Crypto Community Pushes Back at Professor Jiang’s Viral CIA Bitcoin Theory

A viral clip from the Jack Neel Podcast reignited debate over Bitcoin’s (BTC) origins after Professor Jiang argued that game theory points to the CIA as its most likely creator.

The Beijing-based educator and commentator, whose Predictive History channel has 2.3 million YouTube subscribers, framed Bitcoin as a deep state surveillance tool. The claim drew swift and pointed criticism from across the crypto community.

Did The CIA Create Bitcoin?

In the podcast, Jiang posed three questions. He asked who had the technical capability to build Bitcoin, who benefits from it, and why the creator stayed anonymous.

“When you do game theory analysis, you look at all possibilities, you end up with a deep state, the American deep state. You end up with a CIA,” he said.

Jiang speculated that blockchain may have been developed by the same institutions that developed technologies such as the internet and GPS. Next, he argued that the CIA could benefit from such a framework. 

According to him, blockchain could serve dual purposes: enabling large-scale surveillance and potentially acting as a covert financial mechanism to support off-the-books operations.

Finally, he claimed that secrecy would be essential to maintaining trust in the system. In his view, if users believed blockchain was influenced or controlled by a government agency, it could undermine confidence and deter participation.

Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens

Jiang also questioned where blockchain servers are physically located, arguing that whoever controls the hardware controls the software, regardless of open-source claims.

“Because I imagine if you’re able to control the hardware, you can also control the software. I don’t care what they tell me about open source and all that. I want to know where the databases are, where the servers are physically.It’s interesting too that it’s it’s designed like a religion,” he noted.

In addition, he flagged the Winklevoss twins’ large early bet on BTC after their Facebook settlement.

Bitcoin Community Challenge Professor Jiang

Critics called out the server question. An analyst explained that Bitcoin runs on tens of thousands of independently operated nodes globally, with no central server infrastructure and no single point of failure.

“Bitcoin is ultimately an IQ test and this ‘Professor’ has failed. It’s been 17 years and they still fail to understand the basics. It’s okay to say ‘I don’t know’ sometimes, you know,” the analyst added.

Ansel Lindner called it the “opinion of so many midwits.” He argued that such views explain why some gold advocates still struggle to understand Bitcoin and why others gravitate toward centralized, low-quality tokens. 

According to him, the core issue is a fundamental misunderstanding of decentralization.

“People with this view don’t truly understand the open source aspect or the proof of work aspect fully. A strong point about Bitcoin is that it literally doesn’t matter who created it. It can be assessed on its own merits since it’s transparent and decentralized,” Lyn Alden, an investor and author, added.

BeInCrypto previously analyzed Jiang’s claims, concluding that they align more with a conspiracy narrative than a substantiated account of Bitcoin’s origins. To date, no public evidence has linked Bitcoin’s creation to agencies such as DARPA, the Pentagon, or the CIA.

Meanwhile, speculation surrounding Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity is nothing new. Over the years, numerous theories have emerged pointing to various individuals. 

Most recently, The New York Times published an extensive investigation suggesting that Blockstream CEO Adam Back is the strongest candidate for the person behind Bitcoin’s creation. Back, however, has rejected these claims.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch leaders and journalists provide expert insights