A New York Times investigation has named British cryptographer Adam Back as the real identity behind Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin — a claim Back flatly rejects.

Reporter John Carreyrou, who first broke the Theranos scandal while at the Wall Street Journal, said he spent more than a year combing through thousands of archived emails, forum posts and early internet records before concluding that Back, 55, was Nakamoto. Carreyrou cited British spellings and expressions in Nakamoto’s writing, similarities in technical language and grammar, Back’s invention of Hashcash — a precursor cited in the original Bitcoin white paper — and his notable silence when Bitcoin first launched.

Carreyrou also used artificial intelligence tools to analyze linguistic patterns in Nakamoto’s posts, though he acknowledged the findings were circumstantial rather than definitive. On social media, however, he took a more confident tone, declaring the mystery of Nakamoto’s identity solved.

Back pushed back immediately. “I’m not Satoshi,” he wrote on X, dismissing the apparent links as “a combination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests” and accusing Carreyrou of confirmation bias. In interviews with the Times, he repeatedly insisted “it’s really not me.”

A central piece of evidence cuts both ways. Emails from 2008 show Nakamoto reaching out to Back ahead of Bitcoin’s white paper release — correspondence long seen as proof that Back and Nakamoto were two different people. Carreyrou argued Back may have written both sides of the exchange to create distance from the Satoshi identity. Back says the emails are legitimate and that he had no role in Bitcoin’s creation.

Back added that he does not know who Satoshi is and considers that uncertainty a feature, not a bug. “I think it is good for bitcoin that this is the case,” he wrote.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)