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Bitcoin creator mystery deepens with British cryptographer named as the new Satoshi suspect
Aurel Stratan4 min read·Just now--
We have a new suspect who has just been exposed as the (new) “true” creator of Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, with the hunt for Satoshi Nakamoto entering yet another feverish phase.
This time The New York Times points the finger at British cryptographer Adam Back as a leading contender behind the most famous pseudonym in modern finance.
In a fresh investigative push, journalist John Carreyrou — best known for exposing Theranos — analyzed a newly released trove of emails between Nakamoto and Finnish developer Martti Malmi. The latter released these as part of a civil trial against an Australian man who was sued for claiming to be the Bitcoin creator, providing the largest corpus of Satoshi’s communications to date.
The linguistic patterns, technical overlaps, and ideological alignment all seemed to converge on Back, a known figure in the Cypherpunk movement.
The evidence? Back, a self-avowed Cypherpunk, used similar phrases (“a menace to the network”), invented a precursor to Bitcoin called Hashcash, expressed enthusiasm for Japan (fitting that Japanese pseudonym), and even shared Satoshi’s horror at Napster’s demise. Stylometry software gave Back a narrow, inconclusive lead. A forensic linguist…
