KATRIN BENNHOLD2026年4月17日 Amir Hamja for The New York TimesMy mum, a privacy-minded German in her 80s, hates using her credit card. She still carries around wads of cash to pay for everything: a coffee, her weekly supermarket shopping — even a plane ticket to visit me in Wales.我母亲是一位80多岁、极度注重隐私的德国人。她痛恨使用信用卡，至今出门仍揣着厚厚一沓现金，什么都用现金支付：咖啡、每周的超市采购，就连来威尔士看我的机票也不例外。She would get along with Satoshi Nakamoto, the legendary inventor of Bitcoin who operates under a pseudonym and created the first cryptocurrency — a form of electronic cash that leaves no digital trace for banks and governments to follow.她肯定能跟中本聪合得来，这位比特币的传奇发明者一直以化名示人，他创造了世界上第一种加密货币——一种不会留下任何数字痕迹、银行和政府都无法追踪的电子现金。Nakamoto is a godlike figure in the crypto community. But who is he really? Countless people have tried to unmask him. My colleague John Carreyrou, an investigative reporter who uncovered the Theranos scandal, thinks he figured it out. I spoke to him about his investigation.中本聪在加密货币圈里是神一般的存在。但他究竟是谁？无数人试图揭开他的面纱。我的同事约翰·卡雷鲁——曾经揭露塞拉诺斯丑闻的调查记者——认为他已经找到了答案。我和他聊了聊他的这次调查。 The New York TimesUnmasking Bitcoin’s creator揭开比特币创造者的真面目So John, I want to talk about your fascinating Bitcoin investigation. But before we start, can you just give me the 101 version of the Bitcoin origin story?约翰，我想和你聊聊你这次引人入胜的比特币调查。不过开始之前，能不能先给我讲讲比特币起源的入门知识？Bitcoin was a revolution in the world of finance. It was the first cryptocurrency and it has given rise to many others. And it was first laid out in a paper that appeared out of nowhere in an obscure corner of the internet in 2008.比特币是金融界的一场革命。它是第一种加密货币，也催生了此后无数的加密货币。2008年，一篇论文突然出现在互联网一个不起眼的角落，比特币的构想就此首次公之于众。The author, who identified himself as Satoshi Nakamoto, described his idea of a decentralized electronic currency that people can use to send one another money from all over the world with no fees, no banks and no government overseeing it.论文作者自称中本聪，他提出了一种去中心化电子货币的理念，人们可以利用它在全球范围内互相转账，无需手续费，无需经过银行，也不受任何政府监管。OK, let’s talk about Satoshi Nakamoto. How did people become so obsessed with him?好的，那我们来说说中本聪。为什么人们会对他这么着迷？People began suspecting pretty quickly that this was a pseudonym. And as the interest in Bitcoin grew — several hundred million people use it today — so did the interest in solving this mystery of his identity. I’ve personally been captivated by this mystery for a dozen years and I spent a year and a half on my story.人们很快就怀疑这是个化名。而随着比特币的热度不断攀升——如今已有数亿人在使用它，人们也越来越想揭开他的身份之谜。我个人被这个谜团吸引已经有十几年了，为了写这篇报道，我花了一年半的时间。Why?为什么？I think it’s in the public’s interest to know who created this technology that has upended our financial landscape. It’s being used for good — like giving people in countries with unstable currencies a reliable store of value — but it’s also used for many bad purposes because there is no oversight: Criminals use it for money laundering. Iran is using it to circumvent sanctions.我认为，了解这项颠覆了我们金融格局的技术由谁创造是符合公众利益的。它有好的一面——比如能让生活在货币不稳定国家的人们拥有一种可靠的价值储存手段。但是由于缺乏监管，它也被用于大量不良目的：犯罪分子用它洗钱，伊朗用它规避制裁。Is that why he didn’t want his identity known?这就是他不想暴露身份的原因吗？Well, there’s something very subversive about crypto. Currencies historically are controlled by governments. Bitcoin is under no one’s control. And so one likely reason Satoshi used a pseudonym was because he feared legal retaliation from the U.S. and other governments.嗯，加密货币本身就带有极强的颠覆性。历史上，货币一直由政府掌控，而比特币不受任何人控制。因此，中本聪使用化名，一个很可能的原因就是害怕遭到美国及其他政府的法律报复。I think Satoshi also didn’t want people to treat Bitcoin as just another company with a product and a C.E.O. He wants Bitcoin to feel like a discovery, like digital gold — a digital commodity that was discovered and is mined from the ground of the internet. Not having a named founder with a human face helps with that story.此外，我觉得中本聪也不希望人们把比特币仅仅当作一家拥有产品和首席执行官的普通公司。他希望比特币被看作一项发现，就像数字黄金——一种从互联网的土壤里开采出来的数字商品。没有一个有血有肉的实名创始人更能支撑这种叙事。So how did you find him?那你是怎么找到他的？There is a British computer scientist called Adam Back who is a pretty influential and prominent person in the Bitcoin community. He’s been on the list of the top suspects for many years, but no one ever got close to proving it — and he’s always denied it.有一位名叫亚当·巴克的英国计算机科学家，在比特币社区极具影响力，非常有名。多年来他一直是头号嫌疑人，但从来没人能拿出确凿证据，他本人也始终矢口否认。But when I analyzed his and Nakamoto’s writings side by side, I made a number of discoveries. One of them was that both were pathologically incapable of using hyphens correctly. They use hyphens when they’re not needed and don’t use them when correct grammar calls for them to be used.但当我把他和中本聪的文章逐字逐句放在一起对比分析时，有了一系列惊人的发现。其中之一是：两人都无法正确使用连字符，简直近乎病态——不该用连字符的时候乱用，在语法要求必须用的时候又偏偏不用。And I figured this was a writing tic that we could perhaps track by doing a broader analysis with the help of A.I., so that’s what we did.我意识到这是一种独特的写作习惯，或许可以通过借助人工智能进行更广泛的分析来进行追踪，于是我们就这么做了。How sure are you that it’s him? In your story, Back insisted he wasn’t Satoshi and chalked up the linguistic similarities to a series of coincidences.你有多确定就是他？你的报道里提到，巴克坚称自己不是中本聪，还把语言上的相似之处归结为一系列巧合。He continues to deny it. But I’m between 99.5 percent and 100 percent sure. His denials felt pro forma to me, like he’s denying on the record so as to maintain plausible deniability.他至今仍在否认。但我有99.5%到100%的把握。在我看来，他的否认只是走个过场，仿佛他的正式否认只是为了保留合理的否认余地。I should say that the Bitcoin community has cultish undertones, and they have their god, Satoshi Nakamoto, and they don’t want anyone to put a human face and name on their god. They want to continue to think of this as a collective, non-hierarchical project, a decentralized electronic currency where no one is in charge. One of their favorite slogans is “We are all Satoshi.”我必须说，比特币社区带有一定的邪典色彩。他们有自己的神——中本聪，而且不希望有人给他们的神安上具体的面孔和姓名。他们宁愿继续相信比特币是一个集体的、无等级的项目，一种没有人掌控的去中心化电子货币。他们最喜欢的口号之一就是：“我们都是中本聪。”So who is Adam Back?那亚当·巴克又是个什么样的人？He was a member of this group of privacy-minded anarchists in the ’90s who wanted to escape the control, the surveillance and the censorship of the government. They wanted a currency that was outside of governments’ control because they feared that as modern financial transactions got increasingly digitized there would be a computer record of every transaction you made, and that governments would use that to track you. They wanted to get around that by creating what they called “electronic cash,” a digital version of physical cash that you can’t trace.上世纪90年代，他就是注重隐私的无政府主义群体中的一员。这群人想要摆脱政府的控制、监视和审查。他们渴望一种不受政府掌控的货币，因为他们担心，随着现代金融交易日益数字化，你的每一笔消费都会留下电脑记录，而政府会利用这些记录追踪用户。他们想要创造所谓的“电子现金”——实体现金的数字版本，无法被追踪——来规避这一切。Apropos cash, how much is he worth by now?说到现金，他现在身价多少了？We know that Satoshi mined 1.1 million bitcoins in the first 16 months of the project. At current prices, that means he’s sitting on a fortune of about $82 billion, which would make him one of the richest people in the world.我们知道，中本聪在比特币项目启动后的前16个月里一共挖出了110万枚比特币。按当前价格计算，他坐拥约820亿美元的财富，足以跻身全球最富有的人之列。You’ve met Back several times. What’s he like?你见过巴克好几次，他本人是什么样的？He’s the opposite of your typical crypto bro. He’s this mild-mannered, nerdy guy. He’s got slightly disheveled, thinning gray hair, a goatee and wire-rimmed glasses. He basically looks like a middle-aged computer scientist. He’s very pleasant to talk to.他和那些典型的加密圈兄弟们完全相反。他是个温文尔雅、带点书呆子气的人，头发有点乱，灰白稀疏，留着山羊胡，戴着细框眼镜，看起来基本上就是个中年计算机科学家。和他聊天非常愉快。Back in the ’90s, he would often write posts about the need to operate under an alter ego so as not to raise the suspicion of the government. This is someone who has been plotting this for a very long time.早在上世纪90年代，他就经常在网上发帖，说需要用化名行事，以免引起政府的怀疑。他已经为这件事谋划了非常非常久。本文节译自时报全球新闻电邮The World。翻译：晋其角