The New York Times thinks it has found Satoshi Nakamoto. The creator of Bitcoin, whose true identity has been one of the internet's most enduring unsolved puzzles, has been named by the paper as Adam Back, a British Bitcoin developer and entrepreneur.
Back says that is wrong.
"I'm not Satoshi," he posted on X, describing the newspaper's investigation as a case of "confirmation bias."
The NYT piece, written by journalist John Carreyrou, draws on comparisons between Back's emails and online posts and those written by Satoshi.
It also notes that Back's activity on Bitcoin forums lines up with the period when Satoshi went quiet, shortly after the Bitcoin white paper was published online.
Back pushed back on that directly.
He said he actually "did a lot of yakking" on the forums during that period, and that the rest of the evidence was "a combination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests."
Why it matters
The stakes around Satoshi's identity are not purely academic.
Whoever created Bitcoin is thought to hold more than one million coins, mined in the currency's earliest days.
At current prices, that stash is worth around $70 billion, which would make Satoshi one of the wealthiest people on the planet.
Back acknowledged he was not sitting on a fortune of that size, posting on X: "Kicking myself for not mining in anger in 2009."
A recurring story
This is not the first time someone has been named as Satoshi and denied it.
In 2024, an HBO documentary pointed to Canadian crypto expert Peter Todd, who called the claim "ludicrous" and has since provided evidence against it.
That same year, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright spent years insisting he was Satoshi, even presenting apparent proof to media outlets including the BBC. A UK High Court judge eventually ruled he was not.
Back was among those who gave evidence against Wright's claims during those hearings.
For many in the Bitcoin community, keeping Satoshi's identity unknown is not a problem to be solved.
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Back made his own position clear.
"I don't know who Satoshi is," he posted. "I think it is good for Bitcoin."
The recap
- New York Times report identified Adam Back as Bitcoin creator
- Back denied authorship, saying similarities are not proof
- CoinDesk noted others have raised questions about the claim
