New York Times Names Adam Back as Bitcoin’s Creator — He Flatly Denies It

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The New York Times claims to have discovered, after a year of research, who the true inventor of Bitcoin is: namely, the British cryptographer Adam Back. The 55-year-old, however, firmly denies this and calls it a mistake. It is not the first time someone has been publicly identified as Satoshi Nakamoto.

What the New York Times reports

Reporter John Carreyrou, known for his exposés surrounding the Theranos scandal, spent over a year analyzing Satoshi’s known writings as well as thousands of posts from three cryptography mailing lists that were active between 1992 and 2008. This produced a database of 134,308 posts from 620 candidates.

Three independent writing-style analyses reached the same conclusion: Adam Back bears the strongest stylistic resemblance to Satoshi Nakamoto. One analysis identified 325 distinct hyphenation errors in Satoshi’s texts. Back made 67 of them as well; the second-closest candidate made only 38.

In addition, the newspaper found that Back had already described nearly all of Bitcoin’s core features in the Cypherpunks mailing lists between 1997 and 1999 — roughly a decade before the publication of the Bitcoin white paper. A temporal pattern also stood out: when Satoshi announced Bitcoin in late 2008, Back went silent in the forums. He did not comment publicly on Bitcoin again until June 2011, six weeks after Satoshi had disappeared.

Adam Back denies it

Back rejected the claims both personally and publicly. Writing to the BBC on X, he stated:

“I am not Satoshi, but I was involved early on with a strong focus on the positive societal impact of cryptography, online privacy, and electronic money.”

He attributes the textual similarities to confirmation bias. Because of his many posts on the Cypherpunks list, he argues, he appears statistically more frequently when searching for terms related to electronic money. The remaining evidence cited by the New York Times is, in his view, “a combination of coincidences and similar phrasing from people with similar experience and similar interests.”

Back did, however, decline to provide key email metadata that could support his claims. On X, he commented on his alleged lack of Bitcoin wealth with a wink: “I’m annoyed I didn’t mine diligently in 2009.”

Why the question matters

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is not merely an academic question. Whoever is behind the pseudonym may still control a Bitcoin wallet holding more than one million BTC, currently valued at approximately 70 to 78 billion US dollars. Satoshi would thereby be one of the wealthiest people in the world.

In Back’s case, an additional dimension comes into play: he is currently CEO of Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, which holds more than 30,000 BTC and is planning a stock market listing via a SPAC merger. Under US securities law, a confirmed identity as Satoshi could constitute material information subject to disclosure requirements.

Stylometry expert Florian Cafiero, who helped the New York Times in 2022 to identify the authors behind QAnon, did confirm that Back most closely matches the white paper stylistically. However, he described the result as inconclusive. Without a cryptographic signature from Satoshi’s known wallets, the question remains open.

Not the first time

The New York Times revelation joins a long history of similar attempts. On multiple occasions, individuals have been publicly identified as Satoshi Nakamoto without any proof being provided.

• In 2024, an HBO documentary named Canadian crypto expert Peter Todd as Satoshi Nakamoto. Todd also denied it.
• Adam Back himself had previously been linked to Satoshi on several occasions.
• Other figures from the Cypherpunk community, including Hal Finney, have also been put forward as possible candidates over the years.

The true mystery surrounding Satoshi Nakamoto thus remains unsolved, as long as no cryptographically verifiable signature is presented.