Adam Back's Blockstream Faces $320M Security Breach Amid Business Setbacks
Adam Back, a British cryptographer and one of the early figures in Bitcoin's history, has come under scrutiny as several businesses linked to him face setbacks.
Back is the co-founder of Blockstream, a company that develops technology and infrastructure for Bitcoin. Several businesses connected to Back have faced issues, including a $320 million security breach at Blockstream’s Liquid Network.
The incident occurred on September 6, 2026, when an attacker exploited a vulnerability in Elements’ rangeproof verification cache, allowing the creation of about 4,000 unbacked LBTC. The attacker then moved these unbacked tokens through Liquid's standard peg-out process, resulting in a withdrawal of about 4,000 BTC from the Liquid reserve.
Blockstream coordinated a halt of Liquid’s bridge nodes on September 6 and deployed an emergency patch the following day. The attacker later returned 3,400 BTC, leaving about 602 BTC outstanding as of Blockstream's September 25 assessment.