After years of speculation, a reporter claims to have uncovered the founder of Bitcoin : NPR

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Seventeen years ago, someone identifying themselves as Satoshi Nakamoto published a white paper online. It was nine pages long. It was titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Payment System” and presented a vision of a decentralized monetary system that did not rely on a central bank and allowed participants to remain anonymous. Well, for all these years Satoshi Nakamoto has also remained anonymous, a situation that New York Times investigative journalist John Carreyrou decided to do something about. His investigation led him to a 55-year-old computer scientist named Adam Back, who not only had the experience to build something like Bitcoin, but Adam Back, according to Carreyrou’s investigation, also wrote like Satoshi Nakamoto.

JOHN CARREYROU: I noticed that they shared a lot of writing graduations, but in particular, they were both pathologically bad at using hyphens.

KELLY: Carreyrou used artificial intelligence models to test his suspicions, and each time he came back with the same name, Adam Back. Now, Back for his part denies being Satoshi Nakamoto. So I asked Carreyrou, how sure is he?

CARREYROU: I’m almost sure of it. I could say somewhere between 99 and 100% certainty. Adam Back has the experience and all the skills you would need to create Bitcoin. On top of that, he was one of the strongest proponents of finding a way to create what the cypherpunks(ph) called e-money, a digital version of physical money that is untraceable and anonymous.

KELLY: So you’re doing all this reporting. You flew to El Salvador because there was a Bitcoin conference and Adam Back was going to be there. You confront him with what you think you have understood. How did he react?

CARREYROU: Well, he kept denying it, but there were times in the interview where his body language told a different story. When I pressed him on some of the things that I found more difficult to explain, his face blushed, and it was really noticeable because he was tan, and his blush came through his tan. He was also fidgeting, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, and he didn’t have a good explanation for some of the points I raised with him.

One of them was that when Satoshi suddenly appeared out of nowhere on the crypto mailing list in late 2008, Adam Back disappeared. And then Satoshi remained active on this list and other forums on the Internet for 2 and a half years. And during this entire period, Adam Back was nowhere to be found. And yet, bitcoin was the closest manifestation of the vision of electronic money presented by Adam Back. And for some reason, or I think for a very clear reason, he didn’t speak up in this case and stayed away the entire time Satoshi was active. It’s like Bruce Wayne and Batman. When Batman comes out, Bruce Wayne is nowhere to be found.

KELLY: Never in the same room. I mean, I guess if you were looking for definitive proof, which you clearly are, as a smoking gun for your investigation, there is one development worth mentioning, which is that Adam Back co-founded a Bitcoin treasury company. It is in the process of becoming public. You write that U.S. securities law would require him to disclose anything that might be material, any material information to investors, like, oh, I don’t know, say, a huge stash of bitcoins that he would own if he were indeed Satoshi Nakamoto.

CARREYROU: That’s true. And he did not disclose such a hiding place. And so if I’m correct that Adam Back is Satoshi, he’s omitting very important information, and under US law that’s a prosecutable crime. Now, of course, you would need the SEC to look into this, and I don’t know if they will under our current administration. This is an extremely pro-cryptocurrency administration, so I’m not convinced the SEC is actually going to look into this issue.

KELLY: This is a very basic question. Why is this important? Why do we need to know who Satoshi Nakamoto really is?

CARREYROU: Well, bitcoin has seen quite significant development over the last 17 years. This gave rise to a $2 1/2 trillion industry. And it’s used, you know, by people like the Argentinians as a store of wealth. Criminals use it to launder money. The crypto industry was exploited by President Trump to win the election and return to power. And he’s earning now – he and his family are making money through various crypto businesses. I mean, this invention has had a huge impact on our world, and I think it’s in the common interest – in the public interest to know who this person was who invented this thing and what their motivations were. And now we know it’s Adam Back. He was a cypherpunk. He was very concerned about privacy. He was very concerned about surveillance and censorship. He had a great distrust of government and he wanted to create what is called electronic money to work without having to deal with fiat currencies and outside the domain of governments.

KELLY: John Carreyrou, thank you.

CARREYROU: Thank you.

KELLY: He’s a reporter for the New York Times. His article is titled “My Quest to Solve the Great Mystery of Bitcoin.”

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