Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym of the person or group who wrote the [Bitcoin](/blog/btc/) whitepaper on 31 October 2008 and started the network in January 2009. As of 25 October 2026, nobody has proven who Satoshi is. Two claims came out in April 2026. On 8 April, a New York Times investigation by John Carreyrou named the cryptographer Adam Back. Back answered on X: "I am not Satoshi." On 22 April, the documentary Finding Satoshi argued that Satoshi was two people, Hal Finney and Len Sassaman, who have both died. Neither claim includes cryptographic proof. That kind of proof would be a message signed with Satoshi's known keys, or coins moved from the early blocks Satoshi mined.
The newest claims (April 2026)
The New York Times names Adam Back (8 April 2026)
Carreyrou is the reporter who broke the Theranos story. His investigation in the Times argues that Back is Satoshi. Coverage of the piece lists these grounds:
- Back's background. He invented Hashcash in 1997, and the whitepaper cites Hashcash as reference 6.
- Writing comparisons. These covered "distinct errors, writing tics" and the same technical vocabulary, drawn from years of posts and emails (as reported by Decrypt).
- Timing. The investigation compares when Satoshi's last known message was sent with when Back first commented on Bitcoin in public.
- Back's answers in interview. Carreyrou read some of them as slips.
The Times piece also says Back would not hand over the metadata from his emails with Satoshi.
Back is co-founder and chief executive of Blockstream. On 8 April 2026 he denied the claim on X: "I am not Satoshi." He called the article a "combination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests."
Fortune reviewed the investigation the same day and wrote that "Carreyrou doesn't produce any smoking guns." It also pointed out that many early Bitcoin figures share the traits used as evidence.
Finding Satoshi names Hal Finney and Len Sassaman (22 April 2026)
The documentary was directed by Tucker Tooley and Matthew Miele. It follows a four-year investigation led by the author William D. Cohan and the private investigator Tyler Maroney. Its claim is that Finney and Sassaman shared the pseudonym: Finney wrote the code and Sassaman shaped the prose, including the whitepaper (as reported by Decrypt and Forklog). The film presents this as a theory, and no independent proof has appeared.
What the record actually shows
Satoshi's emails, forum posts and code are the only first-hand evidence. They support a short timeline:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 18 August 2008 | bitcoin.org domain registered |
| 22 August 2008 | Satoshi emails Wei Dai about citing b-money. The email says "Adam Back (hashcash.org) noticed the similarities and pointed me to your site." The draft is titled "Electronic Cash Without a Trusted Third Party." |
| 31 October 2008 | "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" posted to the metzdowd.com cryptography mailing list |
| 3 January 2009 | Genesis block, with a 50 BTC reward and the text "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" |
| 9 January 2009 | Bitcoin v0.1 released on SourceForge |
| 12 January 2009 | Satoshi sends Hal Finney 10 BTC, the first Bitcoin transaction |
| 11 February 2009 | P2P Foundation post: "The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work." |
| Mid-2010 | Control of the code repository and the network alert key handed to Gavin Andresen |
| 12 December 2010 | Last Bitcointalk post: "Added some DoS limits, removed safe mode (0.3.19)" |
| 23 April 2011 | Email to developer Mike Hearn, as reported: "I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone." |
The genesis-block text gives a date: the block could not have been made before that headline ran. Many readers also take it as a comment on bank bailouts.
The whitepaper lists eight references. Among them are Wei Dai's "b-money" (1998), Adam Back's "Hashcash - a denial of service counter-measure" (2002), and the timestamping papers by Haber and Stornetta. Nick Szabo's Bit Gold does not appear in the list.
The profile Satoshi gave
As of 2012, Satoshi's P2P Foundation profile described a 37-year-old man living in Japan, born 5 April 1975. Nothing on the profile has been verified. Some commentators link the date to US history. Executive Order 6102, which banned private holdings of gold in the US, was signed on 5 April 1933, and the ban ended on 31 December 1974. Nobody knows whether Satoshi meant the date as a reference.
Clues in the writing
Satoshi's posts use British spellings such as "colour" and "grey," and slang such as "bloody hard." They also often put two spaces after a full stop. The Swiss developer Stefan Thomas plotted the times of more than 500 forum posts. Almost none were made between 5 and 11 a.m. GMT, which is 2 to 8 p.m. in Japan, and the gap held at weekends. That pattern looks like a sleep schedule in the UK or eastern North America, not in Japan. None of these clues identifies a person, and other people who knew Bitcoin early share every one of them.
How many bitcoins did Satoshi mine?
The common estimate is about 1.1 million BTC. It comes from the researcher Sergio Lerner, who in 2013 found a single mining pattern, now called "Patoshi," across blocks from 2009 and 2010. His 2019 follow-up put the total at about 22,000 blocks and about 1.1 million BTC in block rewards. Other researchers put the total lower, at around 750,000 BTC. Nobody has proven which addresses belong to Satoshi, and the coins linked to the pattern have not moved since 2010.
The genesis-block reward cannot be spent at all, because of how the original software handled that block. People still send small amounts to the genesis address. On 25 October 2026, mempool.space showed that address with 67,123 transactions, 57.69 BTC received and nothing spent.
Does a Satoshi claim prove anything?
Answer what the next claim actually offers to see how far it can go: proof of Satoshi's keys, a court ruling, or only a case that makes someone more or less likely.
Does the claim come with a message signed with a key Satoshi is known to have used, such as one from an early block reward?
Does it come with coins moved from the early blocks Satoshi mined?
Has a court ruled on the claim?
- Yes, as with Craig Wright → Decided by a court
- No → next question
Does it rest on writing comparisons, timelines, interviews or the person's background, such as inventing a tool the whitepaper cites?
- Yes → More or less likely, not proven
- No, it is a name or a self-claim with nothing checkable → Not proven
A message signed with a known Satoshi key is one of the two things the article says would prove an identity, and anyone could check it on-chain. As of 25 October 2026, no claim has offered one.
Moving coins from the early Satoshi-mined blocks would show that someone holds the keys, though not who that person is. The coins linked to the Patoshi pattern have not moved since 2010.
The Craig Wright case is the one claim a court has decided. The UK High Court declared that Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto (result announced 14 March 2024, written reasons 20 May 2024), and his documents and signatures were rejected.
Writing analysis, timelines and interviews can only make a candidate more or less likely. Both April 2026 claims, the New York Times case for Adam Back and Finding Satoshi on Hal Finney and Len Sassaman, are of this kind. Back denied it: "I am not Satoshi." Many early Bitcoin figures share the traits used as evidence.
A name without checkable evidence proves nothing. Newsweek named Dorian Nakamoto in March 2014; he denied it, and the identification is widely seen as mistaken.
This sorts the kind of evidence a claim offers; it does not check any signature, address or document, and it cannot tell you who Satoshi is.
The people who have been named
| Person | Why they were named | Response | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adam Back | Hashcash, cited in the whitepaper; named in the 2026 New York Times investigation | "I am not Satoshi" (8 April 2026) | Not proven |
| Hal Finney and Len Sassaman | Named together in Finding Satoshi (2026) | Both died before the film was released | Not proven |
| Hal Finney (alone) | Received the first transaction. A writing study commissioned by Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg found him the closest match | Denied it; Greenberg later concluded he was telling the truth; died in 2014 | Not proven |
| Nick Szabo | Bit Gold; a 2015 New York Times article pointed to him | Has denied it | Not proven |
| Wei Dai | b-money; Satoshi emailed him before the whitepaper came out | Has denied it | Not proven |
| Peter Todd | Named in HBO's Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery (October 2024) | Called the claim "ludicrous" | Not proven |
| Dorian Nakamoto | Named by Newsweek in March 2014 | Denied it; the P2P Foundation account then posted "I am not Dorian Nakamoto" | Widely seen as a mistaken identification |
| Craig Wright | Claimed for years to be Satoshi | The UK High Court ruled he is not | Ruled out by a court |
Craig Wright: the one claim a court has decided
The Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA) brought a case against Wright. Mr Justice Mellor of the UK High Court announced the result on 14 March 2024 and gave his written reasons on 20 May 2024 ([2024] EWHC 1198 (Ch)). The court declared that Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, and the written reasons dismissed his claim to have invented Bitcoin. Permission to appeal was refused.
A later order barred Wright from starting or threatening new legal action related to Bitcoin. In October 2024 he filed claims anyway, reported at around £900 billion. On 20 December 2024 ([2024] EWHC 3316 (Ch)), the court found him in contempt and gave him 12 months in prison, suspended for two years. A further judgment in 2025 ([2025] EWHC 1139 (Ch)) made it much harder for him to bring claims in England and Wales.
What would settle the question
Writing analysis, timelines and interviews can only make a candidate more or less likely. Two things would prove an identity, and anyone could check either one on-chain:
- A message signed with a key Satoshi is known to have used, such as one from an early block reward.
- Coins moved from the early Satoshi-mined blocks. This would show that someone holds the keys, though not who that person is.
Neither has happened. Wright's attempts to prove his claim with documents and signatures were rejected by the court.
Why it matters that Satoshi stays unknown
Bitcoin keeps running without its creator. Changes to the software are made by developers, people who run nodes and miners, and no founder can be pressured or called into court over the network. If someone controls the coins linked to the Patoshi pattern, that person would hold one of the largest balances of BTC. That gives them good reasons to stay hidden, and it also means any movement of those coins would be watched closely.
Limitations: some details here, including the contents of the April 2023 email and the methods behind the 2026 claims, rest on press reports rather than primary documents.
