Does the NSA Hold the Keys to Bitcoin’s Creation?

Does the NSA have anything to do with Bitcoin?

Nic Carter, a Bitcoin advocate, recently reiterated his support for the theory that the United States National Security Agency (NSA) had something to do with the creation of Bitcoin (BTC).

On Sept. 15, Daniel Roberts, co-founder of Iris Energy, seemingly revived this decade-old theory by posting screenshots of a 1996 paper titled “How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash.”

The paper discusses a Bitcoin-like system, which proposes the use of public-key cryptography to allow users to make anonymous payments without revealing their identity. The footer notes show that the research paper was “prepared by NSA employees.” Sources included cryptography expert Tatsuaki Okamoto, who co-invented the Okamoto–Uchiyama public key cryptosystem in 1998.

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On September 21, Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures, voiced his strong opinion on the matter, saying, “I actually do believe this.” He has been a proponent of the theory for years, having proposed in 2020, “If Bitcoin was written by NSA cryptographers as a monetary bioweapon, if you will, and the code escaped those sensitive confines… does that make it a virus… that escaped from a lab?”

In 2021, he remarked, “The only decent thing the NSA ever did from the world was let bitcoin leak from the lab.” However, he clarified that this does not imply that the United States government secretly controls all the Bitcoin, which is a popular conspiracy theory that suggests the NSA created a backdoor to the Bitcoin code.

Does Web 3.0 Already Exist?

“There’s a ton of other circumstantial evidence which supports this [theory],” he added.

Some users suggested that one of the cryptography academics, Tatsuaki Okamoto, listed in the 1996 paper, could have been an inspiration for the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. “The name could have been used as inspiration for Satoshi. That’s not really a critical part of the theory, though,” Carter said.

Matthew Pines, director of intelligence at cybersecurity firm Krebs Stamos, believes it was most likely a “cross-fertilization of NSA crypto nerds and cypherpunk nerds,” adding:

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Raoul Pal, a former Goldman Sachs executive, has his own theory on the matter. During an interview with Impact Theory earlier this year, he suggested that it was “feasible” for the NSA to have created Bitcoin as a means to gather intelligence about its adversaries.

In August, Cointelegraph went into further detail about this conspiracy theory and interviewed Jeff Man, a former NSA cryptanalyst. Man agreed that it was possible for the NSA to have created Bitcoin, but highly doubted it. He concluded that it was unlikely we would ever find out the truth about the world’s most popular digital asset until it was no longer relevant.