A hacker claims to have cracked into mysterious bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto's private email and is offering to sell information to the highest bidder.
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Calling himself "Jeffrey," the hacker told WIRED that he accessed the email because "The fool [Nakamoto] used a primary gmx under his full name and had aliases set up underneath it. He's also alive."
Jeffrey is offering to unmask the secretive Nakamoto for 25 bitcoins, or roughly $12,000.
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It isn't clear if Nakamoto is a programmer or the name of a shadowy group of programmers. Either way, the namesake launched the software that powers bitcoin back in 2009. Since then, the digital currency has defined the concept of "cryptocurrency." While extremely volatile, bitcoin has seen a massive amount of acceptance amongst Libertarian-leaning techies as well as major online outlets like Overstock and Expedia (although Amazon has decidedly not shown any interest in accepting bitcoin).
Many in the larger bitcoin community aren't buying Jeffrey's story.
"I'm pretty sure that this is just some troll in it for the laughs," according to Michael Marquardt (who claims Jeffrey contacted him), the head administrator of the Bitcointalk.org, in an interview with WIRED.