GoKawiilOn October 31, 2008, Bitcoin was born in a white paper published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, who went on to mine its genesis block a few months later. Since then, the mystery behind Satoshi's true identity has grown second only to Bitcoin's own meteoric rise. Now, a recent NYT investigation points toward recurring candidate Adam Back as the man behind the blockchain.
The 40-page-long report was published by journalist John Carreyrou — who previously exposed Theranos — piecing together evidence in an 18-month-long investigation. The article starts with several mailing lists tied to the Cypherpunk movement of the 1990s and 2000s, which Back was a regular part of. His politics aligned with those of cryptographic liberation, using code to circumvent government censorship.
Satoshi invented Bitcoin with the same ideology, a decentralized system that couldn't be controlled by any state or bank. Back even emailed community members about making an electronic cash system in the 90s that would be free from legislative oversight. He later created Hashcash to fight spam emails, but suggested combining it with another e-cash idea called "b-money" to formalize his lifelong vision.
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Back is the only person cited in the original Bitcoin white paper for a technical contribution through Hashcash. A 2024 court case in the UK revealed a series of emails in which Satoshi shared an early draft of the white paper with Back, who then told him to check out b-money. Carreyrou implies these emails "exchanges" were fabricated to create the illusion of two different people.
The reporter argues that even Back's career has followed in parallel to Satoshi's, as both are experts in computer-distributed systems; Back has a doctorate in the field, and the blockchain is an example of one. When Bitcoin was created, Back was mysteriously absent from any of those early circles despite being an intense advocate of the concept, but conveniently reemerged as soon as Satoshi went silent a few years later.
Look at him, that's my quant.My quantitative. My math specialist. Look at him, you notice anything different about him? Look at his face.Look at his shifty eyes! https://t.co/x7ncgDHbTa pic.twitter.com/ZhaBUnfRwVApril 8, 2026
Beyond his online activity, Back co-founded Blockstream in 2014, which has been critical in shaping the development of Bitcoin over the past decade or so. The company has funded key developers in the crypto scene throughout the years as well. In this context, Blockstream can be looked at as the house Satoshi built (if you assume Back is Satoshi) to give Bitcoin a corporate face and protect it in the real world.
Coming back to those mailing lists, Carreyrou says Back's writing style showed striking similarities to Satoshi's in the way they both used British spellings and incorrect hyphenation. For instance, Satoshi would switch between "optimize" and "optimise," or "check" and "cheque" in his writing. He would also conflate "it's" with "its" while merging words such as "bug fix" into just "bugfix."
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