At first glance, cryptocurrencies seem like perfect ground for mysterious rumors and speculative tales about plots by the powerful. Yet, to the surprise of every orthodox believer in tinfoil hats, there actually aren’t that many conspiracy theories with real substance behind them. One possible reason is that the topic is simply too complex for many storytellers who don’t understand what cryptocurrency is in general, or what specific digital assets represent, let alone the technological twists behind various initiatives and pilot projects that blend traditional and decentralized finance.
Even so, three themes fit the definition of genuine conspiracy theories. And they have nothing to do with the worn-out hunt for Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity, which looks more like a distraction from far more relevant questions:
- Who created Bitcoin and for what purpose?
- Who helped Bitcoin grow and how?
- What could eventually bury Bitcoin?
It’s worth noting upfront that this discussion includes information that can’t be fully verified. For that reason, the usual references found in CP Media materials won’t appear here. Instead, the article offers a generous trail of informational threads that curious readers can follow to judge for themselves just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Theory #1: Bitcoin Was Created by Intelligence Agencies
There’s a popular belief that the first cryptocurrency was created by intelligence agencies that might have pursued a wide range of objectives. The core idea is often summed up by the saying:
“If you can’t beat them, join them.”
It’s important to understand that the concept of virtual money, designed for cashless transactions, emerged in the early 1980s within the cypherpunk community. These were cryptography experts and privacy advocates who felt increasing pressure from expanding government surveillance and pushed back.
The origins of digital currency trace back to an American researcher named David Chaum. In 1981, he published a paper titled “Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms”, where he outlined the principles of an anonymous payment system based on cryptography. His work laid the foundation for today’s crypto industry.
Over the following decades, scholars and researchers contributed to the development of the ideas that eventually coalesced into Bitcoin. Among them were cryptographers from the US National Security Agency. In 1996, the NSA published a paper called “How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash”, which, among other things, proposed using public key cryptography to anonymize financial transactions.
Yes, that NSA. The acronym is familiar to every conspiracy theorist. Along with the CIA, the agency has become synonymous with surveillance of both US citizens and people around the world.
There is more. One of the core technological components of Bitcoin is the SHA-256 cryptographic hash function. It was developed by NSA specialists and later approved by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology as part of the Federal Information Processing Standards. These standards are openly published and recommended for use in government and corporate systems.
So there are several basic elements:
- A highly active community of cryptography enthusiasts who rejected government intrusion into private life in general and into finance in particular.
- A rapidly growing scientific, theoretical, and technological foundation that made it possible to build real-world versions of anonymous digital currencies.
- An NSA that actively studied the subject and designed cryptographic tools that were eventually used in Bitcoin.
This is the moment to recall the idea that if you can’t stop something, you take charge of it.
Beyond that, once intelligence agencies had access to a powerful financial tool not directly controlled by the government, they could use it to further their own internal goals. They would also gain leverage over the black market, a kind of honey trap for actors who prefer to stay in the shadows, with a wide set of options for dealing with them, from tracking to recruitment.
Against this backdrop, the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto becomes less important. The whole story starts to look like a long-term intelligence operation that grew far beyond its original scale and eventually slipped out of control, creating the crypto market and the high-tech industry surrounding it. This impression becomes even stronger when we turn to the next conspiracy theory.
Theory #2: Bitcoin Was Boosted by Tether
According to the official version, Tether was launched in July 2014 under the name Realcoin as a US-based startup. The first USDT tokens were issued in October of the same year, and in November, the company adopted its current name as a part of a rebranding.
Shortly before the initial token release, several legal entities were created, including Tether Holdings Limited in the British Virgin Islands. This entity still stands at the top of the corporate structure and unites multiple Tether subsidiaries registered around the world. One of these subsidiaries is Tether Limited. It was founded in Hong Kong in September 2014 and later registered in the United States, where it operated under a Money Services Business license issued by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau within the US Treasury. For a period of time, Tether Limited managed the tether.to website and oversaw token issuance on a global level.
The first dollar-backed stablecoin project was actually BitUSD, launched in July 2014 and now long gone. USDT, introduced a few months later, not only survived but became the dominant player in the market. By late November 2025, it accounted for almost 60% of the total stablecoin capitalization, which exceeded 184 billion USD.
The conspiracy theory suggests that USDT issuance became the main source of liquidity and the key driver behind the crypto market’s rallies from 2017 to 2018 and again in 2020 to 2021. The pace of stablecoin supply growth during those periods shows a suspicious correlation with Bitcoin’s price surge. Since the broader crypto market has historically moved in Bitcoin’s wake, the pattern looks hard to ignore.
Even today, the stablecoin inflows to exchanges are widely viewed as a sign that the crypto market is gearing up for another upward move. Tether remains one of the strongest forces shaping market conditions. It’s no coincidence that every major cryptocurrency, including BTC, is still priced in US dollars, the world’s largest fiat currency. USDT continues to post the highest trading volumes on almost every major exchange in pairs with leading crypto assets, aside from direct fiat pairs.
Until 2021, market confidence in USDT resembled the trust placed in the US dollar itself. There was no reliable proof that all tokens were fully backed, but traders chose to believe. Tether did undergo reserve audits, yet many of them raised more questions than answers. Since 2022, the auditing has been handled by BDO Italia, a regional branch of the global BDO network. On paper, BDO ranks fifth worldwide in audit and consulting, trailing only the Big Four. In practice, it is a network of independent firms, and BDO Italia has been tied to several scandals, including the collapse of The Rock Trading, one of the oldest crypto exchanges in the world.
So what are the main red flags surrounding Tether:
- A critically important role in at least two major crypto market cycles, during which total capitalization expanded from 150 million USD to more than 3 billion USD.
- A complicated corporate structure built around key entities registered across multiple offshore jurisdictions.
- Several investigations initiated by US regulators.
- Persistent questions about the company’s reserves.
- Close cooperation with multiple law enforcement bodies, the NSA among them, and the widespread use of USDT in underground markets, something Tether itself firmly disputes.
These points represent only part of the broader picture. What remains in the end? With the help of lawyers, lobbyists, and a public relations strategy led by Paolo Ardoino, the company resolved its disputes with regulators, addressed doubts about USDT’s backing, secured its place as one of the industry’s leaders, and largely rehabilitated its reputation.
What stays offstage are the beneficiaries, shadow partners, and the darker parts of Tether’s early history. And all of this fits neatly into the framework of the previous conspiracy theory. Once intelligence agencies launched Bitcoin and saw the project’s potential, they might have decided to push it further, which required pouring liquidity into the market. The result was an international structure that operated in a gray zone for a long stretch of time. It operated, to its credit, remarkably effectively despite repeated attempts by regulators to rein it in.
At some point, the market became large and resilient enough to grow on its own. When that happened, Tether’s role shifted. A form of interagency consensus was reached, or perhaps the project received approval at the highest level. In any case, Tether rapidly transitioned into the category of legitimate and transparent businesses in the United States, and its growth accelerated within a regulated environment. Naturally, all of this happened on its own, as it usually does in a free market economy. Everything described above is nothing more than speculation by the author.
Theory #3: Quantum Computers Have Already Cracked Bitcoin
The third theory is the most futuristic of all. The risks linked to quantum computing have been discussed at the highest levels of the crypto community for years. Work on post-quantum cryptographic solutions is underway, but Bitcoin remains highly vulnerable to these threats. A significant portion of the first cryptocurrency is considered permanently lost, estimated anywhere from 1.5 to 7.8 million BTC. Most of it consists of coins mined in the early days by enthusiasts who lost interest long before Bitcoin gained real value and who eventually misplaced the private keys to the addresses holding those assets.
The assumption is that quantum computers might be able to access such addresses using only their public keys. Traditional computing cannot break these protections, but quantum computation could theoretically make this possible. From the outside, such a breach would look no different from someone suddenly recovering access or simply deciding to take profit after years of sitting still.
Headlines like “Satoshi era coins are on the move” show up in industry media with impressive regularity, usually every two or three months. How likely is it that these movements reflect a closed-door demonstration of quantum capabilities at a place like IBM? Or that some research institute with an overly complex name is quietly “raising” funding to continue its experiments? Or, returning to the first theory in this article, that a senior NSA operator is opening a long-sealed crypto stash to finance a classified operation, one so sensitive that even the slightest possibility of a leak is unacceptable, which means no one can request an official budget for it.
It’s also possible that the so-called awakened ancient whale is nothing more than a cypherpunk who found an old hard drive with a forgotten seed phrase. Or a remarkably patient early investor. No one can say for sure. Reality can be just as unbelievable and fantastic as it can be dull and ordinary.
