Blockstream co-founder and CEO Adam Back during the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, on Wednesday, May 28, 2025.
Rhonda Churchill | Bloomberg | getty images
A New York Times report claims to have discovered the identity of Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Article 55-year-old Adam Back – CEO of Blockstream, a prominent cryptographer and an early figure in the Bitcoin community – is recognized as the strongest candidate for the founder of the revolutionary digital currency system launched in 2008. Back himself has denied various claims over the years that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, and did so again on Wednesday. series of posts on x.
The crypto community has always maintained that the secret is not financially significant and even if proven, would have little impact on their identity. Bitcoin The basics (What matters more is the untouched stock of initial coins.) They say that Bitcoin has been operating independently for over 10 years and it is probably better for investors that it remains that way.
“Today’s New York Times story is built on circumstantial interpretation of selected details and speculation, not definitive cryptographic proof,” Blockstream said in a statement. “Dr. Adam Back has consistently stated that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto.”
“Ultimately, it proves nothing,” Backe said in the Times article. “And I will assure you, it’s not really me.”
John Carreyrou – the author of the investigation who rose to fame after exposing the Theranos story in 2015 – points to similar phrasing, spelling and grammar between Back and Satoshi’s posts in early online forums, overlapping timelines of online activity, and Back’s early work on Hashcash, the key proof-of-work system for Bitcoin mining.
The year-long investigation is far from the first attempt to uncover Nakamoto’s identity. Back is considered one of the more plausible candidates, along with computer scientists Hal Finney and Nick Szabo.
Recently, the 2024 HBO documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” identified developer Peter Todd as the Bitcoin creator.
The price of Bitcoin recently rose 4.4% to $71,732.79 as part of a broader market relief rally linked to the US-Iran ceasefire.
