My Quest to Solve Bitcoin’s Great Mystery

Overview

After 17 years, we can finally reveal the true identity behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. We have conducted an extensive and in depth investigation and can reveal that Satoshi’s real name is:

Amy Jade Winehouse

The British connection

An extraordinary claim requires some evidence. The first piece of evidence is the British connection. In Bitcoin’s first block of transactions, Satoshi embedded text from a newspaper headline: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” The headline in question appeared in The Times of London’s British print edition, as opposed to the online or international edition, which had a slightly different headline, because it included the chancellor's name: “Alistair Darling”. This is strong evidence that Satoshi is British.

Amy Winehouse is also British and resided in Camden in London, England. This is a match! However, this alone is not sufficient evidence to prove that Winehouse is Satoshi. I was not totally convinced when I discovered this. It is just one component of a larger argument, involving many separate pieces of evidence.

Winehouse passed away in 2011

Winehouse sadly passed away in London on 23 July 2011, at the age of 27. Three months prior to this, on 26 April 2011, Satoshi sent her last known communication. In an email she said:

I wish you wouldn't keep talking about me as a mysterious shadowy figure, the press just turns that into a pirate currency angle. Maybe instead make it about the open source project and give more credit to your dev contributors; it helps motivate them.

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ucbpmb/just_11_years_ago_satoshi_nakamoto_sent_his_last/

The timeline lines up perfectly. Satoshi stopped communicating just before she died. This explains why all the messages and communication suddenly stopped. This also explains why Satoshi never spent any of the coins she supposedly mined in 2009, because she passed away. Again with respect to the timelines, we have an exact match.

Back to Black

Amy released her second and final studio album, on 27 October 2006, it was entitled “Back to Black”. This is clearly a homage to Adam Back, the investor of Bitcoin’s Proof of Work system in the form of hashcash. Almost exactly two years after this, Satoshi published the Bitcoin whitepaper, in October 2008, again mentioning Adam Back in the text of the whitepaper, just like how Amy named her album after Back.

The timeline is again an astonishing match. When Amy finished work on her second Album in October 2006, she then moved on to working on Bitcoin, before finishing her Bitcoin work in October 2008, two years later. This aligns with the time Satoshi said she spent working on Bitcoin in a 2009 email, which was released in 2024, due to a court case in the United Kingdom.

I'm not going to be much help right now either, pretty busy with work, and need a break from it after 18 months development.

Source: https://mmalmi.github.io/satoshi/#email-24

Satoshi said she spent 18 months developing Bitcoin. Which is pretty much an exact match, with the time gap between the release of Amy’s final album and the publication of the Bitcoin Whitepaper.

To further add to the confusion, the UK’s Spectator Magazine published an article stating that “Adam Black” was Satoshi. While Adam’s real surname is “Back” not “Black”.

Source: https://x.com/JoeNakamoto/status/2041930935520702695

This is not a coincidence. The Spectator is owned by billionaire hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshal of Marshall Wace. Sir Paul is a man in the know. No way would he let the magazine slip in an error like this by mistake. This was no accident! This was a subtle hint about Satoshi’s true identity, by creating confusion between Back and Black, Sir Paul was subtly pointing us to “Back to Black”, the name of Amy’s final studio album.

Support from Bitcoin OGs

Amy’s claim to be Satoshi is even supported by one of Bitcoin most OG developers, Matt Corallo. Corallo first contributed to the Bitcoin codebase in March 2011, a few months before Amy/Satoshi passed away. In 2024 Corallo stated that Winehouse was his “favorite Satoshi”.

Source: https://x.com/TheBlueMatt/status/1850602207743287605

Interlect

Winehouse was regarded as “highly intelligent”, as Juliette Ashby, Amy’s lifelong friend from the age of four, put it in a 2025 interview: “her intelligence astounded me”.

“She was so intelligent for her age,” she recalls. “She was reading all the time…not children’s books, adult books. Always had her head down reading. Her intelligence astounded me as kids.”

Source: https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/amy-winehouse-remembered/

Bitcoin is also a complex system, involving mathematics, computer science, economics, game theory, cryptography and finance. To understand these systems and design a novel new type of money, one would need to be highly intelligent. Again, we have an exact match between Winehouse and Satoshi, both were highly intelligent.

Libertarian Views

Winehouse was a notable user of illegal recreational drugs. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Winehouse opposed the laws banning drug usage, rules that she breached. Legalising drugs is a libertarian position. Libertarians tend to believe that people should be free to do whatever they like, as long as it does not violate the rights of any non-consenting third party. This includes the right to take drugs, which doesn't do any harm to anyone else, except the user.

Satoshi was also a libertarian and she even understood that Bitcoin was attractive to those with a “libertarian viewpoint”.

It's very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly

Source: https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/014853.html

Again, we have another perfect match between Winehouse and Satoshi, both were libertarian. This is quite a coincidence, given how much of a rare breed libertarians are and what a weird small niche libertarianism is.

Summary

When you combine all the separate factors mentioned in this article, the evidence becomes overwhelming. There are four separate areas of a complete match between Winehouse and Satoshi. It is therefore totally unrealistic to think this is a coincidence.

1. British - Match

2. Timing - Match

3. Intellect - Match

4. Libertarian views - Match

The case is finally closed. I have removed any lingering doubt in my mind that I have found the right woman.