Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas on May 28, 2025.
Rhonda Churchill | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A New York Times report claims to have discovered the identity of the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator known as Satoshi Nakamoto.
The article identifies 55-year-old Blockstream CEO Adam Back, a renowned cryptologist and early figure in the Bitcoin community, as the top candidate to be the founder of the revolutionary digital currency system introduced in 2008. Mr. Buck himself has long denied various claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, and did so again on Wednesday in a series of posts about X.
The crypto community has argued that this mystery is not economically significant and that even if proven, it would have little impact on the crypto community. Bitcoin Basic things. (More importantly, it may be a pristine stash of early coins.) Bitcoin has been independently operated for more than a decade, and it’s probably better for investors to keep it that way, they say.
“Today’s New York Times article is built on cherry-picked details and speculative interpretations of the situation, rather than conclusive cryptographic evidence,” Blockstream said in a statement. “Dr. Adam Back has consistently stated that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto.”
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t prove anything,” Buck said in the Times article. “And, let me reassure you, that’s not really me.”
John Carreyrou, the investigative author who rose to fame in 2015 by exposing the Theranos story, points out that the phrasing, spelling and grammar of Buck and Satoshi’s posts on early online forums are similar, and their timelines of online activity overlap with Buck’s early work on HashCash, the proof-of-work system essential to Bitcoin mining.
The year-long investigation is far from the first attempt to uncover Nakamoto’s identity. Buck is considered one of the top candidates, along with computer scientists Hal Finney and Nick Szabo.
Most recently, the 2024 HBO documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” identified developer Peter Todd as the creator of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin prices recently rose 4.4% to $71,732.79 on Wednesday as part of broader market relief following the US-Iran ceasefire.
