In fact, on a recent episode of the New York Times’ Daily podcast, Carreyrou said he’s “somewhere between 99.5% and 100%” certain that he’s figured out Nakamoto’s true identity, Yahoo Finance reports (2).
As a vocal member of the cryptography-focused online activist community called “Cypherpunks,” Back was unquestionably close to Bitcoin’s inner circle in the early days, and he never denied that. In fact, he openly supported Bitcoin and blockchain at multiple events and through his technology company Blockstream (3).
But Carreyrou’s article suggests that Back is hiding his true identity as Bitcoin’s founder. Of the many correlations Carreyrou dug up, some of the most convincing clues center around sloppy grammar and spelling.
Early in his piece, Carreyrou pointed out that Satoshi Nakamoto frequently “mixed British spelling and idioms with American expressions” in messages. Nakamoto also published a headline from the British newspaper The Times in Bitcoin’s first “block” of transactions.
That initial hunch led Carreyrou to focus his search on British suspects.
To further narrow his Satoshi shortlist, Carreyrou kept an eye out for consistent grammar or style oddities in Nakamoto’s messages. For instance, Nakamoto frequently mixed up “it’s” with “its” in his writing. He also used double spaces between sentences and frequently ended his sentences with “also.” And as Carreyrou discovered, so did Back.