"When I first looked at the code, I was sure I was going to be able to break it," Kaminsky said, noting that the programming style was dense and inscrutable. "The way the whole thing was formatted was insane. Only the most paranoid, painstaking coder in the world could avoid making mistakes." Kaminsky lives in Seattle, but, while visiting family in San Francisco in July, he retreated to the basement of his mother's house to work on his bitcoin attacks. In a windowless room jammed with comput-ers, Kaminsky paced around talking to himself, trying to build a mental picture of the bitcoin network. He quickly identified nine ways to compromise the system and scoured Nakamoto's code for an insertion point for his first attack. But when he found the right spot, there was a message waiting for him. "Attack Removed," it said. The same thing happened over and over, infuriating Kaminsky. "I came up with beautiful bugs," he said. "But every time I went after the code there was a line that addressed the problem." He was like a burglar who was certain that he could break into a bank by digging a tunnel, drilling through a wall, or climbing down a vent, and on each attempt he discovered a freshly poured cement barrier with a sign telling him to go home. "I've never seen anything like it," Kaminsky said, still in awe. Kaminsky ticked off the skills Nakamoto would need to pull it off. "He's a world-class programmer, with a deep understanding of the C++ programming language," he said. "He understands economics, cryptog-raphy, and peer-to-peer networking." "Either there's a team of people who worked on this," Kaminsky said, "or this guy is a genius."?

From the book “Resistance Money”.