As of last night, Newsweek was standing by its story that Bitcoin was created by a 64-year-old Californian engineer named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto, for his part, is strenuously denying it.

Newsweek isn’t backing down. Hours after publishing Leah McGrath Goodman’s 4,5oo-word profile of a 64-year-old Temple City engineer named Dorian S. Nakamoto—who, Goodman claims, is the long-mysterious inventor of Bitcoin—the magazine faced a cascade of evidence contradicting the ambitious cover story of its freshly revived print edition. Nevertheless, its editor-in-chief tells Gawker that the publication stands by the story.

[Dorian S. Nakamoto, the rumored creator of Bitcoin, denied any involvement in the virtual currency's development or market trading when questioned by the Associated Press. Image via AP]

Temple City resident Dorian S. Nakamoto—identified by Newsweek as the long-unknown inventor of Bitcoin—told the Associated Press that “he had never heard of Bitcoin until his son told him he had been contacted by a reporter three weeks ago.”

Following a bizarre chase through Los Angeles and into the elevator of an Associated Press bureau, engineer Satoshi Nakamoto denied being the creator of Bitcoin, contradicting a major Newsweek story published this morning.

It's long been taken as a given that Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious "person or entity" who created Bitcoin, the world's best-known digital currency, is a pseudonym—probably for more than one person.

In the wake of Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox announcing that it lost $473 million worth of the virtual currency, many people who saw their money disappear have called for CEO Mark Karpeles to be imprisoned. Well, funny thing: it wouldn't necessarily be the first time Karpeles has been arrested for fraud.

In an attempt to salvage its remaining relevance, the U.S. Postal Service has hit on what might be an interesting possibility: digital currency. On January 29, the organization hosted a webinar with experts discussing how it might make use of Bitcoin. Coindesk has a recap.

In January, two little entrepreneurs girls wanted to set up a stand outside their San Francisco (duh) home to sell cookies and lemonade. That business plan just wasn't disruptive enough for their mother, Holly, a tech worker in the city, who set the girls up with a "wallet" for the anonymous digital currency Bitcoin and a QR code so they could accept the currency, Forbes' Kashmir Hill reports.

"I'm skeptical. I don't think we'll all be paying in bitcoin for tickets to Kanye West's 2024 presidential victory tour." Adrian Chen takes on the bitcoin phenomenon in the pages of the New York Times.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a man in Texas named Trendon T. Shavers with "defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme involving Bitcoin," to the tune more than $4.5 million.

Who is "Satoshi Nakamoto," the mysterious creator of Bitcoin? Maybe one of these people.

The problems keep coming for Mt. Gox, the world's biggest Bitcoin exchange. Just days after Gawker revealed a key business partnership had devolved into a $75 million lawsuit, the Department of Homeland Security seized a payment processing account belonging to the company, alleging it lied on financial documents.

Bitcoin, the virtual currency libertarian geeks expect us all to use to pay for pizza in the future, has had a rough few weeks. A series of booms and busts have sent shivers down the spines of Bitcoin enthusiasts. Now, Gawker has learned that a much-hailed partnership between two of the most prominent players in Bitcoin, Mt. Gox and CoinLab, has devolved into a nasty $75 million lawsuit, which appears to be by far the biggest Bitcoin-related lawsuit ever.

As the internet watched the value of Bitcoin, the anonymous techno-libertarian dweeb-currency, drop by more than half yesterday, a collective wondering went up: Who could be dumb enough to put a significant amount of money in a currency this new, useless and volatile?

Bitcoin finally crashed! And then it didn't. After two weeks in the spotlight, the anonymous techno-libertarian dweeb-currency rocketed past $250 yesterday—only to lose more than half its value over just a few hours today. Only to rally back up to around $200 again, just over the last hour or so. That's millions of dollars. Traded on a Magic: the Gathering site.

Someone's getting rich off the online drug marketplace Silk Road. A new paper estimates that sales of drugs and other illicit goods on Silk Road total $22 million a year. Meanwhile, Silk Road got a fancy new redesign. It's officially boom times on the digital black market.

Just over a year ago, we broke the story of Silk Road, the underground online market that's like an eBay for illegal drugs. It's been thriving ever since. But as the summer drags on, Silk Road users are becoming increasingly paranoid over a series of unexplained disappearances. And the Drug Enforcement Agency has now revealed it's investigating the site. Is Silk Road really as invincible as it seems?

U.S. Senators have called on the Feds to crack down on the anonymous drug marketplace Silk Road. But Silk Road isn't going down without a fight.

Above is a chart of the exchange rate, in dollars, of the digital currency Bitcoin. That red arrow shows the price on Wednesday afternoon right after we published a story about Silk Road, a Bitcoin-powered online marketplace where you can easily buy illegal drugs. In the past 48 hours alone, a Bitcoin's worth has jumped from around $9.90 to around $14.