terms of the duration of when she had kids, I mean, she was a homemaker first and eventually went back to work. But it's just interesting to even, you know, women and their role in society and how it's changed. And I'm just curious, your mom is of that era where women were homemakers, right?

50:09Carol Massar:She was a homemaker. She was also a nurse. Yeah. And she went back to work as soon as she was able. And I think she just said there was too much to do with nine. I mean, she had nine of us in 10 years. That's how it was in our household. Yeah, and I was the oldest girl. Yeah. So I had early responsibility for when she left. I had all the kids in tow, you know? If you were starting a company today, like when we were talking about it, is there something, when you look at the marketplace, is there something that you find interesting that you think needs to be tackled? You know, I think the whole thing of social media and consumer products is super fascinating.

50:46Carol Massar:And I kind of just wonder when that's going to... In a good way or a bad way? Well, I don't know. I think it's going to flame out. I think, you know, there's all these shiny objects. And I think the brands who build for the long haul, you know, in good times and in bad, especially like, let's say, a skincare line or a body care, they're going to survive in any types of media. That's my opinion. so I think those brands that do that really well will survive what are the brands that you look out at today and you think they've done a really good job you know what I look at a lot of the fashion brands and a lot of the personal care brands and I always did throughout my entire career it hasn't changed it hasn't changed and maybe because that's where I lock my eyes on women's wear daily and beauty and you know I that's where I spent my eyes and ears looking for trends well at the same time retail has changed so much since you sold in 2008 if we think about the the places where we used to go bricks and mortar to actually buy your product i would imagine a lot of it is now purchased online i know that when the um did you when did you have the peppermint seasonal or was that something that happened so we created all the private label for williams sonoma and creighton barrel and harvey nichols out of london and peppermint williams Sonoma did that.

51:58Carol Massar:And then it became, then it came to Mrs. Meyers and that consumers love that brand. The reason I ask is because when that was released a few years ago, it was seasonal. And I was like, I actually have to stock up on this because if it's going to go away, that's going to go when you like something. But I did it on Amazon, which is not the typical way that I think people were buying your product in the early years. What is the right way to position to meet buyers where they are today versus when you were building this brand? I think you have to depend on what's your target audience, first of all, and where do they go to consume media.

52:31Carol Massar:And then you've got to be there, like it or not. You've got to figure out all the intricacies of how they work. You know, when we started, Amazon was eight years old. I was curious about, yeah. Oh, and when we used to call on them, we'd go into their, I'll never forget this. Is Jeff here? Oh, wait. It was all tech guys. And they go, how should we package this? And I said, what do you mean, how should we package it? how many bottles in a box? And they were tech geeks. They weren't product geeks. Now that's changed completely. So we had to educate a lot of the early online players how a consumer product should be positioned for shipping to a consumer.

53:11Carol Massar:Do you have a favorite moment in this whole process? You know, there is a favorite moment. Selling, not looking back. Not looking back, yeah. Well, building the brand, I love. I used to have a marketing agency. So we did that a lot for other clients. So I just love that entire process. But one of my favorite moments is, so when I started the company, I had this image in my mind's eye of what this brand should be. And I imagined an end cap in Target loaded with product. And so I always said when I got lost, I felt like at the end of an aisle. Yep. Like in a Target or a Walmart. And I had this image in my mind.

53:48Carol Massar:And whenever I got discouraged or lost, I would reboot that image. So one day I'm in the Whole Foods store in Austin, Texas, where they're based. And we're supposed to do this big laundry promotion. And I run back to the cleaning aisle. And I'm like, where's the laundry? I said to my salesperson, where's the laundry? She goes, you ran right by it. You didn't even see it? I didn't even see it. And there was this huge, I literally almost brought me to my knees. There was the image that I had in my mind's eye from day one. The reality of it, right? The reality of it. Yeah. That was a moment. You have this book.

54:21Carol Massar:It's really beautiful. It's kind of just, I like it. It looks like the product. How do you hope people approach it, use it, think about it? You know what? I wrote this book, well, first as a love letter to my mother, but really for the wannabes, the dreamers, the schemers, the wannabe entrepreneurs, the people who call me, send me an email. How should I do this? Have you thought about this? Would you meet me for coffee? I've also done a lot of speaking to entrepreneur groups, and I answer a lot of the questions that I get asked all the time. What's the number one question you get asked? How do you do it?

54:54Carol Massar:And you know what I say? Should you do it? Yeah. You know, you really should look in the mirror and ask yourself, do you have what it takes to pull this off? Because this is not easy. Well, it's interesting because we had the head of the MBA school. Who am I thinking? Oh, the Berkeley, dean of Berkeley yesterday. He's my mind. He's my brain. Dean Chapman. But just talked about the importance. Now, they're on the West Coast. They're in Berkeley. And we found this with Stanford when we've talked to the team there, that it's entrepreneurship, that so many people are involved in it. But you think about the importance of it.

55:25Carol Massar:It's not easy. Right. But you find a lot of like MBA candidates. Oh, yeah. Who really want to do it. They really want to do it. I mean, I think I read a study that the word title founder has grown 69 % on LinkedIn titles. That's interesting. So that's pretty fascinating. Right? We saw it off of COVID. What's your favorite fragrance? Basil. Oh, it is? That's like picking your favorite child. It's basil. I've got to admit it. We had to go there. Thank you so much. Good luck. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Monica Nassif is the founder of Mrs. Myers, and she's the author of the new book, I Bottled My Mother, The Mrs.

56:04Myers Story, Grit, Grime, and Growing a Business. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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