Ledger Co-Founder Adam Back Weighs In on NSA's Secret Curve Origins

Precedent & Market Context

The discovery of the Claude AI model has reignited debate about Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and the potential vulnerability of the blockchain to NSA surveillance. The breakthrough has significant implications for the security of the internet and the blockchain. Regulatory uncertainty may impact the pace of innovation in the crypto space, but the discovery highlights the need for greater transparency and cooperation between governments, industry leaders, and cryptographers.

Main Event

Nicolas Bacca, co-founder of Ledger, commented in an X post after Claude revealed the origins of the ECDSA curve, saying 'Checkmate Satoshi' in what seems to be a playful statement. In under half an hour, Claude discovered the origins of the NIST P-192, P-224, P-256, P-384, and P-521 seeds, with this reported on October 16, 2026. None of them were the results of any hash algorithm at all, but rather the output of the C library's lrand48 random-number generator, seeded with a Unix timestamp.

Analysis & Market Impact

Blockstream CEO Adam Back subsequently weighed in on the discussion, saying, 'That's the NSA's fault for not revealing the reproducible steps to generate their NIST published curves.' Bacca responded, saying, 'Right, but it still made a good joke.' The choice of secp256k1 over r1 (P-256) in Bitcoin (and Ethereum) was heavily influenced by the fear of an NSA backdoor. 'turns out there is no backdoor after all,' said Coinbase wallet lead Pete Kim, commending Anthropic.

Implications & Outlook

Some believe Satoshi probably chose secp256k1 instead of the NSA's P-256 because of this mystery, as it might be easier to trust the number 7 (the coefficient in secp256k1) than the coefficient in P-256. Claude traced the NIST P-curve seeds to a 1990s random-number generator seeded with timestamps, but Bitcoin never used those curves. This discovery makes backdoors less plausible but does not make ECDSA less secure.