Adam Back

Adam Back is the co-founder and CEO of the blockchain technology company Blockstream. He invented Hashcash, the proof-of-work algorithm cited by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin whitepaper, which was intended to be the basis for its mining function in the future. Over the course of his two-decade-long career as an applied cryptographer and security architect, he has held senior roles at several technology companies, including Microsoft, EMC, PI, VMware, and Zero-Knowledge Systems, and has provided advice to many more companies on cryptography and peer-to-peer finance. Dr. Adam Back holds a Ph.D. in distributed systems from the University of Exeter.