Is Bitcoin a British invention?

Sir Issac Newton, Alexander Flemming and James Watt may all have to move aside to make way for another name in the pantheon of Great British inventors: Adam Back. According to an exhaustive investigation published by the New York Times today, the mystery of who created Bitcoin appears to have been solved. All the signs point to a relatively obscure British computer programmer. If it turns out to be true, Britain should be proud of giving the world its digital currency. 

The origins of Bitcoin have always been shrouded in mystery. The paper that first outlined the plan for a completely secure digital currency was credited anonymously to Satoshi Nakamoto who then went on to create the first network before disappearing completely in 2011, leaving behind 1.1 million coins (worth $70 billion today). Lots of candidates have been identified over the years, but none have been conclusively proved, and no one even really knows if he or she is alive or dead. The NYT thinks it has cracked it. Based on similarities in writing style and online activity, the paper says it is Back. 

Back himself has denied the story, dismissing the evidence as mere coincidence. We still can’t be sure if it is him, or someone else entirely. In fairness, the evidence is circumstantial, and it seems extraordinarily self-disciplined for Back to leave the $70 billion unclaimed. Perhaps we will find out for sure one day. And yet, if Bitcoin does turn out to be British then surely we should, as a nation, we should celebrate his achievement. Sure, Bitcoin may have slumped in the last couple of months – and it remains controversial. And yet, it is without question the greatest single financial innovation of this century and perhaps the last one as well.

There are now over 20 million coins, and there will only ever be 21 million to create scarcity. They have a combined value of $1.2 trillion. It has spawned a host of imitators, from Ethereum to Solana, as well as meme coins from celebrities, including President Trump. With ‘stablecoins’ even the mighty US Treasury may soon be issuing its own digital money.

Crypto has not quite displaced gold or the dollar as the world’s main currency, but in less than two decades it has made incredible progress. If that is not something to be proud of it is hard to know what is. The empire has long since disappeared, our navy doesn’t rule the waves anymore and our economy is rapidly sinking down the league tables. Still, it turns out that Britain can still change the world – even if these days it does so anonymously.