My Quest to Solve Bitcoin’s Great Mystery
Bitcoin’s creator has hidden behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto for 17 years. But a trail of clues buried deep in crypto lore led to a 55-year-old computer scientist named Adam Back.
By John CarreyrouWith Dylan Freedman
John Carreyrou spent a year digging through thousands of decades-old internet postings in search of Bitcoin’s creator.
April 8, 2026
One evening in the fall of 2024, my wife and I were sitting in traffic on the Long Island Expressway when, tired of listening to the jazz-funk station I often played on our drives, she switched to a podcast.
It was “Hard Fork,” the New York Times tech show, and the hosts were discussing a new HBO documentary claiming to have unmasked Bitcoin’s pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto.
I was instantly riveted. I had long considered the question of Satoshi’s true identity one of our age’s great enigmas and had poked at it before without success. Two years earlier, I had even spent several ...
IV. Confrontation El Salvador
I still did not have definitive proof of Satoshi’s identity. Only Satoshi himself could provide that, if he used a private key associated with one of Bitcoin’s first blocks. But I now had a wealth of evidence.
In mid-November, I wrote to Mr. Back to request another interview. This time, I didn’t beat around the bush. I wrote that I had concluded that he was Satoshi and I wanted to show him everything I had uncovered and give him a chance to address it. I even offered to fly to Malta. Once again, he didn’t reply.
So I decided to approach him in person at a Bitcoin conference where he was scheduled to speak in El Salvador two months later.
I landed in balmy San Salvador in late January with a plan. Mr. Back’s panel was on the conference’s second day. I would approach him then. But late on the afternoon of the first day, I noticed that he had posted photos of himself onstage at the conference on his X feed. Confused and worried I had missed my opportun...
Bitcoin’s creator has hidden behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto for 17 years. But a trail of clues buried deep in crypto lore led to a 55-year-old computer scientist named Adam Back.
By John CarreyrouWith Dylan Freedman John Carreyrou spent a year digging through thousands of decades-old internet postings in search of Bitcoin’s creator. April 8, 2026
One evening in the fall of 2024, my wife and I were sitting in traffic on the Long Island Expressway when, tired of listening to the jazz-funk station I often played on our drives, she switched to a podcast.
It was “Hard Fork,” the New York Times tech show, and the hosts were discussing a new HBO documentary claiming to have unmasked Bitcoin’s pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto.
I was instantly riveted. I had long considered the question of Satoshi’s true identity one of our age’s great enigmas and had poked at it before without success. Two years earlier, I had even spent several ...
A notorious North Korean hacking group is likely behind the theft of nearly $300 million in cryptocurrency over the weekend, an affected party has said, in the biggest known crypto heist this year. #NorthKorea#cryptocurrency#heist#DailySun