HBO Documentary Suggests Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Developer Peter Todd
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A new HBO documentary about the origins of Bitcoin suggests that Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of the original cryptocurrency, is likely Canadian software developer Peter Todd.
Called “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” the 100-minute film on Tuesday features interviews with a handful of people who’d been involved with Bitcoin from early on, including long-time Satoshi candidate Adam Back, investor Roger Ver, Bitcoin marketer Samson Mow and Todd.
Peter Todd is standing on the upper floor of a dilapidated industrial building somewhere in Czechia, chuckling under his breath. He has just been accused on camera of being Satoshi Nakamoto, the Bitcoin creator, whose identity has remained a mystery for 15 years.
In the final scene of a new HBO documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, documentarian Cullen Hoback confronts Todd with the theory that he is Satoshi. In a previous work, Hoback unmasked the figure behind QAnon. Here, he tries to repeat the trick with Bitcoin.
“I will admit, you’re pretty creative—you come up with some crazy theories,” Todd tells Hoback, before rejecting the idea as “ludicrous.” “I warn you, this is going to be very funny when you put this into the documentary.”
The film stops short of claiming to have conclusively unmasked the creator of Bitcoin, absent incontrovertible proof. “For the record, I am not Satoshi,” Todd says in an email. “It is a useless question, because Satoshi would simply deny it.”
The hunt for Bitcoin’s creator has yielded a broad cast of Satoshis over the years, among them Hal Finney, recipient of the first ever bitcoin transaction; Adam Back, designer of a precursor technology cited in the Bitcoin white paper; and cryptographer Nick Szabo, to name just a few. The finger is pointed at some; others elect themselves. But though Satoshi has had many faces, a consensus has formed around none of them.
“People have suspected basically everyone of being Satoshi,” Todd points out, early in the documentary. “The problem with this kind of stuff is that people play all these crazy games.”
