Adam Back is the co-founder and CEO of the blockchain technology company Blockstream. He invented Hashcash, the proof-of-work algorithm cited by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin whitepaper, which was intended to be the basis for its mining function getdata in the future. Over the course of his two-decade-long career as an applied cryptographer and security architect, he has held senior roles at several technology companies, including Microsoft, EMC, PI, VMware, and Zero-Knowledge Systems, and has provided advice to many more companies on cryptography and peer-to-peer finance. Dr. Adam Back holds a Ph.D. in distributed systems from the University of Exeter.