Over the past 15 years, numerous conspiracy theories have emerged about the creation and origins of Bitcoin. Some believe it was created by engineers in the Chinese Communist Party or benevolent aliens. However, one theory that has persisted involves the United States National Security Agency (NSA). This theory is supported by the fact that Bitcoin’s source code uses the Secure Hash Algorithm 256 (SHA-256), which was designed by mathematician Glenn M. Lilly under the direction of the NSA. The NSA also published a paper in 1996 describing a Bitcoin-like system for anonymous electronic cash. Some Bitcoiners even speculate that Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, is a reference to the CIA, as Nakamoto loosely translates to “central” in Japanese. However, there is no solid evidence to support these theories, and many Bitcoiners dismiss them as unlikely. Former NSA cryptanalyst Jeff Man believes it is feasible that the NSA could have created Bitcoin for intelligence-gathering purposes, but he doubts it based on his experience at the agency. Ultimately, it is unlikely that we will ever know for certain if the NSA was involved in the creation of Bitcoin.
