Bitcoin News
By James Thorp
1 / 15
What Each Investigation Actually Found. The New York Times took a harder look at Nick Szabo.
2 / 15
Why the Mystery Keeps Surviving. The core problem isn't lack of effort. It's the nature of Bitcoin's origins.
3 / 15
Bitcoin's biggest mystery just got murkier. Between October 2024 and April 2026, three separate, high-profile investigations each pointed a finger at a different person as the…
4 / 15
An HBO documentary, a New York Times investigation, and a feature-length film collectively named four individuals: cryptographer Adam Back, developer Hal Finney, cryptographic…
5 / 15
Each inquiry took a different angle, which is probably why they reached different conclusions.
6 / 15
The New York Times took a harder look at Nick Szabo. That's not a random choice — Szabo is well known for theoretical work on digital currency concepts that predate Bitcoin by…
7 / 15
The feature film went a different direction entirely and focused on Adam Back. Back is a prominent figure in the broader crypto space, and he's repeatedly denied being Nakamoto.
8 / 15
Wright is a separate and somewhat stranger case. He's the only one of the four who has actively claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto — a claim that has generated enormous controversy…
9 / 15
Related: BSTR Co-Founder Sean Bill Calls Out Bitcoin Treasury Firms Deployment Gap
10 / 15
The individuals named have either denied involvement or, in Finney's case, passed away — which makes verification basically impossible. Finney died in 2014.
11 / 15
The core problem isn't lack of effort. It's the nature of Bitcoin's origins. Nakamoto built anonymity into the project from the start, and the last known direct communication…
12 / 15
There's also a cryptographic wall that no journalist or filmmaker can climb over without cooperation from the subject.
13 / 15
So the investigations are left working with circumstantial material — writing styles, technical knowledge, geographic clues, timeline overlaps.
14 / 15
And that's kind of the point, isn't it? Nakamoto seems to have wanted it this way. The deliberate anonymity, the clean exit in 2010, the silence since — none of that looks…
15 / 15
See also: Optimism Ships Fault Proofs for Stronger L2 Security
The Currency Analytics
Want the full story?