The Bitcoin Lady

She had just finished changing from her gi to her smart red blouse and black skirt. A petite five-feet, three inches tall, the seventy-four year-old was a second degree black belt who had been practicing and sparring at the same dojo in Newark, Delaware. It was about one o’clock in the afternoon, and her grandkids were due home from school soon, so she would need to be leaving the dojo, and heading there to meet them. That’s when it came to her, a name for her alias behind the cryptocurrency Bitcoin: she would call herself Satashi Nakamoto.

As an African American, she was just one of the few women who could have been made famous by the film Hidden Figures. Though she was not mentioned in the film, she was part of the reality. The movie came out eight years after her co-founding of Bitcoin, with two other human “computers” from the NASA Space Race. She solved calculus problems in her head for the thrills. She could solve snake and Rubik’s cubes for her grandchildren in under a minute.

She didn’t bake cookies, but she could fry up some chicken. She made it home in just enough time to season the batter, and drop the pieces in the hot oil. When it was done, she placed the finished product in a bowl lined with paper towels. Right on time, her grandson and granddaughter arrived home, and washed up for some fried chicken wings. They nibbled on their portions upstairs.

“Thanks, Mom-Mom,” Kadeem and Sierra Billingsly said. That wasn’t her given name, of course. She was Mariel Cupp. While the two children savored their snacks, she made her way down to a basement desktop computer. Surrounding it, pictures gleamed with smiling faces from years gone by. A hard drive sat next to one of the pictures. This allowed Mariel to establish herself as the lead on the project. Another grandmother did bake cookies, but she was also a retired chemical engineer at Mercier, the chemical company in Wilmington, Delaware. Her name was Sydney Rogers. She sent emails to Mariel concerning setting up an entire framework for digital currency.

“Where we are right now, is like where the Internet was in 1991. In the shadows, we’re obscure and we will remain largely unknown until a big shift in the culture moves Bitcoin into the light.”

Mariel laughed. She typed back: “You got that right.” Then she focused on writing a white paper outlining the network. Her grandchildren came downstairs.

“Grandma! Can we put on our costumes?”

“Fine, babies. Go ahead.”

This October 31, 2008, the winds of change were like the blustery gales outside. Halloween costumes didn’t stop Mariel from completing her task. Throughout this whole process, her anonymity allowed her to shield this new creation like a rare and precious metal. She kept it encrypted on the hard drive, accessible only with a password acknowledging her precious grandchildren, but still damn difficult for anyone else to figure out. The program had already been set up months ago. Mariel was just having fun with it.

But one problem lingered in her thoughts, like lint on velvet. Neither she nor Sydney could ever claim the site. The burning desire for fame and fortune never raged in either one of them. They were doing themselves a favor. They knew if they had imagined Bitcoin and presented it to the world, they would have been laughed at by both Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Nevertheless, they persevered.

Mariel sent another email: “We should set this thing in motion sometime during the winter of next year.”

Sydney replied: “Sounds good.”

Mariel sent the document out into the world. This act would forever transform the way that people saw the way we use money. Mariel considered the implosion of MySpace, and the rise of players like Facebook and Twitter; she knew in her mind that people would eventually come around to Bitcoin. She would ensure they did come around.