HBO’s documentary aimed at outing Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, identified Canadian Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd as the cryptocurrency’s inventor.
Cullen Hobak — producer of HBO’s Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery documentary — confronted Todd and Blockstream founder Adam Back with the evidence he had stitched together to conclude that Todd was Nakamoto.
The documentary’s finale ends with Todd saying: “Well yeah, I’m Satoshi Nakamoto,” in response to a confrontational question from Hoback.
Still, this “admission” doesn’t necessarily prove that Todd is Bitcoin’s inventor. He is well-known for invoking the phrase “I am Satoshi” to support the real creator’s right to privacy.
Todd publicly denied being Bitcoin’s creator ahead of the documentary’s debut and questioned Hoback’s conclusion after clips from the documentary leaked online ahead of its debut.
Todd again denied being Satoshi on social media after the release of the documentary. In an Oct. 8 response to a comment on X asking him to come out and deny HBO’s claim, Todd wrote, “I am not Satoshi.”
Source: Peter Todd
Todd has joked about being Satoshi in the past. In a 2019 What Bitcoin Did podcast episode, Todd told host Peter McCormack: “I am Satoshi, as is everyone else.”
During the podcast, Told told McCormack he made his first Bitcoin (BTC) purchase when the cryptocurrency was worth around 20 cents. This puts the time of purchase in October 2010, roughly two years after Bitcoin’s whitepaper was published on Oct. 31, 2008.
Why Todd was named Satoshi
Holback’s reasoning for claiming Todd is Nakamoto rests on a chat log message Todd wrote claiming to be “the world’s leading expert on how to sacrifice your Bitcoins,” adding that he had “done one such sacrifice and I did it by hand.”
Related: IMDB reveals HBO’s Bitcoin documentary secret: Everyone in the cast is Satoshi
Hoback classified this message as an admission that Todd had permanently disabled his ability to access the 1.1 million Bitcoin (BTC) — worth $69.4 billion — thought to be held by Nakamoto.
In the lead-up to Hoback's bombshell reveal on Todd, the Canadian Bitcoin developer provided his own reasoning for why Bitcoin’s creator might choose to remain anonymous.
“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?”
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