From Forbes, published online April 20, 2011 (print edition May 9, 2011):
“Crypto Currency” by Andy Greenberg was one of the first major print magazine articles about Bitcoin. It opened:
(Forbes article, April 20, 2011)The Internet has left plenty of dead and maimed paper-based institutions in its wake. If Gavin Andresen and his underground cadre of cypherpunks have their way, another archaic slice of pulped tree may be next: the dollar.
Andresen himself said:
Gavin Andresen (Forbes interview, April 20, 2011)Bitcoin is designed to bring us back to a decentralized currency of the people.
This is like better gold than gold.
The article cast the developers as that cadre, working on anonymous money. It introduced Satoshi Nakamoto, who had originally designed the system, as “a mysterious, privacy-obsessed figure,” and added that Nakamoto declined to be interviewed for the story and that not even Andresen had communicated with the founder except through e-mail and posts on Web forums. Satoshi reportedly objected to this characterization.
The article also described Bitcoin as potentially untraceable — an assessment Greenberg later acknowledged was incorrect, as cryptocurrency proved to be extremely traceable through blockchain analysis. Satoshi himself had anticipated this months earlier, cautioning that Bitcoin was pseudonymous rather than truly anonymous — see Satoshi’s July 2010 warning to Martti Malmi on anonymity and pseudonymity.
