A documentary reopens the debate about the identity of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto

The film aims to solve one of the biggest mysteries of the Internet and finally reveal the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous programmer who created Bitcoin in 2008. The film’s second mission is to prove that the identity of Bitcoin’s creator really matters; that Bitcoin, for all its faults, is an important technological breakthrough with far-reaching consequences, and that we have good reason, other than curiosity, to care about who created it.

HBO made a movie about the history of the world’s largest digital currency called Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery. Documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback spent three years flying around the world with a crew, examining ancient message board posts and piecing together the evidence. He concludes that the anonymous creator of Bitcoin is none other than longtime community member and early developer of Bitcoin, Peter Todd. Todd denied the claim in the documentary. “Hoback’s evidence that I am Satoshi is the same kind of convoluted, coincidental theory that fuels conspiracy theories like QAnon,” Todd said. “Which is ironic, given that Hoback’s previous big project was a documentary about QAnon. Obviously, he didn’t try to disprove his theories either.”

Hoback’s previous project, Q: Into the Storm, was aimed at exposing the person behind QAnon, which may have made him interested in uncovering the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. However, Todd believes Hoback was just trying to drum up interest in his new film. “I think Hoback revived the Satoshi case as a marketing ploy: he was actually making a documentary about Bitcoin, and he needed a sensation to get media attention,” Todd said. I don’t think he was interested in finding out the real truth.”

Todd is not one of the usual suspects. On betting site Polymarket, Bitcoin fans have placed bets on who will be identified as Nakamoto in the film, but Todd’s name it wasn’t even on the list. (Most people guessed the Hungarian Nick Szabó.) And it is a surprising claim that Todd would be the cryptographic genius who was able to invent such a sophisticated system, since he was only 23 years old when the Bitcoin white paper was published. It is true that the documentary is more about the history of Bitcoin, its spread and the key figures in its rise, including the Satoshi suspects. The film features interviews with several potential Satoshis, including Adam Back, the inventor of Bitcoin’s predecessor, Hashcash, who the film presents as the other most likely candidate behind Bitcoin. Throughout the film, there are hints that the film will ultimately focus on Nakamoto, but the uncertainty always hovers as an extra layer to the film, which is more about the transformation of analog currency into digital form.

Todd even admits early in the film that people suspect him of being Satoshi, while denying the claim. At the same time, he also tells the common joke that “Oh, I’m Satoshi” – a phrase often heard among Bitcoin insiders. “You’re pretty creative and you come up with crazy theories,” Todd tells Hoback at the end of the film when he confronts him about the accusation that he’s Nakamoto. “It’s ridiculous, but that’s the kind of theory someone who spends their time as a documentary journalist would come up with.”

The key information in Hoback’s documentary linking Todd to Nakamoto comes from two items: one is a series of communications between Todd and an unknown person who identified himself as “John Dillon.” He claimed to work for US government intelligence and supported the implementation of replace-by-fee (RBF) on the Bitcoin blockchain. Todd later added RBF to the Bitcoin platform. Hoback alleges that Todd used Dillon as a mouthpiece under a pseudonym to push his own ideas, as he claims Todd did when he masqueraded as Nakamoto on the BitcoinTalk forum.

Pointing to one of Todd’s earliest posts on the forum – which was a direct response to Nakamoto’s comment that due to transaction fees, the inputs and outputs of the blockchain do not exactly match – Hoback concludes that Todd accidentally logged into his new account under his real name, intending , to reply as Nakamoto, as the post seemed to follow the same line of thought. However, Todd pointed to a comment by fellow early Bitcoin developer Greg Maxwell (who is also named as a potential Nakamoto suspect in the documentary), who notes that Todd’s account was then called “retep” and was only later renamed. “If Satoshi had actually made this mistake, the most obvious thing to do would have been to simply leave the account.” said Todd. “Hoback could have easily checked the facts himself, or by asking us after the interview if the theory made sense. But he didn’t.” The film also points to another inconsistency in Todd’s story: in an old resume, he claimed to be proficient in C++, the programming language used to write the original Bitcoin codebase, but later denied knowing it.

Ultimately, it’s unlikely that anyone will ever uncover the truth behind Nakamoto’s identity — or if they do, they’re unlikely to be able to prove it, Todd says in the documentary. “If I were Satoshi, I’d destroy my ability to prove that I’m Satoshi, because then I’d never be seduced,” Todd says early in the film. He says it’s unlikely we’ll ever find out who Satoshi really is, noting that “ hiding your identity when people aren’t seriously looking isn’t really that hard,” likely aimed at Hoback, who he thinks deserves mockery for his conclusion in part because it puts a huge target on Todd’s back.

According to many estimates, Nakamoto controls or has previously controlled the digital stock of over one million Bitcoins, roughly 5% of the total. At today’s exchange rate, this stock would be worth more than $60 billion, making its owner one of the richest people in the world. The vast majority of coins in so-called Satoshi wallets have never been touched. But they were not destroyed. If Nakamoto is still in control of these wallets and has a way to recover the money in them, it could mean that there is a ten-billionaire in hiding who could emerge at any time. “Wouldn’t you like to know if there’s an anonymous person out there who controls one-twentieth of all the bitcoins on the planet?” Hoback asks.

“To falsely accuse an ordinary person of average wealth of having tens of billions of dollars puts him in danger for obvious reasons,” Todd said. “Cullen knows very well that he’s putting my life in danger just to promote his movie. I had to take steps to reduce the risks to myself.” According to Todd, the social joke that everyone is a Satoshi is partly to defuse risk. “Everybody in the Bitcoin community knows that,” he said.

At the end of the film, Todd looks visibly upset when he is directly accused of being Nakamoto. In response, he sarcastically claims that not only is he Satoshi, but so is Craig Wright (who claimed to be Nakamoto but turned out not to be), in order to ridicule Hoback’s claims. “It’s going to be really funny when we put this in the documentary and a bunch of Bitcoin fans watch it,” Todd said at the end of the film. Being accused, he says, will excite the Bitcoin community because it’s “another example of the “Journalists really miss the point. The point is that Bitcoin becomes a global currency, and people like you who are fed nonsense can potentially do good with it,” he added.

The HBO documentary is now available to watch and is an interesting look at the history of Bitcoin and its rise to global influence. Did the film really expose Nakamoto? In fact, we are as close to knowing the truth as we were before it was presented. As persuasive as Hoback is, he has no conclusive evidence. And filmmakers who devote years of their lives to solving a mystery, as Hoback did, have an interest in achieving an orderly conclusion. To prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Todd is indeed Nakamoto, one would have to see him using the private keys of Nakamoto’s Bitcoin wallet, or dig up some irrefutable forensic evidence linking the two. That didn’t happen.

But perhaps more interesting than his identity is what Nakamoto thinks about what has happened to Bitcoin in the 16 years since its creation. In less than two decades, Bitcoin has created a trillion-dollar cryptocurrency industry, enabled fraud and illegal activity on a previously unimaginable scale, created world-historic fortunes and destroyed people, been accepted as legal tender by several countries, sparked bitter regulatory battles around the world, destroyed millions of pension funds is featured and has created Bitcoin “believers” who believe the currency will replace the US dollar. Nakamoto will hopefully come out of the shadows one day and tell his story. Because the successes and failures of Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency so far (and there have been plenty of both) do not depend on the identity of the founder. Nakamoto stopped contributing to the development of Bitcoin in 2011 and did not participate in the most important discussions about the future of the project. Knowing who he is wouldn’t dissuade the legions of Bitcoin fans who say it’s the “one true currency” or convince the crypto-skeptics who think it’s all a scam.