The long-standing theory suggesting that the National Security Agency (NSA) played a role in the creation of Bitcoin has resurfaced on social media after a decade. Bitcoin advocate Nic Carter has reiterated his support for this theory. On September 15, Iris Energy co-founder Daniel Roberts brought attention to this theory by sharing screenshots of a 1996 paper titled “How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash.”
This paper is one of the earliest discussions of a system resembling Bitcoin, proposing the use of public-key cryptography for anonymous payments without revealing users’ identities. Notably, the paper’s footer indicates that it was “prepared by NSA employees.” The sources cited in the paper include cryptography expert Tatsuaki Okamoto, who co-invented the Okamoto-Uchiyama public key cryptosystem in 1998. As a result of this revelation, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped to $26,655.
On September 21, Carter, who is a partner at Castle Island Ventures, reaffirmed his endorsement of the idea, expressing, “I genuinely hold this belief,” and then proceeded to say,
“I call it the ‘Bitcoin lab leak hypothesis.’ I think it was a shuttered internal R&D project, which one researcher thought was too good to lay fallow on the shelf and chose to secretly release.”
Carter has maintained this theory for quite some time. In 2020, he suggested, “If Bitcoin was authored by NSA cryptographers with the intention of creating a monetary tool, and the code somehow got out of their secure environment… does that liken it to a pathogen… escaping from a laboratory?” In 2021, he remarked, “The most significant contribution the NSA ever made to the world was inadvertently allowing Bitcoin to emerge beyond the confines of their research lab.”
Nonetheless, he clarified that this does not necessarily mean that the U.S. government covertly oversees all of Bitcoin, a separate theory that frequently accompanies the Bitcoin/NSA conspiracy theory, speculating that the NSA inserted a hidden access point into the Bitcoin code.
“In my version of this made-up idea, the researcher did it without permission of the NSA and chose to leave the coins behind so as to preserve his anonymity.” He further commented, “There is a wealth of additional indirect evidence that bolsters this theory.”
The Curious Case of Bitcoin’s Origins from Other Individuals
At the same time, some individuals highlighted one of the cryptography experts mentioned in the 1996 paper, Tatsuaki Okamoto, whose name bears a striking resemblance to Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous originator of Bitcoin. Carter remarked, “The name might have served as an inspiration for Satoshi. However, that’s not a pivotal aspect of the theory.”
On the other hand, Matthew Pines, who serves as the director of intelligence at the cybersecurity company Krebs Stamos, leans toward the idea that it probably resulted from a “collaboration between NSA cryptography enthusiasts and cypherpunk enthusiasts.” adding,
Former Goldman Sachs executive Raoul Pal has previously put forth his personal hypothesis. During an interview with Impact Theory earlier this year, he articulated,
“I think the U.S. government and the U.K. government invented it… which is the NSA and the GCHQ in the U.K., who are the two world centers of cryptography.”
In August, Cointelegraph conducted an extensive exploration of the conspiracy theory and had a conversation with former NSA cryptanalyst Jeff Man. He mentioned that while it’s technically possible that the NSA might have developed Bitcoin as a method for collecting intelligence about its adversaries, it remains highly improbable. Nevertheless, Man concluded that even if such a scenario were true, it’s probable that the true narrative behind the world’s most widely-used digital asset will remain concealed until it becomes inconsequential.