{"id":590967,"date":"2026-04-08T20:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T20:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/590967\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T20:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T20:37:09","slug":"british-cryptographer-adam-back-denies-nyt-report-that-he-is-bitcoin-creator-satoshi-nakamoto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/590967\/","title":{"rendered":"British cryptographer Adam Back denies NYT report that he is Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto"},"content":{"rendered":"

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of the creator of Bitcoin, remains a long-running mystery. But according to a new investigation published<\/a> in the New York Times, Satoshi could be Adam Back, a British cryptographer who conducted influential early research about digital assets. Back denies that he is Satoshi.<\/p>\n

People have been trying to track down the father of Bitcoin for decades, without much success. Based on Back\u2019s denial, it\u2019s not clear if the Times\u2019 tech journalist John Carreyrou, known for his reporting that took down Theranos, got much further than anyone else.<\/p>\n

Back fits the profile of the kind of person you might suspect would create the first cryptocurrency. He created Hashcash, the proof-of-work system that Satoshi used to mine Bitcoin, and he is now the co-founder and CEO of Blockstream<\/a>, a company building infrastructure for blockchain-based payment systems. Back even agreed with Carreyrou that he\u2019s a reasonable suspect, and it\u2019s probable that Satoshi is \u2014 like him \u2014 a fifty-something-year-old British cypherpunk. (In that case, yes, the use of a Japanese moniker is odd.)<\/p>\n

i’m not satoshi, but I 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.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Adam Back (@adam3us) April 8, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

But Carreyrou doesn\u2019t have any undeniable evidence to seal the case shut. <\/p>\n

To stake his claim, he collected archives of emails sent in three cryptography listservs between 1992 and 2008, during the time that the pseudonymous Satoshi was active in these forums. Carreyrou fed the archive into an AI to identify commonalities between how Satoshi and other active posters wrote. For example, Satoshi did not put hyphens in compound nouns, and sometimes mixed up \u201cits\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back was the best match but wrote on X<\/a> that the evidence is a \u201ccombination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Satoshi case isn\u2019t closed, but we have to admit, Carreyrou\u2019s use of AI was pretty clever.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n