British cryptographer and Blockstream CEO Adam Back posted on the X platform on Wednesday, once again denying that he is Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto.A previous report in the New York Times stated that the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, namely Adam Barker, had been confirmed. The New York Times' analysis relied primarily on textual analysis of past emails and posts, particularly irregular hyphen usage and British spelling conventions.
The report compared Buck’s early work in the field of cryptography with the writings of Satoshi Nakamoto, noting similarities in language, technical concepts and time points. The report also pointed out that Buck’s network activities appeared to overlap with Satoshi Nakamoto’s active period and coincided with Satoshi Nakamoto’s sudden disappearance after the release of the Bitcoin white paper.
Buck responded: "I'm not Satoshi Nakamoto, but I have been interested in cryptography, online privacy, and the positive social impact of electronic cash for a long time, so starting around 1992 I became interested in applied research on electronic cash and privacy technologies on the cypherpunks mailing list, which led to the birth of HashCash and other ideas."
Buck said that the conclusion of New York Times investigative reporter John Carreyrou suffers from the problem of "selective attribution": Because he is very active in the cypherpunk mailing list and posts much more than others, he has a higher probability of leaving comments on topics such as electronic cash. This makes it easier for investigators to associate his remarks with Satoshi Nakamoto, and this is just a statistical bias. Buck argued that the remaining evidence was the result of coincidence and the use of similar wording by people with similar experiences and interests. He pointed out that Satoshi Nakamoto required specific skills and experience to invent Bitcoin, and that he and many others in the previous ten years of design attempts "appeared to be close to the final solution, but in fact never got to the core."
Buck also said: "I don't know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, and I think this is a good thing for Bitcoin because it helps Bitcoin be viewed as a new asset class, a mathematically scarce digital commodity."
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