Adam Back is the CEO of Blockchain technology company Blockstream. He has been involved in the development of cryptocurrency since the 1990s. His development of Hashcash later went on to power the mining part of the Bitcoin protocol. Despite his work being referenced in the Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi claimed to have not been aware of his paper. Adam Back claims to have talked on several occasions with Satoshi, but their conversations were never published.

See Timeline

1997

Hash Cash

Back in 1997, Adam proposed a ‘partial hash collision based postage scheme’ which aimed to use cryptography to limit email spam. What Adam described later went on to be labeled as Proof of Work, the key consensus algorithm behind Bitcoin dictating how blocks are mined on the network.Source

1998

A Crypto Vision

Adam was one of the world’s first Cypherpunks talking about the possibility of a cryptocurrency over the course of 10 years before the development of Bitcoin. He openly criticised his own and others’ work and discussed the changes needed to resolve any anonymity, scalability, and transparency issues in developing a decentralised digital currency on the Cypherpunk forums.Source

2008

One pretty big mention

Getting a mention in the Bitcoin Whitepaper is a pretty big deal. Adam’s paper on Hashcash was referenced in the paper after Wei pointed Satoshi to the paper. Satoshi claimed to have never seen it, but was Satoshi trying to get around the fact that Hashcash was his own work?Source

2008

Back to Silence

Adam Back took himself completely out of the public eye during the development of the Bitcoin project from 2009-2010. However, after Satoshi took a step back from the Bitcoin project, Adam came back on the bitcointalk.org forum and sounded like he had very advanced knowledge of the development of Bitcoin.Source

2008

Hiding Something

Back claims to have had email correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto, but despite this, he is one of the only Cypherpunks not to publish his emails with Satoshi. Many have done this to share Satoshi’s vision for the Bitcoin project as it has grown. Could Back be the man on the other side of the emails?Source

2020

Satoshi Was British?

Both Satoshi and Back used British-English rather than American-English. Their writing style was also extremely similar, using double spaces throughout their messages and using British spellings. Almost everyone who has been linked to Satoshi has American origins apart from Adam. Could there be a reason he writes just like Satoshi?Source

Why did you make this?

The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto and the creation of Bitcoin is such an engaging story we wanted to pull all the pieces of evidence into one interactive piece and potentially crack the puzzle as a collaboration with the blockchain community. The real question is, is it better for Satoshi to remain anonymous?

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Use our Vote Page or click the Vote Now button on your chosen Satoshi suspect. All voting is conducted through Twitter so make sure you send the Tweet once you click Vote. You can use the hashtag #HuntForSatoshi to keep up with all the results.

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