In the crypto scene, Adam Back is a legend. As early as 1997, the British cryptographer developed Hashcash, a system Satoshi Nakamoto cites in the bitcoin white paper. Last April, The New York Times even suggested he might be Satoshi himself (article behind paywall).

Back traveled from Menlo Park to Lugano specifically for the Plan ₿ Forum. He brought with him a new office and a new line of business. His company, Blockstream, is opening a hub for its European operations in Lugano and launching a new unit, Blockstream Consulting Services.

Bitcoin in the Core Banking System

The unit targets banks, asset managers and other financial institutions. It aims to support them in evaluating, designing and implementing bitcoin-based financial infrastructure, for example in issuing tokenized assets or in confidential settlement.

"The next phase of bitcoin adoption is its integration into existing financial systems," says Back, co-founder and CEO of the company, which was founded in 2014. Blockstream's experience in cryptography and protocol development, he argues, gives it the expertise to address the complexities of that integration.

Zurich Roots

For Back, Switzerland is familiar territory. His mother is from Zurich. "I came to Switzerland many times as a child growing up," he tells finews. "And I have been to Lugano many years ago as a teenager with my extended family." Blockstream has been attending the Plan ₿ Forum and the Bitcoin Summer School in Lugano for a few years.

Ticino is not new territory for the business either. In July 2025, Blockstream established its European headquarters in Lugano through the acquisition of local startup Elysium Lab. Lugano remains the technical base, while most prospective banking clients are located in German- and French-speaking Switzerland.

Wealth Managers, Not the Mass Market

Back explains the focus on Switzerland with the structure of its banking industry: "There's a concentration of wealth management in Switzerland. The wealth management segment of banking is much more bitcoin-attuned and interested. And it's a bigger part of that business than it is of high-street or mainstream banking in bigger countries like the US."

He expects growth above all in asset management and in technology for institutions. With BlackRock's bitcoin ETFs, the asset itself is becoming more institutional. "The institutions have not been involved in bitcoin in a deep way for such a long time. Maybe three years or something, it's becoming more serious."

From Hardware Wallets to Mexican Bonds

So far, Blockstream has relied on several pillars, according to Back: a retail business with the Jade hardware wallet and software, paid data services such as a block explorer, and a bitcoin price feed operated jointly with ICE Data Services, a unit of the owner of the New York Stock Exchange.

On top of that comes the Liquid Network, a bitcoin layer-two for tokenized assets and stablecoins with around 80 member companies. According to Back, the largest single item is tokenized promissory notes of small businesses in Mexico. "It's an example of organic use cases that are satisfying an area of finance that was underserved or that was inefficient because it was paper-based and error-prone."

"We Don't Know Who Satoshi Is"

So how did Back take the Satoshi theory put forward by investigative journalist John Carreyrou in The New York Times? Carreyrou spent a year researching and approached him at a conference in El Salvador. "Based on the look on his face, I asked him, 'Have you decided that I'm Satoshi?' And he's like, 'Yes.'" He seemed quite convinced. "But that's obviously a strange phenomenon for me, because it's not me."

"It's a mystery. People want to speculate, and I'm probably as good a candidate as anybody." For bitcoin, Back says, the myth is ultimately beneficial: "Unlike something like Facebook or Tesla, there's not a CEO with some personality quirks. Some people like them, some people don't. We don't know who Satoshi is. That's good. And it's probably gonna stay that way."