“The dominant belief is that Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, the greatest mystery of crypto currency, is not a person who actually exists. And that by giving him a Japanese name, he has become even more mysterious (there is an obvious sentiment rooted in Orientalism). This counterfeit passport by Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion, created as a work of art about a mysterious figure who was an essential starting point for the blockchain and surrounding technologies that have a certain religious fervor, will amplify the imagination of such a mythology that is currently in the making. It’s a piece fit to exist on the blockchain.” —exonemo

“This scanned image is the only existing trace of the passport of Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin. Since his first public message until his disappearance on December 12, 2010, Nakamoto has made every effort to preserve his identity. The importance of his creation and the perfectly mastered mystery around him made him today a true contemporary myth, feeding a growing number of rumors and fantasies. We decided to produce evidence of the existence of Satoshi Nakamoto using the technology he created. We asked forgers on the darknet to produce an absurd portrait, paid in Bitcoins: a Japanese passport embodying all the information we gathered about him. The work is the original image (non-photoshopped and with metadata) that the forgers sent us on May 28, 2014 for validation before shipping. We never received the physical passport, as if Nakamoto should definitely belong to the digital world.” —Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion