The Tucker Carlson Show host and former Fox News political commentator, Tucker Carlson, won’t buy Bitcoin because it was created by a “mysterious guy who apparently died.”
During a Turning Point USA event honoring the late political activist Charlie Kirk held on Wednesday, Carlson told attendees he avoids investing in things he cannot fully understand, especially those with questionable origins.
“I try to limit myself to things I understand,” he said, adding that nobody has been able to explain who Satoshi Nakamoto really was. “You know, I grew up in DC primarily, in a government family. So, CIA. That’s my guess. Can’t prove it.”
Carlson: Bitcoin was made by the CIA
Carlson questioned the logic of investing in a digital currency created by an unidentified figure with access to billions of dollars’ worth of untouched coins.
“You’re telling me to invest in something whose founder is mysterious and has billions of dollars of unused Bitcoin. Like, what is that? And no one can answer the question, including some of the biggest holders of Bitcoin in the world,” he told the audience.
He added that some of his acquaintances who hold Bitcoin have brushed away his theories saying Nakamoto’s identity is irrelevant, but “It matters to him.”
The former Fox News journalist had previously shared similar claims about Bitcoin’s creation during the private Trump-supporting event at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville. At the time, Carlson joked that it was “obvious” the CIA had created the cryptocurrency.
“It was the CIA, we all know that. It’s like Signal, they got there first. It’s a honeytrap!” he said, chuckling.
Despite his reservations about the cryptocurrency’s origins, Carlson said he “loves” the principles behind Bitcoin because it provides “financial autonomy.”
“I don’t want what I buy or sell to be tracked. I don’t want my money to be tracked. It’s nobody’s business. I pay my taxes … I don’t care if it was the CIA. It doesn’t matter. The idea is still a great idea,” he told the audience yesterday.
Internet debates over Satoshi’s identity
The true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, who published the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008, is still one of the internet’s most enduring mysteries. The pseudonymous figure vanished from public communication in 2011, after sending a final message to collaborators that read, “I’ve moved on to other things and probably won’t be around in the future.”
Over the years, netizens have been trying to uncover who Nakamoto might be, or if he is still alive. Some Reddit users have speculated that Satoshi could be a collective of cryptographers rather than one individual.
On the r/Bitcoin subreddit, one user wrote that Nakamoto was motivated to create a non-government-controlled currency, which made it “impossible” that he worked for institutions like the CIA, NSA, or the U.K.’s GCHQ.
Another noted that Bitcoin was built on pre-existing technologies such as proof of work, timestamp servers, blockchains, and Merkle trees, all of which were independently invented years before Bitcoin’s release.
“Bitcoin’s true innovation was putting it all together into a working decentralized digital currency system,” the Redditor reckoned.
One theory about Nakamoto’s identity the community almost stuck with was Satoshi being Leonard Harris Sassaman, an American cryptographer in the cypherpunk community.
Sassaman was known for his contributions to privacy and encryption technologies, but died by suicide in 2011 at age 31 after a long struggle with depression and neurological illness.
His death occurred shortly after Nakamoto’s last message, leading some to link the two events. However, this theory was largely debunked in 2014 when Satoshi was confirmed to still be alive.
As reported by Cryptopolitan, Satoshi Nakamoto is regarded as one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, according to blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence. The elusive Bitcoin creator is estimated to control more than one million Bitcoin, valued at approximately $120 billion.
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