Top Satoshi Candidate Didn’t Create Bitcoin, Adam Back Claims

Adam Back, CEO at Blockstream, is convinced that the late cypherpunk Hal Finney is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.

Back pointed to a blog post by Casa CTO Jameson Lopp, which aims to prove that Finney was not the man who started it all.

Finney has long been the top Satoshi candidate, but Lopp presented some time-stamped evidence to reject the narrative back in 2023.

In April 2009, Finney ran a 10-mile race in Santa Barbara while Satoshi was corresponding with former Bitcoin contributor Mike Hearn. Lopp pointed to photographic proof of Finney taking part in the race when the conversation was taking place.

Notably, the emails between Hearn and Satoshi that were published later fully align with the timeline of the race.

Finney, who famously received the very first Bitcoin transaction, was not able to work starting from mid-2010 due to suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The cypherpunk was originally diagnosed with the debilitating disease in 2009. However, the creator of Bitcoin still maintained a high level of online activity in August 2010.

This kind of activity would be virtually impossible since he was barely capable of typing at that point. Meanwhile, Satoshi was contributing code and actively participating in forum discussions, meaning that they had sufficient dexterity and mental focus.

Back, of course, insists that he also did not create the original cryptocurrency. The British cryptographer, who was famously cited in the Bitcoin white paper, has also been among the top Satoshi candidates for years.

As reported by U.Today, former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao recently suggested that Bitcoin could have been created by an artificial intelligence (AI) from the future.