Chinese-American Teacher Jiang Xueqin Sparks Online Debate With Claim CIA Created Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, published its white paper on October 31, 2008, and launched the blockchain on January 3, 2009. Its open-source, peer-to-peer design, with no central issuer, is widely viewed as an important experiment challenging traditional financial intermediaries. Jiang Xueqin has portrayed it as a tool used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, for surveillance and moving gray-market funds, fueling debate over anonymity and state power.

In a recent interview program, Jiang used game theory to argue that the CIA created Bitcoin to track transactions and transfer gray-market funds. Clips and reports of his remarks sparked heated discussion online. The cryptocurrency community pushed back, noting that Bitcoin’s code is public and its ledger is jointly verified by nodes worldwide, preventing any single institution from arbitrarily issuing coins or rewriting transactions. Jiang has also not produced any verifiable documents showing CIA involvement.