We know for sure the creator of Bitcoin was someone named Satoshi Nakamoto, although everyone is pretty sure that was a pseudonym. It’s been a bit since we had a new grand reveal of the real person behind the dollar sign B symbol, so the New York Times swooped in with a sprawling, exhaustive investigation that reveals bitcoin’s true creator is… some dude named Adam? Maybe?
The latest attempt to solve it comes not just from the New York Times but also from John Carreyrou, the author of Bad Blood. That’s the nonfiction investigative work that chronicled the rise and fall of Theranos, the Elizabeth Holmes company that promised to revolutionize blood testing technology but was all a bunch of lies. Carreyrou and article co-writer Dylan Freedman argue that Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin and likely one of the wealthiest people on the planet, is actually a British cryptographer named Adam Back.
Carreyrou’s case doesn’t appear to be a bunch of hastily thrown-together nonsense. It seems built on years of research, linguistic analysis, and following a trail of Internet breadcrumbs that led directly to Back. Carreyrou points to early work on something called Hashcash, which is a precursor technology cited in Bitcoin’s original white paper. He also analyzes the writing style, including spelling quirks and formatting habits, that all seem to align with Back’s own style. Working with data analysts, he narrowed tens of thousands of possible candidates down to a single guy: Back.
Was the Creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, Finally Revealed?
So there’s all of that CSI-style forensic analysis. There are also some circumstantial details that seem to align a bit too neatly, such as how Back was active in cryptography circles that routinely discussed digital cash in the late 90s. Those seemingly went quiet when bitcoin was on the rise, only to then reappear in the public eye after the enigmatic Satoshi seemingly up and vanished without a trace.
It’s a compelling case, one that I’m not quite sure changes much of anything other than satisfying our inherent curiosity to pull back the veil on mysterious identities to give us the satisfaction of the Scooby Doo ending we all desperately yearn for.
Back, on the other hand, doesn’t agree with the investigation’s findings. Because of course he wouldn’t, no matter what the findings were. He’s since repeatedly denied the claim, calling the evidence a mix of coincidence and confirmation bias. Some online critics have criticized the research for producing a lot of circumstantial evidence with no smoking gun, and some suspect that Satoshi was probably not even a single person but a small collective acting under the guise of a single person. That theory still suggests that Back could still be involved, but perhaps was just one name among several.
A big problem with these kinds of investigations is that the mystery might be unsolvable by design. Satoshi disappeared after publishing Bitcoin’s foundational ideas, leaving behind no trace of a verifiable identity but potentially controlling a wallet worth more than a million Bitcoins at the time, which is now worth tens of billions. Obviously, people want to know if anyone is in control of that treasure trove or if it’s been abandoned. It’s all a part of Bitcoin’s grody mythology, a mysterious digital currency with a creator as anonymous as the people who use it for drug and human trafficking.
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