Has the mystery surrounding Satoshi Nakamoto been solved?
By Alexander Bechtel
The New York Times claims to have solved the biggest mystery in the crypto world and identified Adam Back as Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto owns over a million bitcoins worth around $80 billion, though they have never been moved.
When two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Carreyrou publishes a new investigative report, it’s usually worth taking a close look, as the New York Times investigative journalist is one of the most prominent of his generation. In 2015, he exposed the scandal surrounding the company Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes. In doing so, he sparked a major public debate about American startup culture, which, driven by rapid growth, often takes due diligence less seriously.
In his latest article, Carreyrou focuses on Bitcoin—more specifically, the search for its inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto. After a year of research, the reporter ultimately concluded that it is highly likely that the person in question is the British cryptographer Adam Back.
Carreyrou’s investigation was by no means the first attempt to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto. As early as 2014, Leah McGrath Goodman identified California-based physicist Dorian Nakamoto as the inventor of Bitcoin in a Newsweek cover story, prompting the real Satoshi to make a final forum post clarifying that he was not Dorian Nakamoto.
The name of computer scientist Nick Szabo also came up repeatedly; his concept “Bit Gold” is considered a direct precursor to Bitcoin, and his writing style bore similarities to Satoshi’s texts. The biggest headlines were generated by Australian Craig Steven Wright, who publicly claimed to be Satoshi starting in 2015 and presented cryptographic evidence, which was, however, refuted.
Cryptographer Hal Finney, the recipient of the very first Bitcoin transaction, has also been repeatedly mentioned as a candidate. Most recently, an HBO documentary aired in October 2024 identified developer Peter Todd as Satoshi. This claim was widely regarded as unconvincing within the Bitcoin community.
Like many of his predecessors, Adam Back vehemently denies being Satoshi Nakamoto. Carreyrou, however, bases his argument on numerous pieces of circumstantial evidence. Back had already outlined nearly all of Bitcoin’s core concepts on the Cypherpunks mailing list in the late 1990s. These were precisely the building blocks that Satoshi put together ten years later. Computer-assisted text analyses of over ten thousand users of the mailing list also revealed striking linguistic similarities between Back’s and Satoshi’s writing styles. These ranged from identical punctuation errors to rare technical terms and characteristic turns of phrase.
It is also suspicious that Back disappeared from the relevant mailing lists during Satoshi’s active phase and only re-emerged publicly in the Bitcoin community after Satoshi’s retirement, where he quickly gained significant influence. During a face-to-face confrontation in El Salvador, Back denied the allegations on multiple occasions but failed to provide any convincing evidence to the contrary.
Carreyrou’s text is convincing in many places, but he fails to provide concrete evidence. Yet, especially in light of the looming threat posed by quantum computers, it would be quite interesting to know whether Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive. This is because the more than one million bitcoins that Satoshi accumulated in the early days through so-called mining are all held in addresses that could be targeted by quantum computers. At today’s prices, that amounts to roughly $80 billion.
To keep these bitcoins safe, they would need to be moved to quantum-secure addresses. However, this requires the private keys, which are believed to be held only by Satoshi himself. The Bitcoin community is already grappling with how to handle this fortune once the first quantum computers become operational. To protect Satoshi’s Bitcoins from an attack, one would have to intervene in the protocol’s rules and, for example, freeze the holdings—which is actually an absolute taboo for Bitcoiners.
If Adam Back is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto, then he is among the richest people in the world. At the same time, he could probably also be counted among the most disciplined, since Satoshi’s bitcoins have remained in the same addresses since their creation and have never been touched. It will be interesting to see if this remains the case once the first quantum computers are operational.
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This article was originally published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in German. For the original version, click here.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article reflect the private opinion of the author.