Chinese Professor With 2M YouTube Subscribers Says CIA Created Bitcoin

Steady attention without excessive speculation.

The claim came from Professor Jiang Xueqin, a Beijing-based Chinese-Canadian commentator with 2.3 million YouTube subscribers. He made the statement during Episode 86 of the Jack Neel Podcast. As a result, the roughly four-minute clip spread rapidly across X, TikTok, and crypto forums starting around April 15, 2026.

Who Is Professor Jiang

Jiang runs the YouTube channel Predictive History. Specifically, he built a large following through classroom-style lectures on geopolitics, history, and predictive analysis. He is Yale-educated and also gained further credibility after correctly forecasting Trump’s 2024 win.

Despite the title, Jiang is not a university professor. Instead, the label is informal, earned through his viral content. In fact, he is a high school history teacher by profession.

The CIA Bitcoin Theory Explained

Jiang framed Bitcoin as a deep-state creation from the CIA, Pentagon, DARPA, and NSA. More specifically, he called it “the ultimate surveillance technology” and “the biggest scam in existence.” In his view, Bitcoin serves as a tool for tracking financial flows and also for funding covert operations off the books.

His reasoning relied on what he called “game theory analysis.” For instance, he asked: who had the technical capacity, resources, and motive to build a global monetary system in 2008? Furthermore, who benefits most from a public ledger? And why would someone create this and then give it away for free?

“When you do game theory analysis, you look at all possibilities, you end up with the deep state. You end up with the CIA,” Jiang said in the clip.

Key Pillars of Jiang’s Argument

First, Jiang called Satoshi Nakamoto’s anonymity “institutionally suspicious.” He argued that one person could not have had the servers, expertise, or cover to launch something this massive. In addition, the timing of the whitepaper, released right after the 2008 financial crash, seemed too perfect in his view.

Second, he drew parallels to DARPA’s creation of the internet (ARPANET) and GPS. Both were military projects later presented as civilian innovations. Similarly, Jiang suggested that blockchain follows the same pattern.

Third, he argued that the public blockchain ledger is ideal for surveillance. Because every transaction creates a permanent, transparent record, intelligence agencies could mine it indefinitely. Consequently, far from privacy technology, he called it a tracking tool.

Finally, on the Winklevoss twins’ early large-scale Bitcoin investments, Jiang said: “How did they know? They had insider information.” However, he offered no evidence for this claim.

Crypto Community Fires Back

The pushback came swiftly. Indeed, critics across X, YouTube, and crypto forums labeled the theory technically flawed and entirely evidence-free. In particular, the response focused on verifiable facts about Bitcoin’s architecture.

The most fundamental counterargument is simple: Bitcoin has no central servers. Instead, the network runs on tens of thousands of independent nodes worldwide. As a result, there is no single point of failure, no “kill switch,” and no subpoena-able server. According to analysts at BeInCrypto, Jiang’s question about “blockchain servers” revealed a basic misunderstanding.

On top of that, Bitcoin’s code has been open-source on GitHub for over 17 years. Global volunteers maintain it. Meanwhile, multiple security audits, including one by Trail of Bits, have found zero backdoors. As one critic noted: “If the CIA built this, they built the most thoroughly inspected surveillance tool in history, and left zero fingerprints.”

The Cypherpunk Origins

Bitcoin originated on the cypherpunk mailing list. This community was explicitly hostile to government surveillance. Before Bitcoin, precursors like Hashcash (Adam Back, 1997) and Bit Gold (Nick Szabo) already existed. Likewise, b-money (Wei Dai) is also publicly documented. All of these predate any known U.S. intelligence interest in the technology.

The first Bitcoin transaction, importantly, went to Hal Finney, a well-known cypherpunk. As one analyst summarized: “The ideological DNA of Bitcoin is explicitly anti-state.”

Prominent Voices Push Back on CIA Bitcoin Theory

Macro analyst Lyn Alden responded directly. “People with this view don’t truly understand the open source aspect or the proof of work aspect fully,” she wrote. In other words, “it literally doesn’t matter who created it. It can be assessed on its own merits since it’s transparent and decentralized.”

Similarly, Bitcoin analyst Ansel Lindner called it “the opinion of so many midwits.” He tied the misunderstanding to a broader failure to grasp decentralization, open-source development, and proof-of-work consensus.

Another crypto analyst was even blunter: “Bitcoin is ultimately an IQ test and this ‘Professor’ has failed. It’s been 17 years and they still fail to understand the basics.”

Why This CIA Bitcoin Theory Keeps Resurfacing

The CIA-Bitcoin conspiracy is not new. In fact, it resurfaces every few years, typically amplified by commentators with large audiences outside the crypto space. What makes this instance notable, though, is Jiang’s reach: 2.3 million YouTube subscribers, plus cross-platform amplification on X and TikTok.

Still, no documents, leaks, or whistleblowers have ever supported the theory. Multiple YouTube rebuttal videos appeared within days. Meanwhile, the claim circulated mostly within Western crypto and social media circles. Notably, no major Chinese state media amplification appeared in English-language coverage.

As critics consistently pointed out, Bitcoin’s open-source code, proof-of-work consensus, and decentralized architecture make the conspiracy theory structurally implausible. Therefore, the episode reignited old debates but produced no new evidence.

What Comes Next

The debate will likely fade quickly in crypto circles. Yet it also highlights a persistent communication gap. Concepts like open-source code, decentralized consensus, and proof-of-work remain difficult for mainstream audiences to grasp fully.

For investors, consequently, the takeaway is straightforward. Evaluate Bitcoin based on its transparent, auditable code and 17-year track record. Do not rely on conspiracy theories or unsubstantiated claims from commentators outside the space.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.