London, April 8, 2026, 12:14 BST
The New York Times on Wednesday pointed to British cryptographer Adam Back as the most likely person behind Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of bitcoin, and Back rejected the claim within hours. Back, the Blockstream chief executive, wrote on X: “i’m not satoshi.” 1
The timing matters because Back is also fronting BSTR, a bitcoin treasury vehicle merging with Cantor Equity Partners I, a special purpose acquisition company, or blank-check shell. In an SEC-filed transcript of a CNBC interview, Back said the deal was headed for approval “about April,” giving the identity fight an immediate market angle. 2
Wallets widely attributed to Satoshi are estimated to hold about 1.096 million bitcoin. Bitcoin, which trades around the clock, was at roughly $71,483 on Wednesday, putting that stash at about $78.6 billion. 3
John Carreyrou’s report leaned on stylometric analysis — comparing writing habits — as well as old emails, archived mailing-list posts, British spelling, hyphenation quirks and Back’s responses in a two-hour interview in El Salvador. Florian Cafiero, the computational linguist who did the analysis, reportedly ranked Back closest to Satoshi in one test but said the result was inconclusive. 4
Back is not an obscure suspect in bitcoin’s early history. He invented Hashcash in 1997, a proof-of-work system — a computational puzzle first used to curb spam — and the 2008 bitcoin white paper cited Hashcash as one of the ideas behind the mining process that secures the network. 5
Back said the overlap reflected “confirmation bias,” not authorship. Years of writing about privacy, cryptography and electronic cash, he said, made similarities almost inevitable. 6
Still, that is the risk in this story. The case remains circumstantial, Cafiero said a second method produced different rankings, and no cryptographic proof has emerged that would settle the question. 4
The identity debate also lands as BSTR tries to join a fast-growing class of listed bitcoin buyers. Back said in the SEC-filed transcript that BSTR wanted to rank roughly No. 3 globally by holdings and could buy up to 21,000 more coins, subject to approvals and redemptions; he added that a lower launch price would be “to our advantage” because it would let the company buy more bitcoin. 2
The field is already crowded. Strategy said on Monday it held 766,970 bitcoin, while Twenty One Capital said when it began NYSE trading in December that it held more than 43,500, making it the third-largest public corporate holder at the time. 7
Some prominent bitcoin developers attacked the Times’ methods. Jameson Lopp said Satoshi “can’t be caught with stylometric analysis” and warned the report put “a huge target” on Back. The hunt has ended badly before: a London judge ruled in 2024 that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, leaving the mystery open yet again. 4
