The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, has remained one of the internet’s biggest mysteries ever since the cryptocurrency launched in 2009.
Over the years, various names have been floated, but none have really stuck. Now, The New York Times says it may have finally cracked the case.
In a new investigative report, John Carreyrou, the author of “Bad Blood,” the bestselling exposé on Theranos, argues that Satoshi Nakamoto is actually Adam Back, a 55-year-old British cryptographer and prominent Bitcoin figure.
Carreyrou writes that his suspicions were first sparked while watching the 2024 HBO documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery. The film suggests that Canadian software developer Peter Todd could be Nakamoto, but Carreyrou wasn’t convinced. Instead, he zeroed in on Back during a moment in the documentary when he appeared to tense up after being asked whether he was Satoshi.
Carreyrou then spent the following years searching for ties between Back and Satoshi.
Among his findings was that Satoshi cited Back and Hashcash, a statistical puzzle-solving system Back invented, in Bitcoin’s original white paper. The system is used in the mining of bitcoins. This wasn’t new information, but one of the breadcrumbs on the trail.
Carreyrou also found that Back had described an electronic cash system strikingly similar to Bitcoin in a series of posts on the Cypherpunks mailing list between 1997 and 1999.
He also pointed to some unusual timing. While Back was pretty active in Cypherpunks discussions whenever the topic of electronic cash came up, he ignored Bitcoin until 2011, after Satoshi had effectively disappeared.
To strengthen his case, Carreyrou worked with Dylan Freedman, a colleague on The New York Times’ AI team.
Together, they analyzed archives from the Cypherpunks, Cryptography, and Hashcash mailing lists, spanning 1992 to October 30, 2008, and compared them to Satoshi’s writings. They looked for shared writing quirks like sometimes using two spaces between sentences, ending sentences with “also,” and using British spellings.
As they kept running their analysis, the initial pool of 34,000 suspects narrowed to just eight.
“We then asked our database: How many of those remaining eight suspects alternated between using “e-mail” and “email,” “e-cash” and “electronic cash,” “cheque” and “check” and the British and American forms of the word “optimize” like Satoshi did,” writes Carreyrou. “The answer was just one: Mr. Back.”
Still, Back told The New York Times he is not Satoshi and said the similarities are all coincidental.
“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,” wrote Back in a post on X today.
He added that perhaps Satoshi’s identity is better left unknown. It’s worth noting that Satoshi is believed to have mined roughly 1 million Bitcoin, worth billions of dollars today.
“I also don’t know who satoshi is, and i think it is good for bitcoin that this is the case, as it helps bitcoin be viewed a new asset class, the mathematically scarce digital commodity,” he wrote.
