The New York Times was wrong; Satoshi Nakamoto is not Adam Back, but Finney.

Written by: Silicon Valley Alan Walker

Carreyrou spent a year analyzing writing styles pointing to a living person, then ignored the dead, undeniable person. This is not investigation; it’s choosing a suspect who can be interviewed.

Alan Walker · April 8, 2026 · Zombie Café

This morning, Silicon Valley Alan Walker sat at Zombie Café, reading a tweet from The New York Times:

Adam Back, El Salvador, a 55-year-old cryptographer, is the legendary Satoshi Nakamoto.

He took a sip of coffee.

The New York Times reporter John Carreyou did something clever: he chose a living person. Adam Back can be flown in for an interview, recorded in a hotel room, and his “nervous body language” can be documented. He can deny it, and his denial becomes part of the news. It’s good journalism, but not good investigation.

Alan has been in this industry for thirty years, seen too many cases where the “most convenient answer” is packaged as the “most reasonable answer.” The true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is never about who is alive and available for interview. It’s about the chain of evidence.

The chain of evidence points to Hal Finney

First, let’s discuss where NYT’s case has flaws.

The core evidence from NYT reporter Carreyou is:

Stylometric analysis shows Adam Back’s writing style is closest to Satoshi’s; Back was “mysteriously silent” on cryptography mailing lists between 2008-2010; Back invented Hashcash, the precursor to Bitcoin’s proof of work; and Back “tensed up” in an HBO documentary.

More critically, Back submitted five emails between him and Satoshi in the Craig Wright case as evidence. These emails show they are different people. Carreyou’s counterargument is: “Back might have sent these emails to himself as a cover.”

This sentence appears in a NYT investigative report. It has no supporting evidence.

I’m not saying Adam Back isn’t Satoshi. I’m saying: if your strongest evidence relies on the hypothesis that “he might have forged the emails he submitted to court,” your case is invalid.

Now, let’s discuss why Finney’s case is stronger.

Hal Finney died of ALS complications in August 2014, at age 58. He was diagnosed in August 2009 and gradually lost typing ability afterward. He denied being Satoshi until his death. He couldn’t defend himself. This is his biggest weakness as a suspect, and the main reason everyone overlooked him.

But let’s look at the chain of evidence.

First clue: the first Bitcoin transaction

The recipient of the most important first transaction in history is either someone you trust or yourself.

Second clue: he lived next to “Satoshi Nakamoto”

Finney lived in Temple City, California, for ten years. His neighbor was a Japanese-American named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto—a retired engineer with no relation to Bitcoin, yet living under that name.

Is this a coincidence? Of course it could be. But if you were choosing a pseudonym for a project that would change financial history, would you pick a neighbor’s name or randomly generate a Japanese name out of thin air?

I thought about this for thirty seconds.

Third clue: code genetics

Finney created RPOW—Reusable Proofs of Work—in 2004. It’s the direct predecessor of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work mechanism, conceptually closer to Bitcoin’s actual implementation than Hashcash.

Finney helped debug early Bitcoin code in early 2009. He submitted feedback on overflow vulnerabilities, scripting language design, and transaction formats. These weren’t casual user comments; they came from someone intimately familiar with the codebase refining his work.

Meanwhile, in 2009, researchers found that in private messages between Finney and Satoshi, Finney used his Gmail account instead of his usual hal@finney.org. Most email metadata was removed. This unusual caution is noteworthy—a person emailing himself would care more about header cleanliness.

Fourth clue: timestamps and activity patterns

Jameson Lopp’s widely cited rebuttal states: on April 18, 2009, Finney participated in a 10-mile race in Santa Barbara, while at the same time, Satoshi was emailing Mike Hearn confirming on-chain transactions. Finney couldn’t have operated a computer while running.

This argument holds, but its strength is overestimated. There are three reasons:

More importantly, after Finney was diagnosed with ALS in 2010, Satoshi’s activity noticeably declined.

In April 2011, Satoshi announced “moving on to other things,” a timeline that aligns closely with Finney’s gradual loss of typing ability due to illness.

Fifth clue: the unexplained email

In 2020, researchers released a batch of never-before-publicized Satoshi-Finney emails, sourced from a journalist Nathaniel Popper who had access to Finney’s belongings. These emails date from November 2008 and January 2009, before and after Bitcoin’s release.

Note several details in these emails.

First, the email was sent from satoshi@vistomail.com, but Finney’s hal@finney.org server received it earlier than anonymousspeech.com—meaning the recipient’s server recorded receipt before the sender’s server logged the send. This should not happen in normal email transmission.

One explanation is: Finney forwarded Satoshi’s email account to his main account, so the local server received a copy first. Or—both accounts are under the same person’s control.

Second, when Finney provided the email to The Wall Street Journal, the version lacked much header data. Someone protecting another’s privacy would do this. Someone protecting their own privacy would do the same.

Sixth clue: he cares but never brags

In 2013, Finney posted on BitcoinTalk in “Bitcoin and Me,” recounting in detail how he “discovered” Bitcoin, became the first downloader, and accepted the first transaction. The post was heartfelt, full of emotion for the project. He said in his communication with Satoshi, he felt the other was a “very smart, very sincere person.”

Someone can speak about themselves in this tone. Especially someone slowly losing their body to ALS, reflecting on their most important creation.

He predicted Bitcoin would be worth $1 million each in 2011. This wasn’t an outsider’s prediction. It was from someone who knew the code’s cap at 21 million, understood the system’s logic, and knew the system wouldn’t fail.

Comparison with Adam Back:

Back’s silence can be explained by a hundred reasons: legal advice, media fatigue, not wanting to feed false guesses.

Back’s “nervousness” is a typical reaction of someone suddenly identified as Bitcoin’s founder in a documentary.

Finney’s evidence is structural.

It’s embedded in the first transaction on the blockchain, in his neighbor’s name, in his code, and in the timeline of Satoshi’s disappearance.

And what about that race rebuttal?

I know this is the most commonly cited. Finney was running, Satoshi was emailing, so they are not the same person. Consider these two possibilities:

The first: this proves Finney is not Satoshi, so Satoshi is Adam Back, supported by “stylometric uncertainty” plus “nervous body language.”

The second: the transactions and emails were prearranged or involved some level of collaboration, with Finney as the core organizer and ultimate executor.

Lopp himself admits the second possibility exists. He chooses to dismiss it because he believes Bitcoin was created by a single person. But he has no evidence for this—only a hypothesis.

If we allow Carreyou to hypothesize “Back might have forged court emails” without evidence, we can also hypothesize “Finney might have pre-set these transactions.” Both hypotheses rest on zero evidence. But one has a much stronger overall evidential structure.

I don’t need you to agree with me. I just want you to read this after reading Carreyou’s report, then judge for yourself whose evidence chain is more solid.

My coffee has gone cold. ☕️

Alan Walker doesn’t use question marks.