HBO Documentary Reveals Satoshi Nakamoto
09 Oct, 2024 ● Crypto people
HBO’s documentary, which seeks to reveal the true identity of the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, pointed to Canadian Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd as the mastermind behind the cryptocurrency.
Cullen Hoback, the producer of HBO's Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery documentary, presented evidence to both Todd and Blockstream founder Adam Back, concluding that Todd was Nakamoto.
The documentary ends with Todd responding to a confrontational question from Hoback by saying: "Well yeah, I’m Satoshi Nakamoto."
However, this so-called "admission" doesn't definitively prove Todd is the creator of Bitcoin. Todd is known for using the phrase "I am Satoshi" to support the original creator's right to anonymity.
Ahead of the documentary's premiere, Todd publicly denied being the inventor of Bitcoin and questioned Hoback's conclusion after parts of the documentary leaked online.
After the documentary aired, Todd again denied the claim on social media. On Oct. 8, in response to a comment on X asking him to refute HBO’s assertion, Todd wrote, "I am not Satoshi."
Todd has joked about being Satoshi in the past. In a 2019 episode of the What Bitcoin Did podcast, he told host Peter McCormack, "I am Satoshi, as is everyone else."
During that same podcast, Todd mentioned that he made his first Bitcoin purchase when the cryptocurrency was valued at around 20 cents.
This would place the purchase in October 2010, about two years after Bitcoin’s whitepaper was published on Oct. 31, 2008.
Hoback’s reasoning for naming Todd as Nakamoto stems from a chat log where Todd claimed to be "the world’s leading expert on how to sacrifice your Bitcoins," and that he had "done one such sacrifice and I did it by hand."
Hoback interpreted this as an admission that Todd had permanently disabled his access to the 1.1 million Bitcoins—worth $69.4 billion—believed to belong to Nakamoto.
Before Hoback’s revelation, Todd offered his own thoughts on why Bitcoin’s creator might choose to remain anonymous, saying:
"What if the real reason for using the name Satoshi […] was so that people could take Bitcoin seriously? So they could believe it was created by a real cryptographer and not some kid still in school?"
Sources:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/peter-todd-named-satoshi-nakamoto-hbo-documentary
