Adam talks about Satoshi Nakamoto’s rumors at LONGITUDE Paris

Blockstar CEO and British cryptographer Adam Back, the inventor of hashcash, says it's “fun” that people think he's Satoshi Nakamoto, and it's probably a result of his being a bit “talkative” on the cypherpunk mailing list that started it all.

Back spoke with Cointelegraph at the LONGITUDE event in Paris in collaboration with crypto exchange OKX in a Fireside discussion focused on crypto regulation, market structure and the development of stablecoins.

Adam rejected renewed suggestions that he invented Bitcoin

As Meles told Cointelegraph, in a widely publicized New York Times article on April 8, claiming to be Satoshi, he denied it.

He said there is a logical reason why people think he is the inventor of Bitcoin. “The problem for me was that I was too talkative on the mailing list,” Satoshi later announced in an October 2008 Bitcoin white paper, referring to a 1992 cryptography mailing list.

“So when anybody was talking about electronic money, I was there, I was the person to answer what I had to say about it,” he said.

The mystery behind Satoshi, he said, is an “interesting question” that he and others in the industry have pondered but not answered.

Back before the fire, the event featured three panels at Web3 covering the role of traditional financial institutions, the need for more transparent regulation and the pace of stable coin adoption, a separate fire discussion with OKX Europe CEO Erald Goss.

MCA is “extremely useful”, but it also brings risks to creativity

Crypto industry executives say recent moves to regulate the industry are positive for improved transparency, but regulatory fragmentation and over-regulation can hurt innovation.

In an interview on stage, Goss shed light on the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Regulation, a framework OKX Europe will be fully compliant with by January 2025.

“I think MiCA is extremely important to the industry,” Goss said, adding that it helped build trust in crypto.

“Now it's a fully regulated asset class, which is very important,” Goss said, adding that industry participants are “refined and held to high standards.”

However, he warned that “regulatory burdens” could slow down innovation across Europe.

“Nowadays, because there is such a big and heavy regulatory burden on startups, I'm more afraid that the innovation and great entrepreneurship in Europe will start to transfer to other states of the world,” he said.

According to Certike CEO Ronggui Gu, the lack of a uniform global framework is a pain point for the industry.

“For developers, for crypto companies in different regions, they are still in different regulatory frameworks,” he said.

Commenting on the proposed US Clarity Act, mainly because of unresolved issues surrounding Statcoin affecting the banking system, Gu noted that while the bill aims to bring structure, “to be honest, a lot of the terms are unclear, and a little unclear.”

“I think different companies have different interpretations and so on,” he added.

“But I would definitely say it provides a more friendly environment for crypto companies, for developers,” he added.

Frederic Gregard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, said that he is “very confident” that the CLARITY Act will pass soon.

“They were shocked by that,” Gregard added.

“When this goes through, you'll see 100X adoption from non-TradFi,” Gregard said, arguing that “classical industries” are waiting for transparency before adopting the technology.

U.S. Sen. Tom Tillis of North Carolina said Monday that the Senate Banking Committee will mark up the legislation, also known as the Clarity Act, in April, and that Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott suggested he hold it off until next month.

The payments industry does a good job of “cheating” real-time payments

Mastercard's senior vice president of blockchain and digital assets, Christian Rau, said on a panel with Stella Development Foundation Chief Business Officer Raja Chakravarti and Ethereum Foundation Enterprise Leader Matthew Dawson that stablecoins are “well-suited for payment purposes.”

“They don't come with the flexibility of other digital assets because they enjoy regulatory transparency in many worlds,” Rau said.

According to Rau, the traditional payments industry does a “good job of manipulating real-time payments.”

“When I tap my card, it says transaction authorized or paid… it's authorization, clearing and settlement,” he said.

“A lot of things that work well at the moment, they still come with time delays, costs and so on,” he added.

Related: How MasterCard Plans to Solve Card Payments with Stablecoins

Meanwhile, the Stella Foundation's Chakravorti pointed to stable coin circulation of around $317 billion, up about 50% from last year, which he said had started to see a short-term cooling.

“Obviously, in the last couple of quarters, that has started to slow down a little bit,” he said, calling it a positive sign that some parts of the underlying infrastructure are starting to mature.

“I think this next transition is a stable coin in the area, because people are now very focused on creating that opportunity in a very important way in their economy,” he said.

Chakravorty cited the challenge of transforming digital assets into something “workable” within local financial systems, pointing to the “last mile” as one of the biggest barriers to adoption.

“I think that's the absolute key, ultimately, where all the friction lies in this system,” he said.

Magazine: Adam Back Says Current Demand Is ‘Almost' Enough To Send Bitcoin To $1M