[HN Gopher] Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin'...
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Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
https://archive.is/iRBng
Author : jfirebaugh
Score : 239 points
Date : 2026-04-08 04:37 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| xvxvx wrote:
| He's not one person but a front for a US law enforcement task
| force dedicated to tracking down cyber criminals and anyone who
| would need anonymity online. It started, alongside TOR, as a way
| for drug dealers, weapons dealers, and pedophiles to do business.
| Neither cryptocurrency nor TOR are actually anonymous. They're
| part of a pretty impressive honeypot ecosystem.
|
| What I'm interested in is the pivot when crypto tried to go
| legit. Some spook or suit decided that it would be used for other
| reasons also. Now it has some semblance of legitimacy.
|
| Before anyone asks: social media is another part of the same
| ecosystem. Nurtured and protected by the government and law
| enforcement, despite any number of practices that would bankrupt
| most companies and sent people to jail.
| someperson wrote:
| The FBI created the purportedly encrypted "AN0M" messaging app
| [1] as part of a sting operation running between 2018-2021 used
| to catch drug-traffickers.
|
| Creating a fake app that people believe is secure or anonymous
| is an easier way to run a police sting operation than first
| making a significant breakthrough in Distributed Systems around
| the Byzantine Generals Problem.
|
| For your conspiracy theory to be true, at some point a
| honeypot/sting operation must actually end and arrests be made
| and the evidence be used in court.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield
| jahnu wrote:
| Would make a good tv show where a small group in a secretive
| TLA org started this but then made so much money they decided
| to keep it to themselves and get rich.
|
| "Sorry director, the experimental project was a failure. We
| deleted it all now to clean up and free resources. Oh and
| yeah unrelated, I need to hand in my notice. Want to spend
| more time with my ...er... family. Thanks."
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| People who've seen what the nation state can do to those
| who draw it's ire don't do such things.
|
| But other than that it would make a good show.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| That's my theory as well, but not just to catch digital
| criminals, but it's a test bed for the digital wallet / ID
|
| I don't think it's exclusively american tho, it's a consortium
| between US/EU/ASIA, to establish the foundation of the world
| government, digital first
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| > I'd learned enough by then to know that P.G.P. relies on
| public-key cryptography.
|
| > So does Bitcoin. A Bitcoin user has two keys: a public key,
| from which an address is derived that acts as a digital safe
| deposit box; and a private key, which is the secret combination
| used to unlock that box and spend the coins it contains.
|
| > How interesting, I thought, that Mr. Back's grad-school hobby
| involved the same cryptographic technique that Satoshi had
| repurposed.
|
| I read up to here, but I wasn't convinced that this is the
| revelation that the author claims. To my knowledge, asymmetric
| cryptography is widely used. I have no opinions on the rest of
| the article, though.
| kgeist wrote:
| >I read up to here, but I wasn't convinced that this is the
| revelation that the author claims
|
| The rest of the arguments is as weak:
|
| 1) both released open-source software
|
| 2) both don't like spam
|
| 3) both like using pseudonyms online
|
| 4) both love freedom
|
| 5) both are anti-copyright
|
| etc.
|
| Basically, the author found that Adam Back used the same words
| on X as Satoshi did in some emails (including such rare words
| as "dang," "backup," and "abandonware") and then decided to
| find every possible "link" they could to build the case, even
| if most of the links are along the lines of "Both are humans!
| Coincidence? I think not."
| tovej wrote:
| I think this misses the point. The point is that interests
| and writing style matches, which means there's a higher
| chance they are the same person.
|
| The more similarities you find, the closer the match. It's in
| no way proof, of course. But it does provide good reason to
| look closer
| rcxdude wrote:
| Only if those similarities are indicating more than
| 'generic internet hacker' for both of them. You only need
| 23 bits to identify a person but those are 23
| _uncorrelated_ bits, and all the 'similarities' presented
| here are extremely strongly correlated with themselves.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Where are you getting 23 from? That's only 8-ish million
| values max.
| bnjemian wrote:
| Suspect it's a typo. 33, not 23, gives ~8.6*10^9.
| defrost wrote:
| Similarities in style and word were common enough in small
| circles such as the cyphyrpunks that spawned those
| discussions.
|
| Then there's not altogether unlikely chance that Satoshi is
| a nodding homage to Nicolas Bourbaki, each contributor
| holding part of a multiparty voting key.
| alwa wrote:
| The interests and writing style differentiate Mr. (Dr.?)
| Back from the general public, sure. But from what I'm
| reading, they don't do a great job of distinguishing
| _between_ 90s hackers.
|
| "Get this, his PhD thesis dealt with a computer language
| called C++, _just like Bitcoin papers used_ " seems both
| confused and impossibly lazy to me.
|
| > _"Scrap patents and copyright," Mr. Back wrote in
| September 1997._
|
| > _Satoshi did a similar thing. He released the Bitcoin
| software under M.I.T.'s open-source license_
|
| Really?
|
| Like saying "get this, his college-aged musical interests
| included the Urban American musical style known as 'Hip
| Hop'; therefore Tupac didn't really die and _this is him_."
| Heavy on insinuation, light on seriousness. Strong
| "...you're not from around here, are you?" vibes.
|
| What does this kind of journalism hope to accomplish,
| anyway? Beyond bothering middle-aged nerds for gossip? And
| providing a frame for the author's cute little sleuth jape?
|
| "Good reason to look closer" assumes there's good reason to
| pick through ancient rubble in the first place.
| freejazz wrote:
| Did you read most of the article or what?
| DeliciousSeaCow wrote:
| It's weird they spent so much time on the written word
| similarities, when the biggest reveal here is that Back
| disappears off the email lists (on a topic he is VERY
| interested in and has historically corresponded on) when
| Nakamoto appears, and then comes back when Nakamoto
| disappears.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Befitting a writer, though.
| refulgentis wrote:
| That's the weak evidence. Nobody cares that they both like
| open source and freedom, half the cypherpunks list fits that.
|
| The parts worth engaging with: Back described a system
| combining Hashcash and b-money with inflation adjustment and
| public timestamping on the cypherpunks list between
| 1997-1999. That's basically Bitcoin's architecture, a decade
| early. He was one of the most prolific digital cash posters
| for years, went silent when Satoshi appeared, came back when
| Satoshi left. And this person who independently arrived at
| the same technical design also independently landed on the
| same Napster vs Gnutella analogy, the same celebrity email
| filtering idea, and the same FDR gold ban trivia.
|
| Any one of these is a coincidence. At some point you have to
| ask how many you need before the simpler explanation wins.
| bobbiechen wrote:
| This article is a great example of "strong + weak = weak".
|
| I only made it to the interesting stuff because of
| Carreyou's name, otherwise I would have stopped.
|
| The email timing and lack of email metadata were also
| strong, in my opinion. But all of this nonsense like "Wow,
| these guys both talk about PGP??" distracts from it.
| vidarh wrote:
| All of those similarities can be explained by Satoshi
| having read what Back wrote.
| refulgentis wrote:
| You need someone who read Back's obscure 1997-1999
| cypherpunks posts about combining Hashcash and b-money,
| implemented exactly that system a decade later,
| independently came up with the same non-technical
| analogies and trivia, wrote with the same hyphenation
| errors, and then happened to be active during the exact
| window Back went silent. The more you flesh out the
| "someone who read Back" profile, the more it just sounds
| like Back.
| vidarh wrote:
| Someone who has read his material would be likely to
| _repeat_ the same analogies and trivia.
|
| As for the hyphen errors, they are common for people for
| whom English is their second language. I commit hyphen
| errors similar to what is described _all the time_
| because English hyphenation makes absolutely no sense. In
| fact, reading the list of examples, the mistakes listed
| makes more sense to me than the correct way of writing
| those.
|
| I _also_ switch back and forth on a lot of the phrases
| the article mentions.
|
| I _also_ switch back and forth between US and UK
| spelling, because I learned UK spelling at school, but
| was far more exposed to US spelling in practice.
|
| This seems to me to be exceedingly weak.
| dboreham wrote:
| It's been extremely widely known that whoever created
| Bitcoin had a strong interest in Hashcash, and perhaps
| created that or worked on it, for years and years. If
| that's the only smoking gun, why didn't we identify Satoshi
| long ago?
| refulgentis wrote:
| You're right, "interested in Hashcash" describes dozens
| of people, and has been a known Satoshi filter for years.
|
| The new claim is more specific: between 1997-1999, Back
| proposed combining Hashcash with b-money, adding
| inflation adjustment via increasing computational
| difficulty, and using hash trees for public timestamping.
|
| That's most of Bitcoin's architecture in one package, a
| decade early.
|
| The number of people who proposed that particular
| combination of ideas is much smaller than the number who
| were merely interested in Hashcash.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I use "dang" as a nod to Gary Larson.
| discmonkey wrote:
| I got about two sentences further, it turns out another smoking
| gun is Mr. Back using c++ in his graduate studies, just like
| the original bitcoin implementation.
| vidarh wrote:
| Yeah, based on the list of interests, I guess I've been
| Satoshi all this time and didn't know it. A shame my memory
| must have been wiped as I'd quite like all of those bitcoins.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I quit here too. This article is an embarrassment that should
| never have passed the editorial process.
| danso wrote:
| I don't blame you for this initial reaction, which would have
| been mine too had I not known who the author was. I don't mean
| that I automatically trust anything published by the reporter
| who busted Theranos (and won two Pulitzers for _other_ major
| investigations). But I do mean that if John Carreyrou and his
| editors decided to publish something this long, that means they
| (and they 're lawyers) are willing to die on this hill, no
| matter how meandering the first paragraphs of his 1st-person
| narrative.
|
| Since the story doesn't end with: "And then Adam Back bowed his
| head and said, 'You have found me, Satoshi'", I'm guessing they
| preferred to go for the softer "how we did this story" first-
| person narrative. There is no explicit smoking gun, like an
| official document or eyewitness who asserts Satoshi's identity.
| But the circumstantial and technical evidence is quite
| thorough, to the point where the most likeliest conclusions
| are:
|
| 1. Adam Back is Satoshi
|
| 2. Satoshi is someone who is either a close friend or frenemy
| of Back, and deliberately chose to leave a obfuscated trail
| that correlates with Back's persona and personal timeline.
| trgn wrote:
| wrt (2) that is if satoshi had the foresight btc would ever
| blow up in the way it did. obviously, he had some intuition,
| remaining anonymous, but deliberately creating a fake trail
| does not seem super plausible to me
| vintermann wrote:
| You can't sell books or articles from saying something that's
| been said before, but Nick Szabo remains the best Satoshi
| candidate by a mile.
|
| He had developed the system closest to Bitcoin, he was actively
| seeking collaborators to turn his system into a practical
| offering briefly before Bitcoin was released, and he was the only
| cipherpunk who conspicuously said very little when the system
| he'd been trying to realize for a decade suddenly appeared.
| Satoshi credited all his inspirations except for the most obvious
| one, Szabo's. No one in the cipherpunks mailing list thought any
| of this was odd, probably because it was obvious to them who
| Satoshi was.
|
| In contrast to a certain convicted Australian fraudster who got
| caught trying to backdate his statements, Szabo got caught trying
| to _front_ -date them. His politics are a match to Satoshi (tbf.
| true of all the cipherpunks), his coding style matches Satoshi,
| his writing style matches Satoshi if you disable the British
| English spellchecker. For good measure his initials match
| Satoshi.
|
| I view articles like these as a good test of which investigative
| journalists are hacks indifferent to the truth - except for that
| Wired guy, who I think knows better but thinks it's righteous to
| lie a little to protect Satoshi's anonymity.
| triage8004 wrote:
| Szabo is definitely top 3 candidates or on team
| chistev wrote:
| > In contrast to a certain convicted Australian fraudster who
| got caught trying to backdate his statements,
|
| Who?
| greazy wrote:
| This embarrassing wanker
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-28/craig-wright-not-
| sato...
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Nick Szabo doesn't know how to program enough to deliver the
| original bitcoin source code.
| vintermann wrote:
| We know he - Szabo, whether Satoshi or not - asked for help
| in realizing something a lot like Bitcoin, a short time
| before Bitcoin appeared. I don't rule out that he could have
| had some help with the coding.
|
| But I've also not seen anything suggesting he wasn't good
| enough of a coder to make it himself. He has a bachelor's
| degree in computer science.
| tim333 wrote:
| He probably worked with Finney who helped out.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts down to the indictment of the thought
| process of a top investigative journalist. The amount of tunnel
| vision here, that dismisses Szabo based on a tweet of wanting
| to understand developments in core 10 years later? In all this
| writing, there's not a hint of investigation into every damning
| link to Szabo, including the IP leak which was simply dismissed
| as "dead end". Carreyrou is flying across the world to finally
| get a weak slip in speech he thinks finally implicates Back,
| meanwhile Szabo already slipped up in speech years ago for
| anyone to find.
|
| Incredible gell-mann reminder for reporting...
| danso wrote:
| > _No one in the cipherpunks mailing list thought any of this
| was odd, probably because it was obvious to them who Satoshi
| was._
|
| If dozens of people affiliated on a mailing list knew that
| Sbazo was Satoshi is a decade ago, would't his identity be
| treated as an open secret by now?
| tim333 wrote:
| I think a lot of people in the know assume it's Szabo but are
| happy to let the waters be muddy to give some privacy.
| donkeylazy456 wrote:
| another pointless debate. who cares who satoshi is. only TV and
| magazines.
| jmkni wrote:
| Who doesn't like a good mystery?
| themafia wrote:
| I don't. It's a tool used by modern "journalism" to distract
| and detract from a story. If you have something reliable to
| report, then by all means, report it. If all you have is a
| "compelling narrative" then put it on the shelf and do NOT
| waste my time with it.
|
| If you can't manage that then publish fiction books.
| ghost-of-dmr wrote:
| You already wasted your time bringing yourself into the
| conversation.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Non-paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/business/bitcoin-
| satoshi-...
| triage8004 wrote:
| Hal Finney
| chistev wrote:
| If Satoshi is still alive (I believe it's a single guy), then
| it's incredible the amount of self-control he has to not reveal
| his identity after all these years. Not needing the wealth or the
| fame and ego-stroking that comes with being behind such a
| revolutionary technology is enviable.
|
| Not many people are like that.
|
| If he is still alive and just moved on to other things as he
| said, I can't applaud that kind of personality enough.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| If I were Satoshi I'd keep my head down. I wouldn't want my
| life f-d up by outing myself.
|
| Think about the kind of world view you need to have to decide
| to dedicate the necessary time to develop a system for
| transacting outside of approved channels. Dude's probably
| worried about polonium finding its way into his tea or
| whatever.
|
| Assuming he is even an individual.
| chistev wrote:
| What would killing him achieve? The Bitcoin technology is out
| of his control.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| You probably won't get killed, but of course you might by
| someone looking to make a point, in any case your life is
| gonna get turned upside down, various interests are going
| to want you to do things for them, people will want to hire
| you to say things or confer them legitimacy, people will
| want you to opine on things, etc.
|
| If you're in a nice enough place to dedicate the time to a
| project like Bitcoin is that something you really need? If
| you have sufficient frame of mind to develop Bitcoin that's
| probably not something you want in the first place.
| chistev wrote:
| Good point
| GJim wrote:
| > Not needing the wealth or the fame and ego-stroking that
| comes with being behind such a revolutionary technology is
| enviable.
|
| I can only assume you haven't met very many engineers!
| chistev wrote:
| I haven't.
| ghost-of-dmr wrote:
| Plenty of them on HN.
| bcjdjsndon wrote:
| I've met plenty of engineers with egos
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| What if he is already very wealthy and very famous ... and
| knows there is no upside for Bitcoin if they disclose it.
| chistev wrote:
| Wealthy people are notorious for having a ravenous desire for
| more wealth... It's often the mindset that made them wealthy
| in the first place - unless they inherited it, and even then.
| cameldrv wrote:
| One factor is that it's known that he controls the wallet with
| many billions of dollars in it. That would make him a target
| for kidnapping/extortion/etc. He could have easily kept mining
| under a different address though and become very wealthy aside
| from the main wallet.
| manarth wrote:
| https://archive.is/iRBng
| instagraham wrote:
| I don't think this reveals Satoshi's identity, nor that any prior
| piece of reporting may have done so. But I do think there's a
| high probability that Satoshi lurks or has lurked on HN, and
| perhaps reads these posts with an initial sense of apprehension
| followed by a chuckle at the inevitable misidentification.
| szmarczak wrote:
| > misidentification
|
| We don't know if that's misidentification either. The author
| provides good evidence that the writing style matches, which
| doesn't provide a strong proof, however it's a good clue of who
| might it be.
| gertop wrote:
| I'm surprised that this is the best NYT investigative journalism
| could do. It's well written and comprehensive, but it also
| contains no new information.
|
| And I truly mean it, all the proofs listed here are so well known
| that you're likely to learn just as much by watching one of the
| hundreds of "Adam is Satoshi!!1" YouTube videos.
|
| Given the title (a quest!) I would have expected some personal
| findings to be added to the shared narrative, not just rehash of
| the first 2 pages of a Google search.
| hnsdev wrote:
| Particularly I believe that Satoshi Nakamoto is a nation-state
| who created Bitcoin to bypass sanctions. Simple as that.
| exabrial wrote:
| I've subscribed to the nation-state theory as well, but
| intentions unknown.
| Jackpillar wrote:
| It was the CIA and anyone who aren't starry eyed tech dorks has
| known this forever
| Aboutplants wrote:
| Occam's razor in this case is most likely true
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I tend to think this, too. Or rather a small group of
| cryptographers working for a nation-state. It's the only way to
| make sense of the fact that Satoshi is enormously wealthy. I
| don't think any individual could sit on this kind of wealth and
| not cash out visibly.
| arcxi wrote:
| Satoshi may also be unable to cash out simply because they
| are dead.
| lancewiggs wrote:
| I like it. In particular the descriptions of how he reacted when
| confronted. The public key anecdote is a red herring - there is
| far more convincing evidence in the article.
| jmkni wrote:
| I can't get past the fact that Hal Finney lived around the corner
| from someone called " Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto"
|
| I know coincidences happen but that's one hell of a coincidence
| DeliciousSeaCow wrote:
| Given Back and Finney's close-ish relationship, that same fact
| could have permeated to Back, and would be a further reason for
| him to use the name. That said, it's all pure speculation so
| :shrug:?.
| raphlinus wrote:
| I found this article about as compelling as all the other
| attempts at identifying him. Half of the cypherpunks (I was
| pretty active) had the same set of interests in public key
| cryptography, libertarianism, anonymity, criticism of copyright,
| and predecessor systems like Chaum's ecash; we talked about those
| in virtually every meeting.
|
| The most compelling evidence is Adam Back's body language, as
| subjectively observed by a reporter who is clearly in love with
| his own story. The stylometry also struck me as a form of
| p-hacking--keep re-rolling the methodology until you get the
| answer you want.
|
| It's entirely possible Adam is Satoshi, but in my opinion this
| article moves us no closer to knowing whether that's true or not.
| He's been on everybody's top 5 list for years, and this article
| provides no actual evidence that hasn't been seen before.
| lumirth wrote:
| What struck me in particular was the fact the reporter noticed
| that Back had theorized how to evade stylometry. Obviously, if
| one of the people in question had specifically come up with
| ways to evade methods, you'd want to re-roll those methods to
| account for that.
|
| That, alongside a number of other tidbits (Back's activity and
| inactivity patterns lining up with Satoshi's appearance and
| disappearance, his refusal to provide email metadata, his
| financial incentive to hide his identity as Satoshi under US
| securities law) makes the case a lot more meaningful than just
| "likely p-hacking."
| Lerc wrote:
| > _his financial incentive to hide his identity as Satoshi
| under US securities law_
|
| I don't think you can attribute this to financial incentive.
| The actual Satoshi could forfeit 90% of their BTC and still
| have more than they could know what to do with.
|
| At those kinds of levels I can see personal security being a
| higher consideration.
|
| Either way it would give no indication who might be Satoshi
| because all candidates would have a similar incentive if they
| were Satoshi, and you are measuring the absence of
| information.
| philistine wrote:
| why does everybody assume that whoever is Satoshi still has
| access to their wallet? It's absolutely possible whoever is
| Satoshi has simply lost the key.
|
| We're talking new technology where you're running fast and
| loose. It's absolutely possible, and I'd say a big reason
| why someone would not want to admit to being Satoshi.
|
| _I 'm Satoshi, but I also lost billions because I messed
| up a Debian upgrade_.
| apeace wrote:
| The body language thing really bothers me.
|
| Personally, if someone accuses me of lying, but I am actually
| telling the truth, I immediately start acting like a liar. It's
| really embarrassing and hard to explain. I can't believe such a
| seasoned reporter is leaning so hard on "his face went red."
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Yea pretty similar idea to a polygraph test which for years
| was called a "lie detector."
|
| In reality, they measure a bunch of things that may indicate
| lying, but they are just as likely to indicate that a person
| is nervous or reacting to the fact they're being tested at
| all.
|
| They're typically inadmissible in court these days, however,
| there is still a pretty solid amount of blind trust in their
| results.
|
| That part of the article gives a similar "lie detecting"
| hypothesis, just without the machine.
| vidarh wrote:
| In fact, we are _incredibly bad_ at telling lies from the
| body language of people we don 't know well. Pretty much all
| the "well known" tells are sheer and utter bullshit that at
| best tells you if a person is _stressed_. That may or may not
| mean they are lying, but unless you know that person well
| enough to know if they have specific tells that correlates
| with lying _for them_ , your odds are poor.
| archagon wrote:
| Same set of interests? Clearly Raph is Satoshi.
| n0um3n4 wrote:
| Len Sassaman with contributions from others through time. We
| already know that.
| djao wrote:
| The refusal to provide email metadata is the most damning
| evidence. Adam Back clearly has the emails; he is the one who
| provided them in the first place during the previous court case.
| Everyone knows he has the emails. If Adam Back and Satoshi are
| two different people, the metadata should be exculpatory, and
| easy to share. There's literally no reason whatsoever to hide the
| metadata unless he is the one.
|
| In a court of law, self-disclosure of inculpatory information
| cannot be compelled, so this analysis does not pass muster in a
| court of law. The court of public opinion, however, is quite
| different.
| ShowalkKama wrote:
| >There's literally no reason whatsoever to hide the metadata
| unless he is the one.
|
| privacy?
| neffy wrote:
| Time? He's busy starting a company, taking the time to drag
| out decade old emails and digging out the meta data for a
| journalist who is borderline stalking (assuming he even has
| them somewhere). I wouldn't give that the time of day either.
| ianferrel wrote:
| The thing is, most of the people heavily involved in early
| Bitcoin are fairly characterized as cryptoanarchists, a group
| strongly devoted to the principle of privacy and liberty
| effected through technological means.
|
| The refusal to provide personal communications metadata by such
| a person is evidence of nothing but their steadfast commitment
| to the philosophy that presented them with the opportunity to
| be part of those email conversations in the first place.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Then again, if I weren't Satoshi, but people suspected that I
| was, I'd be willing to do just about anything to prove that
| it's not me. No one in their right mind would want that kind
| of target on their back.
|
| Satoshi is either dead, or he lost his keys and probably
| wishes he were.
| vzaliva wrote:
| What would it show? If he logged in to Santoshi's email account
| and sent an email to his personal account, the metadata would
| be in order, and we would learn little from it.
| leroy_masochist wrote:
| Regardless of whether Carreyrou is right, Mr. Back's life has now
| changed massively. The article points out that the market value
| of Satoshi's wallet is north of $100bn. Time to invest in some
| personal security.
| sonofaplum wrote:
| He was already the CEO of a billion dollar company and the
| article describes him traveling with security.
| ghywertelling wrote:
| I haven't seen this question answered anywhere.
|
| Why would anyone use bitcoin if the world's factory ie China
| wants gold as payments?
|
| Even pro Bitcoin people like Balaji and Lyn Alden haven't
| answered this structural question. There exists market for what
| counts as money. If that market (led by China) says we don't
| accept Bitcoin, then these are just some random numbers.
| int32_64 wrote:
| If you've ever seen Back's twitter you would know he's not
| Satoshi. I'm still firmly in the Finney camp.
|
| Every couple years one of these articles shows up focusing on one
| of the core Satoshi suspects, at least do a Wei Dai one next
| time.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I'm also in the Finney camp.
|
| The most important bit to me is that doing something like this
| would be entirely in-line with his personality.
|
| Also, I think he truly believed there was a good chance he'd
| eventually be brought back. The most likely case in my mind is
| that he died with the private keys in his head, and that we'll
| never get confirmation.
| mijoharas wrote:
| So I just searched the article for Finney to see why it claimed
| it wasn't him. It claims Satoshi was active after Finney had
| died?
|
| What's that about? I used to be of the opinion that it was
| probably hal, but haven't paid too much attention. What's the
| counter evidence here? And why do we disregard that?
| int32_64 wrote:
| Satoshi's email accounts were presumably hacked in 2014 and
| the emails sent from them later were presumed fake because
| they lacked PGP signatures.
| cloche wrote:
| Do you have a link for Satoshi's post after Hal had died?
| 4oo4 wrote:
| Someone already found this years ago:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcvX0P1b5g
|
| I haven't read the full article yet but I'm guessing they didn't
| give credit, as the New York Times tends to do. Not definitive
| but it's a very convincing case.
| sambaumann wrote:
| This video is linked in the article
| sambaumann wrote:
| This article is convincing, but ultimately still no true
| evidence, it's all circumstantial.
|
| After reading this, Back does seem like a pretty likely
| candidate, but maybe you could run the same kind of investigation
| on every other candidate and find similar matches. The filters
| they used for the text analysis did seem pretty arbitrary to
| match up with Back's language
| meonkeys wrote:
| fascinating. John Carreyrou is the guy who broke the Theranos
| story!
|
| But
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_Electric%3A_The_Bitcoin_...
| is a bit more compelling. Satoshi is Adam Back _and_ Peter Todd.
| stevenalowe wrote:
| Why does it matter? Changes nothing except doxxing someone
| blast wrote:
| Humans are social animals, so any mystery about another person
| is interesting, and wealth and fame multiply this.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Why do journalists try to doxx innocent people, putting their
| personal (and here actual) lives at risk? Bansky, Scott
| Alexander...
|
| Spend this effort investigating corruption.
| lumirth wrote:
| If you read the article there's an interesting bit where Mr.
| Back has an active incentive to hide his identity as Satoshi:
| US securities law, which requires disclosing things which'd be
| material to investors. Like, for example, a stash of bitcoin
| which if sold could crash the price of the thing.
|
| And also, from my understanding, Back allegedly had some not-
| insignificant ties or meetings with Epstein?
|
| Point being, journalism like this is morally complex, and not
| as simple as "doxxing innocent people." Of course, we are
| biased, as hackers on a web forum, we naturally relate with
| Satoshi, who was also a techie on a web forum.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Journalists job is to get clicks on their article.
| creato wrote:
| If this guy was still just a guy on a mailing list and
| otherwise living a private life, this article would be
| inappropriate to publish IMO.
|
| However, he's a significant public figure in the Bitcoin world
| (apparently). Still a gray area I guess but I don't think he's
| off limits from this kind of scrutiny.
| apeace wrote:
| I have always thought Satoshi must be dead (as a couple of past
| suspects are).
|
| How could someone not want one hundred BILLION dollars? There is
| no person alive who could resist that. I'm sorry, there's just
| not.
|
| To be fair, if Back was Satoshi, he would need to hide it so his
| company can go public, or whatever. Because that way he might
| make -- who knows! -- hundreds of millions of dollars?
|
| Even if moving the coins crashed the Bitcoin price by 90%,
| Satoshi would still be a billionaire. Generational wealth.
| DeliciousSeaCow wrote:
| Back has earned generational wealth already, and the wealthy
| borrow (at rates lower than capital appreciations) against
| capital to fund all their living. If I were Back, that's
| exactly what I'd be doing to preserve anonymity.
| browningstreet wrote:
| The billionaires ruining the world right now are certainly
| satisfied with their respective hauls.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| He (or the enterprise) could have ample bitcoin, on other
| accounts... the main account is just bait for people.
| bnjemian wrote:
| It's funny because the author notes a prior attempt to uncover
| Satoshi's identity and giving up because an implied lack of
| technical depth.
|
| I guess this time they were undaunted. Perhaps they received an
| AI assist and felt validated by AI sycophancy.
|
| Much of the technical evidence cited is weak (e.g. strong
| knowledge of public-key cryptography, both used C++, etc.).
| Still, the (somewhat lazy) forensic linguistics is interesting.
| danso wrote:
| Pretty compelling story. Not necessarily for its revelations, but
| for the fact that John Carreyrou and the NYT decided to publish
| it at all. If it were by anyone else, I would have stopped
| reading after the first thousand words of meandering narrative,
| but Carreyrou is staking his massive and impeccable investigative
| journalistic reputation on this mountain of circumstantial
| evidence and statistical analysis. Him torching his reputation
| (especially with Elizabeth Holmes fighting hard for a
| pardon/clemency!) would be as interesting as a story as actually
| finding Satoshi's real identity.
|
| The evidence is good. What was more interesting to me is the
| section where he explains how he eliminated all the other
| asserted and likely candidates. Since the story is already a very
| long read, I imagine much of this section got left out. So some
| of the reasons for eliminations are too brief to be convincing on
| their own. For example:
|
| > _What about other leading Satoshi suspects, I wondered? Were
| there any who fit the Satoshi profile better than Mr. Back? A
| 2015 article in this newspaper put forward the thesis that
| Satoshi was Nick Szabo, an American computer scientist of
| Hungarian descent who proposed a Bitcoin-like idea called "bit
| gold" in 1998. Mr. Szabo remained at the top of many people's
| lists until recently, but a heated debate that played out on X
| about a proposed update to the Bitcoin Core software exposed his
| ignorance of basic technical aspects of Bitcoin._
|
| _A 2015 article in this newspaper_ -- Decoding the Enigma of
| Satoshi Nakamoto and the Birth of Bitcoin, by Nathaniel Popper
| [0]
|
| _[Szabo] proposed a Bitcoin-like idea called "bit gold" in 1998_
| -- Szabo 's post on his Blogger site [1]
|
| _but a heated debate that played out on X about a proposed
| update to the Bitcoin Core software exposed his ignorance_ --
| links to a Sept 29, 2025 tweet by Adam Back replying to Szabo,
| who had tweeted:
|
| > Good info thanks. Follow-up questions: (1) to what extent is
| such an OP_RETURN-delete-switch feasible in practice? (I know it
| is feasible in theory, but there are many details of core that I
| am not familiar with). (2) has such a thing been seriously
| proposed or pursued as part of Core's roadmap?
|
| _exposed [Szabo 's] ignorance of basic technical aspects of
| Bitcoin_ -- links to another reply tweet by Back in October 2025
| [3]:
|
| > Nick, you're actually wrong because there is a unified weight
| resource. eg byte undiscounted chain space reduces by 4 bytes
| segwit discounted weight. no need for insults - people who are
| rational here are just talking about technical and risk tradeoffs
| like rational humans.
|
| Szabo's tweet was: "Another coretard who thinks their followers
| are mind-numbingly stupid."
|
| ----
|
| Can someone explain why this relatively recent tweet fight is
| convincing evidence that Szabo is too ignorant to have been
| behind Bitcoin? I know he went silent for a bit when Bitcoin
| first got big, but he hadn't revealed his ostensibly overwhelming
| ignorance until a few months ago?
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/business/decoding-the-
| eni...
|
| [1] https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html
|
| [2] https://x.com/adam3us/status/1972888761257415129
|
| [3] https://x.com/adam3us/status/1981329274721149396
| andy800 wrote:
| > a heated debate ... exposed his ignorance
|
| Didnt follow everything here, but wouldn't that make for a
| perfect cover story? If you're Satoshi, and people are getting
| close to verifying (or at least nominating you as "most likely
| candidate"), what better way to throw people off than to engage
| in a public conversation in which you (creatively) get all
| kinds of technical details wrong and make yourself look too
| ignorant or dumb to ever have been Satoshi?
| thakoppno wrote:
| There's no bottom to this line of reasoning, however.
|
| One can always suppose the identified individual is a double,
| triple, quadruple agent.
| ozten wrote:
| Does Carreyrou give reasons for eliminating Hal Finney from
| being (part or all of) Satoshi?
| sho_hn wrote:
| Yes, he mentions he was photographed running a foot race
| during a date and time Satoshi sent emails (of course that's
| a bit weak).
| ozten wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| Reasoning: They have the chops to create the world's first
| system where consensus, scarcity, and ownership exist
| without a central authority... But, they also lack the
| ability to write a Perl script to "Send Later". Checks out.
| madars wrote:
| A major problem with the article is the author's inability to
| weigh the evidence: actual evidence, like presence/absence
| pattern, is buried whereas p-hacking stylometry (let me try
| another expert, this one didn't give me what I wanted! let me
| feed him the Satoshi/Adam Back tells that I'm already in love
| with!) is majority of the article. It also includes absolute
| garbage like the vistomail spoof email during the block size
| wars. The author is simply out of his depth here.
|
| It is sad - but entirely unsurprising - that NYT decided to
| paint a big target on someone's back just for clicks. Judith
| Miller-tier all over again. Miller too had real evidence and
| junk evidence, couldn't distinguish between the two, and
| editors wanted a flashy headline. Here NYT editors need
| multimedia events (like junk stylometry filtering - watch the
| number shrink from 34,000 to 1!!!) because that's what its
| audience-product relationship demands.
| gridder wrote:
| Barely Sociable already explained it 5 years ago:
|
| https://youtu.be/XfcvX0P1b5g
| dang wrote:
| If people want rabbit holes
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| talkfold wrote:
| The guy who took down Theranos spent a year on hyphenation
| patterns. Respect the commitment.
| themafia wrote:
| Every couple of years they convince some "intrepid" reporters to
| go make up a story about /the/ creator of bitcoin.
|
| Which I find highly suggestive about the true nature of the
| creator(s) of bitcoin.
| modeless wrote:
| I don't believe anyone claiming that Satoshi is still alive.
| There is zero chance any human who put so much effort into
| creating something would remain silent while it became a $2
| trillion phenomenon that succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
| Satoshi is certainly dead.
| cbxyp wrote:
| This is a ridiculous argument "zero chance" that completely
| discounts the possibility (or in all likelyhood, probability)
| that the creator may be compelled to stay silent, in jail, etc.
| kleene_op wrote:
| > There is zero chance any human who put so much effort into
| creating something would remain silent while it became a $2
| trillion phenomenon
|
| I'd argue this is the best reason to remain silent as much as
| one can.
| Dove wrote:
| I once became so famous that a community of several hundred
| people knew and recognized my name for a few years. At the
| time, it was very ego-flattering, and I was delighted to have
| done something that had such a big and positive impact.
| However, as an experience it really did not agree with me, and
| even this very minor level of fame has left me resolved to
| never, ever, ever become that famous again if I can help it.
|
| I don't think I am unique in that. In fact, I perceive that it
| is very normal for public figures, not merely to fade from
| public attention, but to actively seek out seclusion.
|
| While I'm not Satoshi, I would put the odds of someone in such
| a position of maintaining radio silence far from "zero chance".
| I would put it more around 70 or 80 percent. And at any rate,
| it is certainly what I would do.
| ploum wrote:
| My theory is that Satoshi is a persona created by Adam Back and
| Hal Finney.
|
| They probably devised something where both needed to agree and
| sign something for Satoshi to act. This also allowed them to
| say "I'm not Satoshi Nakamoto".
|
| They also probably ensured that anything that belongs to
| Satoshi required both of them. The death of Hal Finney ensure
| that Satoshi died definitely.
|
| But they may have "killed" him before by burning the keys
| because, when Bitcoin started to become a success, they
| probably anticipated the need to "kill" satoshi (few remember
| but Bitcoin passing 1$ was considered as a crazy bubble at the
| time! Some become millionnaires and exited when BTC did the 30$
| bubble. Satoshi's stack was already closely observed, bright
| mind of that time would have anticipated the need to kill it).
| Or it was just that "satoshi" was not needed or they
| accidentaly deleted some keys.
| vidarh wrote:
| I'd like to think that if I'd come up with something like
| this, I'd have quickly gone "oh shit" and realised it'd be
| hard to access the earliest coins without raising unwanted
| attention, and started mining with multiple different keys,
| and actively moved those coins around. If Satoshi is still
| around, I'd expect he has more than enough money without the
| need to risk the upheaval touching those earliest keys would
| cause.
| AgentME wrote:
| Adam Back is the well-off CEO of a company in the blockchain
| space. From that position, he gets to continue to use his
| expertise in the field with plenty of connections while having
| more than enough money without needing to risk revealing
| himself as Satoshi or risk de-stabilizing Bitcoin's value by
| using Satoshi's known wallets. It seems like the best possible
| outcome for someone in Satoshi's position.
|
| I'll at least agree that I don't think any other living
| candidates for Satoshi make any sense. I can't believe someone
| who started a brand new influential field of study could fully
| exit from it while fully avoiding the proceeds from it, as
| would be necessary to believe in any other living candidate.
| afavour wrote:
| > would remain silent while it became a $2 trillion phenomenon
|
| I can see how it might be preferable. Satoshi has an incredible
| amount of wealth in a form that's very easy to transfer
| anonymously. Anyone that admits to being him will be a huge
| target.
| sfink wrote:
| If I were to invent something like bitcoin, I would use your
| exact logic to decide to burn the keys. I couldn't trust
| myself, so I would remove the possibility of agonizing over it.
| Obviously, I still might feel regret, but I'd choose the
| potential regret over the potential agony.
|
| Hell, even if I didn't burn the keys initially, I might do it
| as I observed it starting to take off. I'd be more attached to
| the idea and its success than to the idea of being filthy rich
| (and at risk of jail, extortion, and murder). It would feel
| like a giant middle finger to the parts of the system I
| disliked.
| shawn_w wrote:
| Maybe they're embarrassed to admit they lost the password for
| their wallet.
| 348asGaq7 wrote:
| It would not surprise me. Adam Back seems to have good
| connections to the deep state people, too. His company is merging
| via a SPAC with a Cantor Fitzgerald (Lutnick owned) company.
|
| Cantor Fitzgerald also handles the collateral for Tether, which
| relocated from the Caribbean (where it was associated with a CIA
| bank) to El Salvador.
|
| Bitcoin is very handy for avoiding awkward Iran Contra schemes
| for covert ops. You no longer need Lutnick's friend Epstein to
| handle the laundering.
| c83n2d8n39c9 wrote:
| what if satoshi is not one person but a phenomenon, a group of
| minds... the interesting thing about the technology is that it is
| a public ledger and everything that goes along with that when you
| tie it to the metadata trails across the networks people use it
| on... ohh the implications
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| A fun counter factual: try "proving" that famous scientists are
| their collaborators based on this methodology. Obviously Hardy
| and Littlewood are the same person. They're both British
| mathematicians who use analysis and number theory and have
| similar sensibilities in politics and math.
| refulgentis wrote:
| The Hardy-Littlewood comparison cuts the other way. Two
| collaborators in the same subfield sharing terminology is the
| baseline, not evidence of anything. What makes the Back case
| interesting is convergence on things that have nothing to do
| with cryptography: the same Napster vs Gnutella analogy, the
| same celebrity email filtering idea, the same obscure FDR gold
| ban interest, the same weird hyphenation errors. Pick any two
| cypherpunks at random and you won't find that kind of overlap
| on non-technical quirks.
|
| Then add the negative space. Back was one of the most prolific
| voices on these lists for a decade, especially on digital cash.
| Satoshi shows up, Back goes quiet. Satoshi leaves, Back comes
| back. Hardy and Littlewood never had that problem.
| kgeist wrote:
| >the same Napster vs Gnutella analogy, the same celebrity
| email filtering idea, the same obscure FDR gold ban interest,
| the same weird hyphenation errors
|
| Dunno it assumes their cypherpunk group must always discuss
| strictly cryptography and never discuss anything else. It
| could be just some off-topic ideas floating around in their
| community.
|
| For me, the only solid, damning evidence would be statistical
| methods of text analysis like they do to prove authenticity
| of a literary work.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Every time I see one of these articles about "unmasking"
| Nakamoto, I always wonder the same thing: why? I don't really see
| a compelling reason to unmask this person. Surely there are other
| more important things a journalist can spend their time looking
| into. It's the same with Banksy: why?
| afavour wrote:
| I agree about Banksy. But in this case Satoshi controls a huge
| about of bitcoin. If, whoever they are, they did something with
| it, it would absolutely move markets.
| afpx wrote:
| I always thought it was Argonne that built it. Interestingly it
| seems that Adam Back did work with them. So maybe?
| Lerc wrote:
| I found this amusing.
|
| _> P.G.P., a free encryption program used by antinuclear
| activists and human rights groups to shield their files and
| emails from government surveillance._
|
| I find it fascinating to see how the users of a program change,
| based on how a reporter wants to build or diminish.
|
| At least it's going in a positive direction today.
| 6thbit wrote:
| that's such a loaded statement.
| torben-friis wrote:
| >Water, a drink consumed by nobel price winners and European
| kings...
| Lerc wrote:
| Oxygen, an element serial killers need in order to kill
| again.
| fny wrote:
| Dihydrogen monoxide - a constituent of many known toxic
| substances, diseases and disease-causing agents[0]
|
| [0]: https://www.dhmo.org/
| coppsilgold wrote:
| The author has collected more than enough entropy to single out
| Mr. Back, especially when the anonymity set of who could be
| Satoshi is so small.
|
| It's either Back or someone who tried to frame him, long before
| Bitcoin was even remotely successful. Generally, framing someone
| like this is a poor strategy because it places you in the
| person's radius as opposed to being absolutely anyone.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My dorm room was next door to Hal Finney. He was a freakin genius
| at every intellectual endeavor he bothered to try. My fellow
| students and I were in awe of him.
|
| But you had to get to know him to realize what he was. To most
| people, he was just a regular guy, easy going, friendly, always
| willing to help.
|
| He was also a libertarian, and the concept of bitcoin must have
| been very appealing to him.
|
| And inventing "Satoshi" as the front man is just the prankish
| thing he'd do, as he had quite a sense of humor.
|
| I regret not getting to know him better, though I don't think he
| found me very interesting.
|
| My money's on Hal.
| doublextremevil wrote:
| Satoshi supported big blocks in his writings and empowered the
| pro-big block Gavin when he disappeared. Adam is a well known
| supporter of small blocks, ultimately the "winning" side of the
| debate. They are not the same person.
| cloche wrote:
| I haven't read the article yet but I remember this as well.
| IIRC Adam went the route of more towards a centralized group
| controlling Bitcoin's future during the BTC/BCH debates/fork.
| It seemed against what Satoshi would have pushed for. Plus
| Adam's group seemed like a catalyst for Gavin stepping back as
| a result of the political in-fighting and mud-slinging. It
| would be a huge surprise if Satoshi were Adam.
|
| Personally, I think Satoshi was Hal Finney.
| danso wrote:
| Doesn't this fierce debate exist because people cannot agree
| what Satoshi would have written had he known Bitcoin would take
| off in such a massive way, versus what Satoshi believed back
| when bitcoin was just a paper? If it actually is the case that
| Adam Back is Satoshi, we shouldn't find it surprising that
| Back's views on bitcoin changed as bitcoin's viability and real
| world impact changed
| opengrass wrote:
| Congrats to the author citing a troll on a Vistomail account
| anyone could re-register when AnonymousSpeech was around.
| dboreham wrote:
| I'm going to call BS on this. Not that this guy couldn't be
| Satoshi, but the article has some serious nonsense in it. Ha said
| he learned to program on a "Timex Sinclair". It wasn't called
| that in the UK. Did he know the alternative name and auto-
| translate in speaking to a US journalist? Seems unlikely. Then he
| used C++! Amazing. So did everyone at that time. He took an
| interest in PK cryptography. So has every single serious software
| engineer since the 1990s. It's the same thing as Bitcoin!
| Seriously. I stopped reading when the next piece of evidence was
| that he used the word "libertarian".
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| this and the recent banksy 'umasking' by major news outlets is
| sad in our era of huge US governmental crimes and coverups.
| uxhacker wrote:
| Using the articles logic.
|
| Obviously Satoshi and Banksy are the same person. They are both
| from the same era and British.
|
| There are so many people I know from that Era who believed the
| same things that Mr. Back believed in. Half my work colleagues at
| the time where interested in distributed computers, Postage pay,
| and algorithmic payments.
|
| I am not convinced
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| Satoshi is the guy with the PhD in distributed computing who took
| a sabbatical during which bitcoin was published.
| nly wrote:
| Len Sassaman?
| sho_hn wrote:
| This was a fun article, but also an oddball collection of strong
| and weak claims.
|
| Some of the "isn't it interesting ..." type coincidences would,
| as people on this forum would know, be commonplace among the
| subculture or even just technologists, and often lack the
| comparison to the overall Cypherpunk corpus - for example: no,
| studying public-key cryptography in grad school certainly isn't a
| high-signal differentiating tell for Satoshi-ness.
|
| For some he does provide that though, and they're certainly
| compelling.
|
| What I like best about the Back attribution is that it totally
| makes sense in context of my operating model of humans and passes
| the Occam's Razor test: Still actively involved, interested in
| the governance, interested in acclaim/prestige, built up wealth
| masking his other wealth, etc. Ego and "Tell me you're Satoshi
| without telling me you're Satoshi" written all over it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| By now, this is a snipe hunt.
|
| If "Satoshi" were to ever try cashing out some of "his" BitCoin,
| I suspect that things could get interesting.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Seems like the IRS would have an enormous vested interest in
| tracking him down too...
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Would be darkly hilarious if Santoshi lost his wallet long ago...
|
| I've certainly lost a lot of the small scripts and utilities I
| wrote long ago. Can't remember any usernames, much less
| passwords, from 20 years ago...
| dools wrote:
| This is the most compelling "who is Satoshi?" post I've found:
|
| https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=628344.msg48198887#m...
|
| "I contend that James Simons put the team together that made up
| Satoshi Nakamoto and that Nick Szabo was the main public-facing
| voice behind the nym."
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Looking at some of the linked examples, I did not feel convinced
| at the style similarity. For example:
|
| > In the spirit of building something in the public domain, Mr.
| Back and Satoshi also both created internet mailing lists
| dedicated to their creations -- the Hashcash list and the
| Bitcoin-dev list -- where they posted software updates listing
| new features and bug fixes in a format and style that looked
| strikingly similar.
|
| That paragraph links two release notes:
| https://www.freelists.org/post/hashcash/hashcash113-released...
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130401141714/http://sourceforg...
|
| They do have a similar "release notes rendered with Markdown"
| feel, but the actual text has some obvious capitalization and
| tone differences.
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