The New York Times published an investigation on Wednesday arguing that Adam Back, the British cryptographer who invented Hashcash, is the most likely person behind the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym used by Bitcoin’s creator.
Back denied the claim, telling Cointelegraph he was referring reporters to his post on X after previously rejecting similar attempts to identify him as Satoshi. Back reiterated in the post that he is not Satoshi, adding that he “was early in laser focus on the positive societal implications of cryptography, online privacy and electronic cash, hence my ~1992 onwards active interest in applied research on ecash, privacy tech on cypherpunks list which led to hashcash and other ideas.”
The investigation was conducted by John Carreyrou, a French-American investigative journalist best known for exposing the Theranos fraud. In the report, he claims that Back, who was cited in Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper, actively discussed electronic cash for years, then vanished just as Bitcoin (BTC) emerged, only to reappear after Satoshi disappeared.
The story revives one of Bitcoin’s oldest mysteries by putting one of the protocol’s earliest and most influential cryptographers at the center of a new attempt to identify Satoshi, but the case remains circumstantial without cryptographic proof.
The investigation also leaned on stylometric analysis, arguing that Back’s writing shared features with Satoshi’s, including formatting habits, hyphenation quirks and overlapping technical language. The report did not present that analysis as conclusive proof.
Adam Back talking about electronic money. Source: NYT
Among the mailing-list participants, people who posted messages on the Cypherpunks, Cryptography and Hashcash mailing lists, only Back hyphenated “proof-of-work” and referenced the obscure Russian currency WebMoney, both appearing in Satoshi’s emails, the report claimed. Similarly, Back was one of just two to write “partial pre-image,” mirroring Satoshi’s usage, and the only one to discuss “burning the money” for digital coins.
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Adam Back’s career mirrors Satoshi’s path
Back’s professional career reinforces the suspicion that he is the elusive Bitcoin creator, according to Carreyrou. He noted that Back avoided Bitcoin early, then in 2013 rapidly engaged, co-founding Blockstream, poaching top developers and raising over $1 billion.
“It all seemed consistent with what Satoshi might do if he decided to reappear under the cover of his real name and take back the reins of his creation,” the report claimed.
Back has consistently and repeatedly denied that he is Satoshi. “I’m not. But also the documentary will presumably be wrong, as no one knows who Satoshi is,” he wrote in 2024 in response to an HBO documentary that identified Peter Todd as Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator. Todd also denied the claim at the time.
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Crypto community remains skeptical
The crypto community has been skeptical about the new claim by Carreyrou. Jameson Lopp, co-founder and chief security officer at self-custody platform firm Casa, said Nakamoto “can’t be caught with stylometric analysis.”
Carreyrou also acknowledged that the case does not amount to definitive proof, saying cryptographic evidence would be the only real smoking gun, he wrote on X.
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