A year-long investigation by journalist John Carreyrou identifies Adam Back, a 55-year-old British computer scientist, as the man who created cryptocurrency under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous figure who introduced Bitcoin in 2008.
Back is the CEO of Blockstream, one of the most influential companies in the Bitcoin industry, and the inventor of Hashcash, a computational anti-spam tool that Bitcoin’s mining process directly borrows from.
Carreyrou’s investigation began after watching an HBO documentary in late 2024 that tried, and failed, to identify Bitcoin’s founder. Back appeared visibly uncomfortable when his name came up as a suspect. That reaction sparked a deeper inquiry.
Adam Back emerges as the crypto creator Satoshi Nakamoto
Carreyrou combed through thousands of posts across three cryptography mailing lists dating back to 1992, building a database of more than 34,000 users.
After filtering for writing habits shared with Satoshi, including the use of double spaces between sentences, specific hyphenation errors, and the tendency to place the word “also” at the end of sentences, the pool narrowed from 620 candidates down to a single name: Adam Back.
JUST IN: The New York Times reportedly claims Adam Back is Satoshi Nakamoto after an 18-month investigation
If confirmed, this could rewrite the origin story of Bitcoin entirely. pic.twitter.com/7xJWfmnb0x
— Pi News (@PiNewsMedia) April 8, 2026
Back also shared at least three rare linguistic markers with Satoshi. Both hyphenated the term “proof-of-work” as a compound noun, a practice only eight people had used across the mailing list archives.
Both referenced an obscure Russian online currency called WebMoney. And both used the phrase “partial pre-image” in connection with Hashcash. Back was the only person in the database who matched all three.
Back denies all claims but refuses to provide key evidence
Beyond writing patterns, Back outlined the foundational architecture of what would become Bitcoin between 1997 and 1999, a full decade before it launched. He proposed a distributed electronic cash system with built-in scarcity, publicly verifiable transactions, and inflation controls that mirror Bitcoin’s design precisely.
Carreyrou confronted Back in person at a Bitcoin conference in El Salvador in early 2025. Back denied being Satoshi Nakamoto more than six times during a two-hour meeting.
However, when Carreyrou quoted Satoshi saying he was “better with code than with words,” Back appeared to respond as though the words were his own, noting that he had done a lot of talking on those lists for someone who preferred code. Back later said it was just a casual conversational response.
Back also acknowledged that he possessed the technical expertise and professional history consistent with Bitcoin’s creator, even as he maintained that he was not Satoshi Nakamoto.
He declined to provide the metadata from emails he exchanged with Satoshi, which Carreyrou had requested as part of the investigation.
@nytimes Bitcoin’s founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, has remained hidden for 17 years. A trail of clues — and a year of digging by our reporter, John Carreyrou — led us to a 55-year-old computer scientist in El Salvador named Adam Back. At the link in our bio, read our full exclusive story on the search for Bitcoin’s creator — and how we unraveled the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto. Video by By John Carreyrou, Sutton Raphael, James Surdam, Coleman Lowndes and Joey Sendaydiego #bitcoin #investigation
♬ original sound – The New York Times
