Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? This is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating questions in the world of technology and modern finance. Recently, an article published by the New York Times, based on the investigation by journalist John Carreyrou, has reignited the debate and speculations suggesting that the renowned cryptographer and pioneer Adam Back could be the true identity behind the creator of Bitcoin.
In light of the uproar caused by the publication, Adam Back turned to his X account to address the situation and dispel the rumors through a thread.
In his first publication, Back was blunt: "I am not Satoshi, but from the beginning I focused on the positive social implications of cryptography, online privacy, and electronic money." The developer explained that his active interest since 1992 in applied research on ecash and his participation in the cypherpunk mailing list led him to create Hashcash, a clear precursor to the technologies that Bitcoin would later use.
Regarding the linguistic evidence and similarities presented by Carreyrou and other authors, Back argued that it all comes down to a "confirmation bias." Remembering a quote of his in which he admitted: "I don't claim to be good with words, but the truth is that I spoke a lot on these lists," Back explained that his high volume of participation in the forums of the time makes it statistically more likely to find his comments on electronic money than those of others.
For the cryptographer, the conclusions of the research are erroneous and should be "statistically corrected." He stated that the rest of the similarities are simply "a combination of coincidences and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests." According to him, he and other pioneers were "so close and yet so far" in the design discussions during the decade leading up to the invention of Bitcoin.
Far from wanting to take credit, Back concluded his message defending the value of the original creator's anonymity for the ecosystem: "I also don't know who Satoshi is, and I think it's good for Bitcoin that this is the case, as it helps Bitcoin be seen as a new class of asset, a mathematically scarce digital product."
As he well recalled at the end of his thread, alluding to the famous phrase from the crypto community: "We are all Satoshi."