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CRYPTIC CREATOR

Has the identity of bitcoin’s mystery creator been unchained?

An investigation from The New York Times puts forward its case to solve the crypto world’s biggest puzzle.

Millie Giles

From Agatha Christie’s enduring detective novels, to an abundance of true crime podcasts, to unmasking modern enigmas like Banksy, there’s no doubt that people love mulling over a whodunit.

For the crypto community, the question mark that’s loomed since a nine-page proposal for a little peer-to-peer electronic cash system called “Bitcoin” appeared on the internet in 2008 has been the anonymous creator of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency.

Working under the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto,” bitcoin’s creator initiated an industry worth some $2.4 trillion today by founding the revolutionary financial technology, leaving virtually no digital footprint. Countless fans, forums, and filmmakers have tried to pinpoint their identity over the last 17 years. Now, a new investigation from The New York Times claims to have an answer.

Blockbusting

Published early Wednesday, the piece sees author John Carreyrou put forward several striking similarities, based on a body of evidence amassed over a yearlong inquiry, between the so-called Satoshi and 55-year-old British cryptographer Adam Back, a prominent name within crypto who currently leads the Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, which plans to go public via a SPAC merger this year. His Wikipedia page has gained traction over the last decade, and his name has come up in previous efforts to reveal the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, but he wasn’t a front-runner until today.

Ignoring those whose claims to the crypto crown have already been debunked, a handful of computer scientists have repeatedly cropped up in theories: Hal Finney, the late programmer and Cypherpunk member who received the first-ever bitcoin transaction from Satoshi; Len Sessaman, a cryptographer named in a 2024 HBO exposé documentary; and Nick Szabo, the creator of Bit Gold, who’s been the subject of even Elon Musk’s speculation.

Carreyrou’s argument for Back cites a series of inventions related to decentralized networks, matching credentials and supposed interests, similar spelling and grammar habits, and a period of Satoshi inaction that all but says, “Have you ever seen them in the same place?” While Back has already denied the report, one thing is certain: efforts to unmask bitcoin’s creator will continue, even if there are some who believe it’s better if the world never knows for sure.

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Hyperliquid reclaims all-time high

HYPE, the native token powering perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid and its underlying blockchain, rebounded to reclaim its all-time high previously set at the start of the month.

Treasury firms Hyperliquid Strategies and Hyperion DeFi have also rallied as the token increased double digits in the last 24 hours to trade as high as $76.70, rising past its record price set nearly two weeks ago, according to CoinGecko. In the interim between all-time highs, HYPE pulled back to around $53.

The token has several tailwinds, the first coming from ETF flows. Since their inception in May, HYPE ETFs have yet to record negative weekly outflows, posting a cumulative total net inflow of $171.8 million, per SoSoValue.

The second comes from Hyperliquid spending basically everything it earns in fees to buy HYPE, a mechanism embedded into the protocol’s codebase.

The venue’s buyback funding mechanism is set to add a new source of yield. Validators of the network activated “AQAv2,” which means stablecoin deployers will share about 90% of reserve yield revenue on their supply within the protocol.

Around $6.1 billion of Circle’s USDC resides in Hyperliquid, per DefiLlama. Accrual begins on August 26 and the first payment is made on October 3, the network announced in its Discord channel last week.

A substantial amount of capital is riding on different positions of HYPE. In total, a move down to under $53 would result in the liquidation nearly 1.8 million HYPE worth of leveraged long positions on the on-chain perps venue, or $131.7 million, data from CoinGlass shows. For the upside, a climb above $100 results in the liquidation of more than 3 million worth of leveraged HYPE short positions, or $221.5 million.

HYPE’s rebound to all-time high comes after Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, defended his agency’s decision to approve regulated perpetuals, or futures contracts without expiration dates, CNBC reported on Monday.

Last month, the CFTC approved bitcoin perpetual futures trading in the US through regulated prediction markets firm Kalshi and an affiliate of centralized exchange Coinbase.

“Perps are highly likely to become lightly regulated and thus approved in the US,” said David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund.

“We expect to see perps for many different types of assets, from commodities to equities,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

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Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets, Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were very oversold following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.

Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop thats stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

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