TEMPLE CITY, California (Reuters) - A Japanese American man thought to be the reclusive multi-millionaire father of Bitcoin emerged from a modest Southern California home and denied involvement with the digital currency before leading reporters on a freeway car chase to the local headquarters of the Associated Press. 
 
 Satoshi Nakamoto is surrounded by reporters as he leaves his home in Temple City, California, March 6, 2014. REUTERS/David McNew 
 
 Satoshi Nakamoto, a name known to legions of bitcoin traders, practitioners and boosters around the world, appeared to lose his anonymity on Thursday after Newsweek published a story that said he lived in Temple City, California, just east of Los Angeles. 
 
 Newsweek included a photograph and described a short interview, in which Nakamoto said he was no longer associated with Bitcoin and that it had been turned over to other people. The magazine concluded that the man was the same Nakamoto who founded Bitcoin. 
 
 Dozens of reporters, including a sprinkling of Japanese media, encircled and camped outside the man’s two-story house on Thursday morning, accosting the mailman and repeatedly ringing the doorbell, to no avail. Police cruisers drove by several times but did not stop. 
 
 Several times, someone pulled back the drapes on an upstairs window. 
 
 In the afternoon, the silver-haired, bespectacled Nakamoto stepped outside, dressed in a gray sport coat and green striped shirt, with a pen tucked in his shirt pocket. He was mobbed by reporters and told them he was looking for someone who understood Japanese to buy him a free lunch. 
 
 Newsweek estimates his wealth at $400 million. 
 
 “I’m not involved in Bitcoin. Wait a minute, I want my free lunch first. I’m going with this guy,” Nakamoto said, pointing at a reporter from AP. “I’m not in Bitcoin, I don’t know anything about it,” he said again while walking down the street with several cameras at his heels. 
 
 He and the AP reporter made their way to a nearby sushi restaurant with media in tow, before leaving and heading downtown. Los Angeles Times reporter Joe Bel Bruno followed the pair and described the chase in a running stream of tweets. Eventually, the pair dashed into the Associated Press offices in downtown Los Angeles. 
 
 MISUNDERSTOOD 
 
 In a later AP interview, Nakamoto said he was misunderstood in a key portion of the Newsweek story, where he tells the reporter on his doorstep, “I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it.” 
 
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 Asked by the AP if he had said that, Nakamoto said, “No.” 
 
 “I’m saying I’m no longer in engineering. That’s it,” he told the AP. “And even if I was, when we get hired, you have to sign this document, contract saying you will not reveal anything we divulge during and after employment. So that’s what I implied.” 
 
 “It sounded like I was involved before with Bitcoin and looked like I’m not involved now. That’s not what I meant. I want to clarify that,” the AP reported him as saying. 
 
 The Bitcoin Foundation, an advocacy group promoting the adoption of the digital currency, said “... We have seen zero conclusive evidence that the identified person is the designer of Bitcoin.” 
 
 “Those closest to the Bitcoin project, the informal team of core developers, have always been unaware of Nakamoto’s true identity, as Nakamoto communicated purely through electronic means,” it said in a post on its website. 
 
 Newsweek writer Leah McGrath Goodman told the AP that she stood by her story. “I stand completely by my exchange with Mr. Nakamoto. There was no confusion whatsoever about the context of our conversation - and his acknowledgment of his involvement in Bitcoin.” 
 
 “FOCUSED AND ECLECTIC” 
 
 Fans see Bitcoin as a digital-world currency beyond government interference, while critics, whose ranks swelled with the recent bankruptcy filing by major bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, see a risky investment whose anonymity aids drug dealers and other criminals. 
 
 Nakamoto kept a low profile in part to avoid the attention of authorities, Newsweek said. On Thursday, the office of Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services, was keen on speaking with him, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters. 
 
 Bitcoin is bought and sold on a peer-to-peer network independent of central control. Its value soared last year, and the total worth of bitcoins minted is now about $7 billion. 
 
 In the Newsweek article, Nakamoto was credited by Bitcoin’s chief scientist, Gavin Andresen, in working out the first codes behind the currency. 
 
 Slideshow (3 Images) 
 
 A man of few words who refused to discuss anything beyond the currency or even communicate outside of email, Nakamoto was described by his brother in the Newsweek article as “fickle and has very weird hobbies,” including a penchant for model trains. 
 
 Japanese-born Nakamoto displayed an unusual aptitude for math as a child. He immigrated with his mother to California in 1959. He worked for defense and electronics company Hughes Aircraft, but never discussed work because much of it was classified, according to Newsweek interviews with several friends and relatives. 
 
 “He’s very focused and eclectic in his way of thinking. Smart, intelligent, mathematics, engineering, computers. You name it, he can do it,” Newsweek quoted Arthur Nakamoto, his younger brother, as saying. ||||| The day started with a possible answer to one of the digital era's greatest mysteries: Who created the bitcoin virtual currency that has become a multibillion-dollar global phenomenon? 
 
 From there, with the unlikely revelation by Newsweek magazine that it might be Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, a 64-year-old Japanese American living in Temple City, the day only got wilder and weirder. 
 
 It featured a media frenzy on his front lawn and a semi-comical car chase through multiple cities as Nakamoto rode in a Prius driven by an Associated Press reporter trying to elude other reporters. And then, a denial from Nakamoto — as he climbed into an elevator at the downtown AP offices — that he was the creator of bitcoin. 
 
 "I never was involved," he said to a Times reporter, saying there was only one reason he had agreed to even talk to a reporter. "It was all for a free lunch." 
 
 Really? 
 
 Like so many other elements of the day, the off-the-cuff remarks hinted at some finality but in truth only contributed to the murkiness surrounding the true identity of "Satoshi Nakamoto," the mastermind behind bitcoin. Indeed, the story published by Newsweek on Thursday sparked an angry backlash among members of the bitcoin community, with some vowing retribution against the reporter and others insisting that she had the wrong man. 
 
 "He always used non-tracking emails and did everything he could to stay anonymous, so it's difficult for me to understand why he would use his real name," said Adam Draper, who runs a start-up that invests in bitcoin-related companies. 
 
 In a 2008 memo titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System," "Satoshi Nakamoto" laid out the details for a new virtual currency. Rather than relying on banks and other financial middlemen, bitcoins would rely on a cryptographic protocol to ensure its value, security and anonymity. 
 
 Users would have to "mine" coins by solving complex mathematical problems. They could then buy and sell them through various exchanges. Initially, it was embraced by hackers and anarchists who loved the idea of a currency free from government or corporate control. 
 
 But over time, bitcoins created a frenzy as their value skyrocketed, making many of the original bitcoin members quite wealthy. 
 
 They also moved closer to mainstream acceptance as a growing number of businesses began accepting them and entrepreneurs and venture capitalists created an expanding economy of bitcoin-related companies. 
 
 Bitcoins have also generated controversy, with U.S. agencies breaking up a notorious online black market in which users used the currency to buy drugs and guns. Last month, one of the largest and oldest bitcoin exchanges announced that hackers had stolen more than $450 million worth of bitcoins, forcing it to file for bankruptcy. 
 
 Along the way, Nakamoto never stepped forward to claim credit. And, in fact, a couple years ago, he withdrew from the bitcoin community completely, leaving others to carry on the work of developing the system and wonder about his real identity, which remained shrouded in mystery. 
 
 Until Thursday. 
 
 Following a trail of clues over several months, Newsweek reporter Leah McGrath Goodman believed she had tracked down the real bitcoin creator. The article said Satoshi Nakamoto was not a fake name, as many had assumed, but his real one — just one of many strange twists. 
 
 In part, she said she found him by discovering he had a hobby of collecting model trains, 
 
 Fred Hill, the owner of Original Whistle-Stop Trains in Pasadena, said in an interview with The Times on Thursday that Nakamoto has been a regular since Hill bought the business in 1976. 
 
 Nakamoto, a skilled machinist who builds all of his train layouts from scratch, is highly sociable and "a lot of fun," Hill said. Nakamoto will chat extensively about trains, particularly steam engines. In the shop, he always goes by his adopted first name, Dorian. 
 
 "He's not a disheveled, spacey individual at all," Hill said. "He's not an eccentric. He's a very intelligent man." 
 
 The Newsweek story also said he had a career in technology that included some classified work for major corporations and U.S. defense agencies. He has been separated from his wife for more than a decade. And much of what he did for a living over the past decade was unclear. Nakamoto's modest home surprised the reporter because the real bitcoin creator owns about $400 million in bitcoins.
– The man "unmasked" as the founder of bitcoin by Newsweek says he'd never even heard of the virtual currency until reporters tracked his son down a couple of weeks ago. In an exclusive interview with the AP, Dorian Nakamoto—also known as Satoshi Nakamoto—says many of the details in the Newsweek report about him are correct, but he strongly denies having anything to do with bitcoin, which he repeatedly referred to as "Bitcom." Newsweek's reporter stands by her story, but Nakamoto—who says he came to the US from Japan when he was 10 but his English isn't flawless—believes a key quote was misinterpreted. "It sounded like I was involved before with bitcoin and looked like I'm not involved now. That's not what I meant. I want to clarify that," he says, explaining that he worked on missile systems for years and many aspects of his career are confidential. While Nakamoto was speaking to the AP, reporters from outlets including the Los Angeles Times and Reuters followed their car in a farcical chase that ended at the AP's offices in downtown Los Angeles. (Click for more on Leah McGrath Goodman's Newsweek profile.)