He taught himself Basic, and spent his time reverse engineering video games, finding decryption keys in software packages.

[3] Back is a pioneer of early digital asset research similar to Wei Dai, David Chaum, and Hal Finney.

He is also known for promoting the use of ultra-compact code with his 2-line[15] and 3-line RSA in Perl[16][17][18] signature file and non-exportable T-shirts[19][20] to protest cryptography export regulations.

[22][2] In 2016, the Financial Times cited Back as a potential Nakamoto candidate, along with Nick Szabo and Hal Finney.

[24] Back has promoted the use of satellites and mesh networks to broadcast and receive bitcoin transactions, as a backup for the traditional internet.