The New York Times journalist John Carrier spent a year and a half investigating who is behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, who is considered the creator of the worldʼs most famous cryptocurrency Bitcoin. He concluded that it is Adam Beck, a 55-year-old British developer and founder of Blockstream.
The New York Times / «Бабель»
The journalist was prompted to conduct a major investigation by a scene in an HBO documentary where Beck, sitting on a park bench in Riga, visibly tenses when the director calls him a possible Satoshi. Beck vehemently denied this and asked not to record the conversation. The journalist found the behavior suspicious, so he began to “dig”.
In his extensive article, the journalist presents the results of an analysis of Satoshiʼs texts and compares them with Beckʼs publications. He draws attention to the same linguistic turns and phrases, the confusion of British and American spelling, the same errors in the use of hyphens, and similar technical terms.
In addition, both authors have often written about spam and even proposed similar solutions to limit it using computational problems.
An even more compelling argument was the archive of emails from 1990s “cryptopunks”—people interested in cryptography and who advocated anonymity.
In them, Beck described concepts that almost completely coincide with the principles of Bitcoin: a decentralized system without banks, anonymity of transactions, limited issuance of currency, a system of verification through a network of nodes, protection against double spending.
In addition, Adam Beck is the creator of the Hashcash algorithm, a statistical puzzle-solving system that Satoshi later integrated into the Bitcoin code.
Despite the numerous coincidences, there are also contradictory facts. In particular, Beck provided correspondence with Satoshi, which allegedly proves that he is not Satoshi. However, the journalist suggests that these letters could have been created as a cover. When the author asked for metadata of the emails, which could confirm their authenticity, Beck stopped responding.
Beck later responded to the New York Times article by stating that he was not Satoshi Nakamoto, and that the evidence provided by the journalists was "a collection of coincidences and similar phrases from people with similar experiences and interests".
“I am not Satoshi, but from the very beginning I have paid special attention to the positive consequences of cryptography, Internet privacy, and electronic money for society. That is why since 1992 I have been actively interested in applied research in the field of electronic money and privacy technologies on the Cypherpunks mailing list, which led to the creation of Hashcash and other ideas,” he wrote in X.
This is not the first time that Beck has been called the creator of Bitcoin. In particular, in 2020, the Barely Sociable YouTube channel published an investigation that made similar arguments about the Hashcash integration and Beckʼs suspicious behavior on the forums. But the cryptographer has repeatedly rejected these assumptions.
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is the worldʼs first and most famous cryptocurrency, or "digital currency", which was introduced in 2009. In fact, Bitcoin is a decentralized electronic payment system with a conventional unit of money — bitcoin.
Bitcoin has no centralized management or issuers. Digitally signed transactions between two addresses are transmitted to all nodes in the peer-to-peer network, and data on the movement of bitcoins is stored in a duplicate database.
It is still unknown who exactly created this cryptocurrency. The formal creator is Satoshi Nakamoto. This is the pseudonym of the person or group of people who wrote the first protocols of the future digital currency. The real identity of the creator of Bitcoin is still unknown to the general public.
Who else was called the creator of Bitcoin?
Journalists, researchers, and enthusiasts have been trying to "uncover" the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto for over 15 years. During this time, dozens of versions have emerged, ranging from serious to almost conspiratorial.
Yes, the most famous versions included Gal Finney, one of the first Bitcoin users and the one who received the first transaction from Satoshi, and Nick Szabo, the author of the concept of bit gold, the predecessor of Bitcoin. Investigators called his writing style and ideas very close to Satoshi, but he denies this.
The most prominent "self-proclaimed" Satoshi is Australian Craig Wright. In 2015, he publicly stated that he created Bitcoin, but was unable to provide convincing cryptographic evidence. Lawsuits were filed against him. Incidentally, Adam Beck testified against Wrightʼs claims at the hearing.
In 2014, Newsweek magazine named Dorian Nakamoto Satoshi due to a name match and some indirect facts. Dorian himself categorically denied involvement, and this version quickly lost credibility. And one of the newer candidates, mentioned in an HBO documentary, is Canadian crypto expert Peter Todd. The theory is based on technical coincidences and old forums, but has a weak evidence base.
Despite dozens of hypotheses, none have been definitively confirmed. The only indisputable way to prove Satoshi’s identity is to access his early Bitcoin wallets. But no one has done that yet.
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