Adam Back

On 3 October 2016, Back was appointed as CEO of Blockstream.

Relationship to Satoshi Nakamoto

Back was one of the first two people to receive an email from Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of bitcoin. In 2016, the Financial Times cited Back as a potential Nakamoto candidate, along with Nick Szabo and Hal Finney. Craig Wright had sued Back for stating that Wright was not Nakamoto, with Wright subsequently dropping the suit. In 2020, the YouTube channel Barely Sociable claimed that Back is Nakamoto. Back subsequently denied this.

The 2024 HBO documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, directed by Cullen Hoback, examined Back as its principal Satoshi Nakamoto suspect, with Hoback stating that "the evidence pointing in Adam's direction was a lot harder to poke holes in." The film noted that Back is the only person named in the body of the Bitcoin white paper, and that Back's writing style resembles Nakamoto's. Hoback also highlighted Back's move to Malta, his edits to Wikipedia's Bitcoin article that restored its Nakamoto section and listed other suspects but not himself, and his joining the Bitcoin forum on April 17, 2013, the same day the size of Nakamoto's holdings first became public. In an on-camera interview for the documentary, after Hoback listed him among the suspects, Back replied: "I thought you might think I'm Satoshi. And I don't want that to be on the record, really." The film argued that both Back and the developer Peter Todd had been involved in the creation of Bitcoin, and characterized Blockstream, the company Back co-founded in 2014, as possible "corporate Satoshi".

In 2026, an investigation by John Carreyrou in The New York Times asserted that Back is Nakamoto, citing his use of certain less common phrases, shared niche interests, and the timing of Nakamoto’s final known communication and Back’s first public comment on Bitcoin, among other things. Back once again denied the allegation. Carreyrou concluded the article by demonstrating that while Back denied being Satoshi, he was unable to adequately explain a substantial amount of circumstantial evidence beyond categorical denial, and refused to provide the metadata attached to the e-mails he exchanged with Nakamoto. During an in-person interview, Back's body language at times appeared to contradict his denials, with his face reddening as he shifted uncomfortably when confronted with specific points. In one notable exchange, when Carreyrou raised a Satoshi quote stating "I'm better with code than with words," Back interrupted and responded as though speaking for himself, a slip that Carreyrou interpreted as Back accidentally responding as Satoshi.