Almost two years ago, the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto was revealed to be Peter Todd, a Canadian software developer, in the documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery. Today, The New York Times reports that the real identity of the creator of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency is Adam Back, a British cryptographer and prominent figure in the Bitcoin community.
In a year-long investigation, journalist John Carreyrou found several similarities between Black and Satoshi. Among them is the use of Hashcash, which is a key component used by Satoshi in Bitcoin. Hashcash was invented by Black.
Journalist John Carreyrou conducted a year-long investigation to find the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. The investigation eventually focused on Adam Back, a British cryptographer and prominent figure in the Bitcoin community.
Back was also an early member of the Cypherpunks movement, a group of activists, technologists, and cryptographers who discussed strategies to improve privacy and oppose government and corporate surveillance. The Cypherpunks archive shows that Back shared similar ideas to Bitcoin (10 years before it existed) such as bankless electronic money, a distributed system that is resistant to attacks, a “proof-of-work” mechanism and inflation control by increasing the difficulty of producing Bitcoin.
Linguistic studies have found other similarities such as Satoshi and Beck using British English spelling, similar grammatical errors, the use of unique phrases, a habit of typing two spaces after periods and the use of unusual technical terms.
Beck's behavior during the early days of Bitcoin is also seen as suspicious. After Satoshi announced Bitcoin in 2008, he was active for 3 years before disappearing in 2011. During that period, Back was completely inactive even though Bitcoin's ideas shared many similarities with ideas he shared much earlier. Back only became active in Bitcoin discussions after Satoshi's disappearance.
Although this report claims that Adam Back is Satoshi Nakamoto, Back himself did not admit to being the mysterious creator of Bitcoin when questioned by the author. So for now, the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, who holds 1.1 million Bitcoins worth $78,938,431,000 (~RM 314,008,892,340), has not yet been truly confirmed, but Adam Back is the closest candidate.
