Recently, The New York Times has stirred up the mystery surrounding Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity again. This time, the accusation points to Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream. I looked into the related reports, and they indeed devote quite a bit of coverage to analysis.

Investigative reporter John Carreyrou spent more than a year aligning the evidence across multiple angles—cryptopunk mailing lists, writing style, technical philosophy, and more—and ultimately zeroed in on this 55-year-old British cryptographer. His logic also doesn’t seem entirely without basis. Back is indeed a core member of the cryptopunk community. The Hashcash mechanism he invented was directly adopted by Bitcoin. And in the late 1990s, he also proposed the idea of decentralized electronic cash—the key elements of which correspond almost one by one with the Bitcoin white paper.

From writing style to technical background, and even comparisons of the timeline, the report lists a whole bunch of similarities. It even used AI to conduct large-scale filtering of emails from the mailing lists, shrinking the candidate pool step by step until only Back remained. It really does sound quite convincing.

But this time, Back’s reaction was swift. He directly denied it, saying he is not Satoshi Nakamoto. Instead, he explained these similarities as statistical bias—because he was particularly active in the cryptopunk mailing lists, he’s more likely to be associated with the identity. He also pointed out that although there were many attempts at decentralized electronic cash in the early days, they still never truly “touched the core,” even if the final approach seemed, “at first glance, very close.”

What’s interesting is that the community’s reaction is also split. Bitcoin Core developer Jameson Lopp said bluntly that this kind of stylistic analysis can’t really catch Satoshi, and it’s unfair to put a target on Adam Back based on such weak evidence. Others pointed out that Bitcoin’s code is written in C++, which is completely different from Back’s programming style. There are also claims that Back’s philosophy leans more toward a store of value, which doesn’t match the early Bitcoin electronic cash concept.

Actually, this isn’t the first time. Looking back over the past decade or more, the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity has triggered several waves of controversy. In 2014, Newsweek identified Dorian Nakamoto, a Japanese-American physicist, but it was later debunked. In 2016, Australian developer Craig Wright claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, but the court ultimately ruled that his claim was unfounded. In 2024, an HBO documentary also shifted the spotlight to Canadian developer Peter Todd, but that was also refuted.

To be honest, each time it causes a commotion, but there’s still no decisive evidence. What can truly seal the case is only a private key signature. And with time, Satoshi Nakamoto’s anonymity has instead become part of Bitcoin’s narrative. Bitcoin has been operating for so many years now, and its value comes more from global consensus than from the founder’s identity halo.

So, as to who Satoshi Nakamoto really is, I think this mystery might never be fully solved. But from a certain perspective, this sense of mystery may also be what protects Bitcoin itself.