Andrew Chow started tinkering with bitcoin in high school. Unknown to his parents, and before he even had a bank account, the teenage coder set up a website that said “I will work for bitcoin” and provided a wallet address for people to tip him.
Seven years later, Mr. Chow is one of six people in the world who can write changes into the software that underpins the nearly $500 billion cryptocurrency. Their job is critical to bitcoin, yet is largely unknown to the millions who own it.
Known as maintainers, he and five other coders serve as stewards of Bitcoin Core, an open-source program that keeps the cryptocurrency’s digital ledger up-to-date on thousands of computers that make up its network.
A succession of crypto-focused trading platforms, asset managers and lenders have collapsed since last spring, along with $2 trillion of collective market value. Linking the disasters were common themes of amateur governance, weak oversight and little transparency.