Blockstream, the leader in blockchain and related technologies, today announced that its board of directors unanimously appointed the company's co-founder Dr. Adam Back as CEO of the company. Adam replaces the outgoing CEO, Austin Hill, who recently stepped down from the board to pursue other opportunities.

As a world-renowned applied cryptographer, Adam brings over two decades of experience working on the most advanced science and technology in the fields of e-cash, digital currencies, distributed computing, and privacy technology.

He is best known for his invention of Hashcash, a proof-of-work system used to limit email spam and denial-of-service attacks and that is used in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as part of the mining algorithm.