[Cryptography] MAybe he's Adam Back, maybe not

[Steven M. Bellovin]

Almost all of the technical evidence is of that nature, though like many 
people I was especially amused that the journalist regarded it as 
significant that both Satoshi and Adam used C++ and public key 
cryptography. The only part that sounded vaguely convincing to me was 
the in-person confrontation at the end.

On 14 Apr 2026, at 0:16, Peter Gutmann via cryptography wrote:

> John Levine <johnl@ iecc. com> writes: >A long piece in the New 
> York Times claims to have figured out that Satoshi is >really Adam 
> Back. Some of the clues seem plausible, like linguistic quirks and 
> >relations to hashcash, some less
>
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> John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> writes:
>
>> A long piece in the New York Times claims to have figured out that 
>> Satoshi is
>> really Adam Back. Some of the clues seem plausible, like linguistic 
>> quirks and
>> relations to hashcash, some less so like the code being written in 
>> C++.
>
> It's all confirmation-biased examination of cloud pictures.  I've been
> identified as Satoshi a couple of times based on grapholo... sorry, 
> linguistic
> analysis when I'm definitely not.  For example something that someone 
> pointed
> out was that I double-space at the end of sentences and (apparently) 
> Satoshi
> did too.  This isn't some personal quirk that identifies me as Satoshi 
> but
> something that anyone who learned to touch-type before maybe the 
> mid-90s does
> because that's how it was taught, and most people posting to 
> cypherpunks in
> 2008 would be from that era.  So it's not "double-space = Satoshi 
> quirk", it's
> "double-space = learned to touch-type".
>
> If you stare at the clouds long enough you're bound to see Satoshis 
> somewhere.
>
> Peter.
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         --Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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