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Cryptocurrency News Articles
Is Peter Todd Really Satoshi Nakamoto? New Doc Makes the Case
Oct 09, 2024 at 10:01 am
Capping days of mounting anticipation, a documentary aired Tuesday said Canadian software developer Peter Todd is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous cypherpunk who created Bitcoin.
A new documentary has claimed to identify Canadian software developer Peter Todd as Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.
The film, titled “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” aired on HBO Tuesday and follows filmmaker Cullen Hoback’s years-long quest to uncover the true identity of the enigmatic figure.
While the documentary presents a compelling case for Todd’s involvement in Bitcoin’s early development, the evidence is unlikely to satisfy everyone who has long analyzed the clues left by Nakamoto, who mysteriously vanished in 2011, three years after sharing the Bitcoin white paper on the P2P Foundation website.
Todd himself has denied Hoback’s claim in the documentary, calling it “ludicrous,” and on X Tuesday evening.
Todd did not immediately reply to DL News’ request for comment Tuesday night.
Journalists and crypto sleuths have spent years trying to solve what may be the greatest mystery in modern finance: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
Usual suspects
Their efforts have turned up several names, and some have suggested Nakamoto was a group of people. The usual suspects — Nick Szabo and Adam Back, among them — have denied they are Satoshi.
One 2014 report said Satoshi Nakamoto was none other than a man by the same name living quietly, and openly, in Southern California. Speculation has also turned to X owner and multibillionaire Elon Musk.
Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist tried — and failed — to prove he was Nakamoto in a lawsuit filed in the UK.
In the documentary, Hoback unearths a comment Todd made in a Bitcoin forum in December 2010, in which he replies to one of Nakamoto’s posts.
“Read it closely,” Hoback says in the film to one of his colleagues. “Is [Todd] responding, David? Or is He continuing a thought?”
Hoback posits Nakamoto and Todd are one and the same, and that Todd accidentally logged in using a recently-created account bearing his own name to finish the thought that he had shared an hour and a half earlier while using the Satoshi Nakamoto account.
The filmmaker also points to other hints that Todd might be Nakamoto, including the fact that Nakamoto posted more frequently during summers, “like they were on an academic calendar” — Todd was a university student in Bitcoin’s early days — and that Nakamoto stopped posting on the forum shortly after Todd joined.
“I’ll warn you, this is going to be very funny when you put this into the documentary and a bunch of Bitcoiners watch it,” Todd says in the film.
“I suspect a lot of them will be very happy if you go this route, because it’s gonna be yet another example of journalists really missing the point.”
Hoback asks Todd to elaborate.
“The point is to make Bitcoin the global currency,” Todd says, adding that Hoback and others trying to unmask Nakamoto were “distracted by nonsense.”
But the question of Nakamoto’s identity is more than idle speculation.
Bitcoin, introduced 15 years ago, is the original cryptocurrency and the anchor of the crypto economy, now worth $2.3 trillion.
Central banks are studying blockchain technology, Wall Street giants are offering Bitcoin funds, and the two candidates for US president in the November 5 election have referenced crypto on the campaign trail.
$67 billion stash
Nakamoto is estimated to control 1.1 million Bitcoins, currently valued at about $67 billion.
If Nakamoto has access to that mass of Bitcoins, it would mean the creator could one day attempt to sell them, an event that would likely have a dramatic impact on the token’s price.
Ahead of its initial public offering in 2021, for instance, Coinbase said the identification of Nakamoto or the transfer of their Bitcoins was a factor that would adversely affect its business.
The cryptographers club
Nakamoto spoke openly and often in a who’s who email group of mathematicians and cryptographers referred to as the cypherpunk mailing list.
Members included Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks; Ross Ulbricht, the founder of dark web marketplace Silk Road; and Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum.
Nakamoto’s communication on the mailing list abruptly stopped in December 2010. His last known email was sent in April 2011.
Ahead of the documentary’s debut, bettors on Polymarket’s pool about Satoshi’s identity wagered $20 million on various candidates.
Once the frontrunner on Polymarket, late American cryptographer Len Sassaman fell out of bettors’ favor Monday after Hoback told CNN he confronts Nakamoto in the documentary.
And Sassaman’s widow, Meredith Patterson, told DL News that HBO never approached her when making the documentary.
Bettors then turned their
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