The main conspiracy theory among the most persistent crypto enthusiasts is the claim that Bitcoin was created by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
This theory is based on a 1996 study titled “Cryptography and Anonymous Electronic Cash,” authored by NSA cryptographers. However, a closer, fact-based examination reveals fundamental flaws in this argument and asserts that the NSA did not create and could not have created Bitcoin.
The NSA document, released more than a decade before the Bitcoin white paper in 2008, is a review of existing cryptographic research in the field of digital cash.
It discusses various centralized, privacy-oriented electronic cash schemes and their security implications. While it introduces concepts such as public key cryptography, blind signatures, and anonymity mechanisms—all of which were already established in the academic literature by the early 1990s—the document does not propose a decentralized system. This alone distinguishes it from the radically different architecture of Bitcoin.
The NSA document bears no resemblance to Bitcoin and relies on a centralized authority (a bank) for verification and security.
The Bitcoin white paper, written by Satoshi Nakamoto, presented a revolutionary innovation: decentralized consensus through proof-of-work (PoW) and a distributed ledger (blockchain) without the need for a central authority.
This idea does not appear anywhere in the 1996 NSA document. In fact, all examples of NSA systems depend on a central financial institution, such as a central bank, for the issuance, verification, and redemption of digital currency tokens. Bitcoin was created precisely to avoid this centralized model of trust.
The NSA document does not mention Proof-of-Work (PoW) and relies on previous designs, such as electronic cash, which ultimately failed due to centralization.
The conspiracy theory that the NSA created Bitcoin is often cloaked in indirect hints with zero evidence. These hints include the NSA’s long-standing interest in cryptography, the employment of qualified mathematicians in the field, and its early involvement in standards such as SHA-256—the hash function used in Bitcoin’s mining algorithm.
However, none of these points serve as proof. The fact that a government agency contributed to the development of foundational technologies is not evidence of authorship. If this logic were valid, any software project built on TCP/IP or AES encryption, as well as the Internet itself, could be attributed to a government agency.
Furthermore, there are no hard documents, whistleblower testimonies, leaked memos, internal code repositories, or confirmed witness statements indicating that the NSA ever worked on a project resembling Bitcoin.
In an era when classified programs and surveillance operations have been exposed by insiders like Edward Snowden, it is hard to believe that a government-originated Bitcoin project could remain entirely undisclosed for over a decade, especially after gaining worldwide fame. Additionally, Snowden himself is a proponent of BTC.
The creation of Bitcoin coincided with Snowden’s active work at the NSA. Snowden revealed many secret and unsavory operations of the intelligence agencies, but he had nothing bad to say about Bitcoin.
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