The enduring mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto's real identity has taken another twist, as a tech journalist's attempt to pry information from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was rebuffed with the agency's infamous “Glomar response”—a refusal to confirm or deny the existence of any records.
FOIA Roadblock: The Glomar Maneuver
Daniel Oberhaus, a staff writer at Motherboard, filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with both the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), seeking all internal emails containing the name “Satoshi Nakamoto.” While he considered the requests a long shot, the CIA's reply was particularly telling. The agency stated that it “can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the requested documents,” a standard tactic known as the Glomar response—named after a CIA cover company, Global Marine, used during a secret 1970s submarine salvage operation. The phrasing allows intelligence agencies to avoid revealing whether they even possess sensitive materials, effectively stonewalling the requester without confirming any facts.
Oberhaus noted that he “figured it couldn’t hurt to ask some other three-letter agencies what they know about Nakamoto” while filing unrelated FOIA requests. Despite adhering to typical guidelines, his efforts yielded no substantive documents from the CIA. The FBI's response has not been disclosed. The incident underscores the extreme secrecy surrounding one of Bitcoin's most tantalizing questions: who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
NSA's Stylometric Analysis: A Digital Fingerprint
More detailed allegations come from blogger Alexander Muse, who published a series of Medium posts in 2017 detailing his investigation into Satoshi's identity. Muse claims to have spoken with a source inside the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) deployed a sophisticated “writer invariant” stylometric technique to analyze Nakamoto's writings. According to Muse, the NSA extracted the 50 most common words from Satoshi's known texts, divided the writing into 5,000-word chunks, and calculated the frequency of those words per chunk. This generated a unique 50-number identifier for each segment. The data was then projected into a 50-dimensional space and flattened onto a plane using principal component analysis, creating a “fingerprint” comparable to trillions of other writing samples collected globally.
Muse further elaborated that the Obama administration harbored serious concerns that Satoshi might be an agent of Russia or China, potentially weaponizing Bitcoin against the United States. “Why go to so much trouble to identify Satoshi? My source tells me that the Obama administration was concerned that Satoshi was an agent of Russia or China—that Bitcoin might be weaponized against us in the future. Knowing the source would help the administration understand their motives,” Muse wrote. He confirmed that he was ultimately unable to learn Satoshi's true identity, but concluded that DHS “does know” and that Bitcoin's first billionaire was likely a group of individuals.
The blogger's efforts did not go unnoticed. DHS contacted Muse directly and requested an interview, which he accepted. He was barred from publishing the details of their discussion, but mentioned that “the only way to contact me now is via text—and it is likely I’m going to have to change my number fairly soon. I still don’t know who Satoshi Nakamoto really is—but I believe the NSA does.”
The Search Continues: Still No Final Answer
The CIA's Glomar response and the alleged NSA analysis provide compelling circumstantial evidence that U.S. intelligence agencies have at least investigated—and possibly identified—Satoshi Nakamoto. However, no official confirmation has ever been released. The mystery persists, fueling endless speculation and occasional self-proclaimed unveilings, none of which have been universally accepted. For the Bitcoin community, the question is more than academic: a revealed identity could reshape the narrative of decentralization and government oversight. As of now, the CIA's public affairs office remains silent, and the world is left with more questions than answers.