Unmasking the Creator of Bitcoin

Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, has remained anonymous for 17 years despite numerous attempts to unmask him.

Bitcoin has spawned a $2.4 trillion industry.

Satoshi Nakamoto appeared on the internet in late 2008 when he announced his nine-page white paper outlining how Bitcoin works.

Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared from public communication in April 2011 after improving the Bitcoin software with early adopters.

John Carreyrou began researching the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto's identity in early 2022.

John Carreyrou famously broke the story about Elizabeth Holmes' startup, Theranos, faking blood tests, which led to a federal investigation and her imprisonment.

John Carreyrou identified over 100 unusual words and expressions used by Satoshi Nakamoto.

The Cipherpunks were a group of techno-anarchists formed in the early 1990s who believed in using cryptography to ward off government surveillance and censorship.

Satoshi Nakamoto said that Bitcoin was 'very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint.'

Between 1997 and 1999, Adam Back laid out in detail virtually every single aspect of Bitcoin on the Cipherpunks list, including a decentralized currency using peer-to-peer software with anonymous payers/payees, a publicly viewable ledger, and using hash to mint coins.

Adam Back disappeared from the cryptography mailing list before Satoshi Nakamoto posted his white paper there and stayed away while Satoshi was active, only reappearing before Satoshi vanished.

Only Adam Back and Hal Finney used the term 'partial pre-image' across all years of the Cipherpunks and cryptography mailing lists, and only Adam Back hyphenated it exactly like Satoshi Nakamoto.

Adam Back also had a habit of confusing 'its' (IT apostrophe S) and 'its' (ITS) and sometimes put 'also' at the end of sentences.

A forensic expert at Hofstra University confirmed to John Carreyrou that his method of identifying a writer by homing in on certain words and phrases is standard practice in such cases.

After applying multiple filters for Satoshi Nakamoto's specific writing ticks (e.g., two spaces between sentences, British spellings, 'its/it's' confusion, 'also' at sentence end, alternating spellings for 'email' and 'optimize'), Adam Back was the only remaining suspect out of thousands of Cipherpunks.

John Carreyrou believes Adam Back made a 'slip-up' during their interview by interjecting 'for someone who's bad with words, I sure did a lot of yakking on these mailing lists' immediately after Carreyrou quoted Satoshi Nakamoto saying 'I'm better with code than with words.'

John Carreyrou states that if Adam Back is Satoshi Nakamoto, his wealth in crypto could make him a target of 'wrench attacks,' where people kidnap and extort crypto holders.