Adam Back Denies New York Times Report Identifying Him as Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto

British cryptographer Adam Back rejected a New York Times investigation that named him as the person behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.

The newspaper published the report on April 8 after an extensive review of thousands of old internet posts and emails that traced connections between Back's work and the design of Bitcoin.

Reporter John Carreyrou spent more than a year on the project and concluded that the 55-year-old Blockstream chief executive represented the strongest candidate yet identified in the 17-year search for Bitcoin's founder.

Credit: Screenshot of the NYT news report (webpage)

The evidence centered on several overlaps.

Adam Back invented Hashcash in 1997, a proof-of-work mechanism that Satoshi explicitly referenced in the Bitcoin white paper released in October 2008.

Back participated actively in the Cypherpunk mailing list starting around 1992, discussing electronic cash systems, privacy technologies, and decentralized networks years before Bitcoin emerged.

A computer-assisted linguistic analysis examined writing habits such as British spellings, specific punctuation patterns, hyphenation errors, and recurring phrases.

The process narrowed a large pool of potential authors down to Adam Back alone.

However, Adam Back addressed the claims directly on X shortly after the article appeared, and he dismissed the claims, saying:

“I’m not satoshi, but I was early in laser focus on the positive societal implications of cryptography, online privacy and electronic cash, hence my ~1992 onwards active interest in applied research on ecash, privacy tech on cypherpunks list which led to hashcash and other ideas,” he wrote.

He added in follow-up posts that he does not know Satoshi's identity and that the continued mystery serves Bitcoin well by framing it as a mathematically scarce digital commodity rather than the project of any single individual.

Blockstream released a statement the same day that echoed his position.

“Dr. Adam Back has consistently stated that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto,” the company said. “Today's New York Times story is built on circumstantial interpretation of select details and speculation, not definitive cryptographic proof.”

The New York Times article acknowledged that Back had denied the suggestion multiple times during the reporting process and described the links as a series of coincidences rooted in shared technical interests and backgrounds.

No evidence has surfaced that would allow verification through the private keys controlling the early Bitcoin wallets or through cryptographic signatures tied to Satoshi's known communications.

Back has faced similar speculation in the past but has rejected it each time.

The latest report has renewed public interest in Bitcoin's origins without altering the protocol itself or the status of the roughly 1.1 million bitcoins believed to remain in wallets associated with Satoshi.

The identity of Bitcoin's creator remains unknown.

NYT report in question: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/business/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto-identity-adam-back.html