The New York Times published a detailed investigation suggesting that British cryptographer and co-founder of Blockstream Adam Back may be the creator of Bitcoin under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
Narrowed Down to One Candidate
Journalist John Carreiro studied over 130,000 messages from early "cypherpunk" mailing lists, which included Satoshi, Back, and narrowed the pool from hundreds of participants to one candidate by analyzing writing style, spelling, and other linguistic features.
Back had previously been regularly mentioned among possible candidates for the role of Satoshi, and many of the arguments presented have already been discussed in the crypto community. However, the journalist conducted extensive work, systematizing disparate facts and correlating them into a unified version.
As early as 1997, Back described key elements of the future Bitcoin: a decentralized network, limited issuance, distrust of banks, and user privacy preservation. He also proposed using Hashcash, which was later mentioned in the technical concept of Bitcoin.
Wallets Remain Idle
Back himself has consistently denied that he created Bitcoin and has not responded to numerous inquiries from the journalist.
Notably, in 2024, the HBO documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery" named developer Peter Todd as the creator of Bitcoin. Todd and Back are personally acquainted and even appear together in a scene from the film, where both directly deny that either of them is Satoshi.
In the 17 years since Bitcoin's existence, various candidates have been put forward for the role of its creator, but none of the versions have received confirmation.
Satoshi himself has not been in contact since 2011. It is believed that he owns more than 5% of existing Bitcoins worth billions of dollars. The coins in the wallets attributed to him have remained idle for years. Back, however, sold part of his Bitcoins in the summer of 2025.
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