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Cryptographer Adam Back has denied he is Bitcoin’s mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, after a New York Times investigation named the British man as the most likely person behind the pseudonym.
The report compared Back’s emails, forum posts, and writing style to Satoshi’s, while also pointing out the timing of their online activity around Bitcoin’s 2009 launch and Satoshi’s later disappearance.
Back quickly rejected the theory on X, calling it “confirmation bias.”
Adam Back denies Satoshi Nakamoto claim
“I’m not Satoshi,” he wrote, adding that the evidence was “a combination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests.”
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
He continued, “the rest is a combination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests – inference satoshi needed specific skills and experience to discover bitcoin, where myself and others got ‘so close yet so far’ in design discussions the decade before.”
I also don't know who satoshi is, and i think it is good for bitcoin that this is the case, as it helps bitcoin be viewed a new asset class, the mathematically scarce digital commodity.
— Adam Back (@adam3us) April 8, 2026
Wallets believed to belong to Satoshi still hold more than one million Bitcoin, now worth around $70 billion, making the identity question one of the most financially significant unsolved stories on the internet.
Back joked that he was in fact “kicking myself for not mining in anger in 2009,” and added that he still does not know who Satoshi is, saying the anonymity is “good for bitcoin.”
This is the latest in a long list of failed attempts to unmask Bitcoin’s creator, following past theories involving Peter Todd, Dorian Nakamoto, and Craig Wright.
