Saylor Rejects Carreyrou's Adam Back Satoshi Claim
Michael Saylor highlighted a flaw in John Carreyrou's stylometry-based investigation: contemporaneous emails between Satoshi and Adam Back show they were distinct individuals during Bitcoin's early development.
Key Takeaway
Without a signature from Satoshi's keys, even an 18-month stylometry investigation is just narrative.
Strategy founder Michael Saylor said stylometry is interesting but not proof after investigative journalist John Carreyrou named Blockstream CEO Adam Back as Bitcoin's creator.
Carreyrou spent 18 months using stylometry analysis to identify Back as Satoshi Nakamoto. The investigation ran in The Times. But Saylor pointed to contemporaneous emails between Satoshi and Back during Bitcoin's early development as evidence they were distinct individuals.
Saylor said until someone signs with Satoshi's keys, every theory is just narrative. Bitcoin evangelist Jameson Lopp went further, saying Satoshi Nakamoto can't be caught with stylometric analysis. He criticized Carreyrou for painting a huge target on Adam's back with such weak evidence.
Bloomberg analyst Joe Weisenthal said he wasn't 100% convinced by the evidence or the conclusion. The stylometry is interesting, but all the cypherpunks had similar thoughts on politics and privacy and the architecture of the internet. That overlap makes it hard to distinguish one writer from another based on style alone.
The debate over Satoshi's identity has produced multiple theories over the years, but none have been definitively proven. Saylor's point about the private keys remains the standard most Bitcoin developers accept as proof. Back invented Hashcash in 1997, more than a decade before Bitcoin launched in 2009.
This article was written based on reporting from U.Today.
