“I’m not Satoshi,” this is how the person identified by The New York Times as the creator of bitcoin took off

The investigation sought to put an end to 17 years of intrigue: Who is behind Satoshi Nakamoto, the much-mentioned name of the creator of bitcoin, the most common of all cryptocurrencies? This Wednesday The New York Times published an investigation conducted by journalists John Carreyrou and Dylan Freedman that concludes that yes, the only one who could solve the mystery is Nakamoto himself, but that According to their investigations, everything would indicate that it was Adam Back, a cryptocurrency specialist and businessman in the field.

The most interesting point of the investigation is not only who it points to, but also how it got there. He Times reconstructed the path from thousands of old internet messagesemails revealed in a trial, archives of cypherpunk lists (an anarchist group from the 90s that wanted to push cryptography) and Comparative language analysis. At the center of everything appears Back, who for decades has been involved in the discussion about digital money, privacy and cryptography.

Hours later, Back himself used his social networks to comment on the matter: “I’m not Satoshi, but from early on I was very focused on the positive implications for society of cryptography, online privacy and electronic money, hence my active interest from about 1992 onwards in applied research on electronic money, privacy technology on the list cypherpunks which led to hashcash and other ideas.”

He referred to some clues that Carreyrou and Freedman followed, to which he put cold feet. “It is a combination of coincidence and similar phrases of people with similar experiences and interests — given that Satoshi needed specific skills and experience to discover bitcoin, where myself and others were ‘so close and yet so far’ in design discussions the previous decade,” he added.

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.

— Adam Back (@adam3us) April 8, 2026

“I don’t know who Satoshi is either.and I think it is good for Bitcoin that it is like this, since it helps it be seen as a new asset class, the mathematically scarce digital commodity,” Back concluded, to clear up doubts.

The story began to move for Carreyrou after watching the HBO documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery“, which had attempted to identify Satoshi and pointed towards Canadian developer Peter Todd. The journalist was not convinced with this hypothesis, but A scene in which Adam Back reacted with discomfort did catch his attention. when his name was mentioned as a possible creator of Bitcoin.

From there another vein appeared. During the civil trial in London against Craig Wright, the Australian who for years claimed to be Satoshi without being able to prove it, Hundreds of emails between Satoshi and Martti Malmi came to light, one of the first collaborators of the Bitcoin project.

For him Timesthis material expanded the archive of authentic texts of the creator of the cryptocurrency like never before. If the technical clue was too well hidden, The key could be in the writing. The research started from two initial hypotheses.

The first is that Satoshi was probably British. The second, that it was almost certainly part of the cypherpunk universe, the community of cryptographers, programmers and activists who since the 90s have been discussing how to use technology to protect privacy, anonymity and freedom from governments and large institutions. He Times He mentions several reasons to believe that. In the first Bitcoin block, Satoshi embedded a phrase taken from the British edition of The Times of London about the 2009 bank bailout.

Another of the most striking methodological findings of the work was much less sophisticated than one might imagine. Carreyrou read Satoshi’s textual corpus for months and was writing down words, expressions and phrases that were distinctive to him. The list had more than one hundred entries. According to the reconstruction of TimesAdam Back was the one who accumulated the most matches. It was not conclusive evidence, but it was a pattern that, in the opinion of both, was repeated too much.