Well, this is awkward: A new HBO documentary thinks it found the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin — but that guy disagrees.
The new film Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery by documentarian Cullen Hoback — he also made HBO’s Q: Into The Storm, which (pretty much) revealed the identity of Q-Anon — posits crypto developer called Peter Todd is the real person behind Satoshi. Here’s the rub: Todd has publicly denied that Hoback got it right.
“Cullen is wrong. I am not Satoshi… The truth is Cullen is grasping for straws.” he told MarketWatch.
In what some could see as a bit of misdirection — if you were inclined to believe Hoback’s hypothesis — Todd suggested it would be impossible to dig up the true identity of the inventor of Bitcoin.
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“It’s likely that hundreds, even thousands, of people had the right skills to create Bitcoin in 2008,” Todd told MarketWatch. “Any one of them might be Satoshi. Unless Satoshi chooses to reveal their identity, we will probably never know who they actually were.”
The mystery of Satoshi’s true identity has been a central part of Bitcoin’s story. Australian computer scientist Craig Wright claimed he was Satoshi — which was widely doubted — and a court ultimately decided he was not. Newsweek famously ran a cover story claiming it found the man behind the cryptocurrency in 2014. That man, Dorian S. Nakamoto, strongly denied he was the inventor. And there have been other guesses — and denials — along the way.
Todd has repeatedly denied being Satoshi on X in the wake of the doc coming out.
Money Electric is now available to stream on Max if you want to look at the evidence for yourself.
