Jiang Xueqin, a Chinese-Canadian educator and host of Predictive History, sparked debate after arguing that Bitcoin could have been created by the CIA or a broader American “deep state,” rather than by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. This claim, made on the April 15 episode of the Jack Neel Podcast, quickly drew backlash from prominent Bitcoin commentators, who said Jiang’s argument was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the network works.
Was Bitcoin a CIA project?
Jiang, a Beijing-based commentator with 2.3 million YouTube subscribers, framed his theory around what he described as a game-theoretic process of elimination. He said the standard origin story “makes no sense,” questioning why someone would spend years, or even decades, developing blockchain technology only to release it to the world for free and then disappear.
“Then you need to ask yourself three questions,” Jiang said. “First of all, it’s about who would have the technology and expertise to create something like blockchain. Second, you have to ask yourself who would benefit from creating this blockchain. The third question you want to ask is why would they keep this a secret?”
From there, Jiang argued that likely candidates were U.S. intelligence and defense agencies, citing the role government-linked institutions play in building foundational internet infrastructure. “Probably the same people who created the Internet, probably the same people who created GPS, DARPA, the NSA, the CIA, probably those guys,” he said. According to him, blockchain would serve two strategic objectives: surveillance and secret financing.
He took the argument further by suggesting that the network’s value depends on whether people believe it is beyond political control. “The answer is if people believe that this is transparent, open and beyond authority, beyond political control, it will have value,” Jiang said. “So as soon as people realize this is a CIA operation, people won’t put their money into the blockchain. People won’t put their money into Bitcoin.”
Jiang also highlighted what he sees as suspicious early adoption, specifically referencing the Winklevoss twins’ decision to allocate millions of dollars to Bitcoin when it was still a fringe asset. “They’re not technologists, are they?” he said. “What, why would they invest millions and millions of dollars into this thing? It’s really strange.”
Professor Jiang Xueqin claims that bitcoin was created by the CIA.
“Why would you spend years, or even decades, in your basement creating new technology and then giving it to the world for free? It makes no sense.”
“When you do a game theory analysis, you look at everything… pic.twitter.com/uLtRVpkj0t
-TFTC (@TFTC21) April 15, 2026
The Bitcoin community reacts
The reaction from Bitcoin-focused voices was immediate and brutal. Ansel Lindner dismissed the theory as the product of people who “don’t understand decentralization,” adding “That’s the opinion of so many idiots. It’s also the reason why even some gold bugs can’t understand bitcoin to this day, and why idiots believe in centralized scam sh*tcoins.”
Lyn Alden agreed. “Ansel is right,” she wrote. “People with this view don’t really understand the open source aspect or the proof of work aspect. A strong point of Bitcoin is that it doesn’t matter who created it. It can be evaluated on its own merits because it is transparent and decentralized.”
This line of rebuttal goes to the heart of the dispute. Jiang’s theory relies on origin and hidden control; but the facts about Bitcoin’s design make these questions far less important than he suggests, because the network is public, open source, and managed by participants rather than a central operator.
MDB, another Bitcoin commentator, focused on one of Jiang’s specific questions: “Where are the Bitcoin servers located?” He said that this question alone showed Xueqin’s core problem and lack of understanding. “Bitcoin does not run on a single company’s servers,” MDB wrote. “Bitcoin operates on a distributed network of nodes spread across the globe, which is exactly why it is difficult to censor, shut down or control.”
At press time, BTC was trading at $74,886.
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