In the 15 years since bitcoin was first created, no one has been able to crack one mystery: the true identity of the creator, known only as Satoshi Nakamoto.
Now, a new HBO documentary has opened the case files again to point the finger at a new candidate: Canadian crypto expert and software developer Peter Todd.
But Todd has laughed off the theory, calling it “ludicrous” in the documentary. And considering the long history of failed attempts to find Satoshi’s identity, HBO’s attempt may just be another on a long list.
Todd, 39, is one of several figures from the bitcoin world featured in the documentary Money Electric: The bitcoin Mystery. In the roughly 100-minute feature, filmmaker Cullen Hoback speaks to bitcoin personalities, investors and programmers involved in the early development of the cryptocurrency, including Blockstream CEO Adam Back, whose name has often been tossed around as a Satoshi possibility.
Since the documentary’s release on Tuesday, Todd has shared posts from skeptics on social media.
“I’m not Satoshi,” he said in a reply to a post on X asking him to deny the theory. In another post he called it “nonsense” and “hilarious” and mused that “crazy people might try to get my non-existent fortune.”
Satoshi seemingly vanished from the internet in 2011, but what hasn’t vanished are Satoshi’s holdings. The creator of bitcoin reportedly possesses one million bitcoin, worth more than $60 billion US today.
If Satoshi is still alive, still has access and returned to sell those holdings, it would make them a billionaire – and profoundly hurt the rest of the bitcoin economy.
bitcoin’s origin story
On Jan. 3, 2009, as the world was reeling from the 2008 financial crisis, the very first block on the now-infamous blockchain was born. It was the launch of bitcoin, a digital cryptocurrency that operated on peer-to-peer transactions, without intermediaries such as banks, governments or private companies such as PayPal.
The idea had started as a white paper, penned by someone (or someones) called Satoshi Nakamoto. In the first years of bitcoin’s development, Satoshi was active on a developer forum for the currency and communicated with peers like Back. Then, in 2011, Satoshi disappeared.
It didn’t take long for theories to pop up about the identity of Satoshi, long thought to be a pseudonym. The theories have ranged from Adam Back – who invented a concept called “hashcash” that was mentioned in Satoshi’s original white paper, and who also had an email relationship with Satoshi – to Hal Finney, a now-deceased cryptographer who was deeply involved in bitcoin’s creation; to Nick Szabo, a coder who designed a precursor to bitcoin called “bit gold.”
The latest suspect: Peter Todd
In one scene in the documentary, the camera follows Todd as he clambers through the damp, moss-covered hallways of an abandoned Second World War bunker in a forest in Latvia. (Todd has an avid interest in exploring caves, which he said he first discovered through a club in Toronto.)”
“People have suspected basically everyone of being Satoshi,” he said.
Minutes later, when Hoback suggests he isn’t the mysterious creator, Todd replies, “Oh, no, I am Satoshi. I’m Satoshi Nakamoto.”
But that declaration is far from a smoking gun. Todd jokingly says he could be Satoshi several times during the documentary, sometimes in the same breath as the suggestion that Back is Satoshi.
Todd was involved in bitcoin’s development early on – he joined the project as a programmer in 2013, and has connections to key figures in the bitcoin world, including Back and the other Blockstream co-founder, Gregory Maxwell – but he has never been the subject of much Satoshi speculation before.
On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, released the digital currency to the world by posted the “genesis block,” the starting point from where Bitcoins could be mined through the blockchain.
He would have been only 23 when the white paper came out, and said in the documentary that he spent the mid-2000s getting a fine arts degree. According to Politico, he graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto.
Todd, whose social media presence ranges from vocal support of Ukraine to suggesting that Israel should “nuke” Iran, was described as a “contrarian” in the HBO documentary by Samson Mow, another character. Mow used to work for Blockstream and now is the CEO of his own company aimed at promoting nations adopting bitcoin, called JAN3.
“Peter will always try to disagree with you,” Mow said in the documentary.
The quest to unmask Satoshi has run into numerous dead ends in the past. In 2014, a man named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto hired a lawyer to clear his name after he was accused by Newsweek of being the Satoshi behind bitcoin. In 2016, Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright declared that he was Satoshi, but his claim was soon debunked when it was revealed he had faked his evidence.
The HBO documentary doesn’t focus solely on Satoshi Nakamoto. It also tracks the rise and fall of cryptocurrency, from the proliferation of new crypto coins to the crashes that followed, to bitcoin’s surprising endurance despite dire predictions, as well as the currency’s quest to become a viable option used in nations across the world.
But the Satoshi question emerges as a central theme.
The documentary ties circumstantial evidence together to paint a picture of Todd as an unlikely candidate hiding in plain sight, suggesting that his trolling is a cover-up. Its case hinges on a reply Todd made on an online bitcoin forum in 2010 to one of Satoshi’s posts, which Hoback suggests was actually an instance of Todd attempting to continue a thought as Satoshi and accidentally posting it while he was logged into the wrong account.
When Hoback presents his theory to Todd and Back in the documentary, laying out the evidence he’s pieced together, Todd laughs.
“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,” he said.
