Meet Adam Back, who one NYT journalist says with ‘99.5%’ certainty is the creator of Bitcoin, responsible for revolutionizing global finance

In fact, on a recent episode of the New York Times' Daily podcast, Carreyrou said he's "somewhere between 99.5% and 100%" certain that he's figured out Nakamoto's true identity, Yahoo Finance reports (2).

​As a vocal member of the cryptography-focused online activist community called "Cypherpunks," Back was unquestionably close to Bitcoin's inner circle in the early days, and he never denied that. In fact, he openly supported Bitcoin and blockchain at multiple events and through his technology company Blockstream (3).

But Carreyrou's article suggests that Back is hiding his true identity as Bitcoin's founder. Of the many correlations Carreyrou dug up, some of the most convincing clues center around sloppy grammar and spelling.

Early in his piece, Carreyrou pointed out that Satoshi Nakamoto frequently "mixed British spelling and idioms with American expressions" in messages. Nakamoto also published a headline from the British newspaper The Times in Bitcoin's first "block" of transactions.

That initial hunch led Carreyrou to focus his search on British suspects.

To further narrow his Satoshi shortlist, Carreyrou kept an eye out for consistent grammar or style oddities in Nakamoto's messages. For instance, Nakamoto frequently mixed up "it's" with "its" in his writing. He also used double spaces between sentences and frequently ended his sentences with "also." And as Carreyrou discovered, so did Back.

Even more striking, Carreyrou noticed that Nakamoto was "pathologically incapable of using hyphens correctly." He hyphenated compound nouns (e.g., double-spending), but not compound adjectives (e.g., full blown).

When cross-checking this grammatical error against suspects using artificial intelligence, Back's messages were a clear match.

What else backs up Carreyrou's theory?

It's not just a few slipups that caught Carreyrou's attention.

For instance, Back famously created the spam-detection software Hashcash that used the same "proof of work" algorithm later adopted on Bitcoin. Back was also an early enthusiast for a precursor to Bitcoin called "b-money."

In Bitcoin's official 2008 white paper, Nakamoto called out Hashcash as an inspiration and put b-money in the references (4).

Carreyrou went a step further and found that Back was the first person to (supposedly) receive an email from Nakamoto before publishing the white paper. After Bitcoin launched, Back suddenly went silent until Nakamoto vanished in 2011.

Carreyrou grew even more suspicious when Back became tight-lipped toward his questions. Although the two had a cordial interview at the Bitcoin2025 Conference, Back wouldn't share the metadata showing the origin of Nakamoto's emails.

According to Carreyrou, Back's demeanor became tense with more targeted in-person questions at a Bitcoin conference in El Salvador about the connection to Nakamoto.

All of these facts (and many more) led Carreyrou to allege Back launched Bitcoin and created Satoshi Nakamoto as a cover to maintain the currency's mystique as a decentralized, community-driven project.

In response, Adam Back denies all of these claims on his X account (5).

Why figuring out Nakamoto's true identity is a big deal

Carreyrou's mission to learn Nakamoto's real identity isn't just a curiosity in cryptocurrency.

Many, including Carreyrou himself, believe there's a reason Nakamoto wants to remain a secret. As Carreyrou put it in his New York Times video summary (6), "The ethos of Bitcoin is that it's a decentralized, collective project with no central authority, no hierarchy. If Satoshi is suddenly identified and becomes a real person, then that suddenly gives Bitcoin a leader.

"Adam Back doesn't want that. He knows the community doesn't want that."