The cryptocurrency community is not persuaded by HBO’s documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” which identified Canadian Bitcoin inventor Peter Todd as Satoshi Nakamoto.
The highly anticipated documentary’s producer, Cullen Hobak, offers a number of purported pieces of proof in the 100-minute movie that ultimately led to the conclusion that Todd, a pioneer in the cryptocurrency industry, was the pseudonymous founder of Bitcoin.
For a number of years, Todd has contributed to the cryptocurrency sector as a Bitcoin Core Developer. Early involvement with encryption and blockchain-related technologies sparked his interest in these areas during his adolescence.
His first recorded interaction with Bitcoin occurred in the late 2000s, shortly after the 2008 release of the Bitcoin white paper, when he was already involved in the cryptocurrency community at the age of 23.
Todd stated on a 2019 episode of the What Bitcoin Did podcast that he started corresponding with early Bitcoin contributors including Hal Finney and Hashcash founder Adam Back when he was around 15 years old. His subsequent contributions to the Bitcoin community and cryptography in general were influenced by these early exchanges.
Todd disclosed in a 2018 interview with news that prior to switching to Bitcoin, he worked as a geophysical startup and as a designer of analog circuits.
In July 2014, he began working at Coinkite as a Bitcoin Core Developer. He went on to hold important positions, such as chief scientist for projects like Mastercoin and Dark Wallet.
How come Todd Satoshi is?
Todd was named primarily because of a number of circumstantial evidence that Hobak pieced together, including his cryptic online posts, including one in which he described himself as “the world’s leading expert on how to sacrifice your Bitcoins.” These posts are interpreted as veiled admissions that imply Todd may have destroyed access to the estimated 1.1 million BTC that Nakamoto is credited with creating.
According to the video, Todd apparently accidentally posted using Satoshi’s account on the BitcoinTalk forum in 2010, which stoked even more rumors.
Todd is also recognized as a major proponent of Replace-by-Fee (RBF), a contentious issue in the community that suggested a system that would permit a previous transaction to be swapped out with a new one that has a greater fee. According to the documentary, this technical recommendation could only have been made by someone like Nakamoto who had extensive understanding of the original Bitcoin code.
The community refutes assertions, and Todd agrees
Even before the documentary aired, Todd steadfastly denied being Nakamoto in spite of these ideas. More recently, on October 8, he replied, “I am not Satoshi,” to a remark on X that asked him to publicly refute HBO’s assertion.
HBO’s assertions were swiftly refuted by the cryptocurrency industry. Pix, a Web3 researcher, identified a number of crucial areas in which the documentary failed.
First, Pix pointed out that Peter Todd was not even working in the field of cryptography in 2008 and was still completing his fine arts degree, thus it is doubtful that he would have required to employ a pseudonym like Satoshi Nakamoto.
Pix then refuted HBO’s assertion regarding a 2010 BitcoinTalk article that implied Todd unintentionally exposed himself as Satoshi by failing to switch accounts. Pix contended that a 13-hour-later follow-up post was more likely to be a straightforward remark than proof of a forgotten account changeover.
Pix also talked on the RBF connection, stating that years after Satoshi had already left the industry, Todd had introduced RBF in 2014. HBO rejected the notion that Satoshi had planned this feature in advance as being extremely unrealistic.
In his final response to the “sacrificing bitcoins” letter, Pix made it clear that Todd’s cryptic remark was a joke about blockchain integrity rather than an admission that Satoshi’s 1.1 million BTC will be destroyed. Pix claims that this crucial piece of evidence was taken completely out of context, which further undermines HBO’s assertions.
Ki Young Ju, a researcher with CryptoQuant, was among those who did not believe, calling the documentary “disgusting.”
BitMEX Research joined the naysayers, claiming that there was “zero reason” to think Peter Todd was Satoshi and describing the HBO proof as “clearly ridiculous.”
Prominent members of the community, such as Satoshi himself and Adam Back, who has long been associated with the early development of Bitcoin, also opposed the theory. Back, who appeared in the documentary, said, “No one knows who Satoshi is,” refusing to confirm the rumors further.
The finding was referred to as shoddy journalism by other market experts.
surprise for Polymarket bettors
A well-known prediction market website, Polymarket, placed chances on who HBO’s program would name as Satoshi Nakamoto. But at first, Peter Todd was not offered as a betting choice.
The main targets of bettors were individuals like Len Sassaman and Nick Szabo, who have both been widely suspected of being the founders of Bitcoin. Elon Musk and Hal Finney were among the other candidates.
This omission further demonstrates how shocking and universally disregarded the documentary’s assertion regarding Todd was.
