Fortune Magazine: Is Peter Todd Satoshi Nakamoto? Why the HBO Documentary Got It Wrong

Author: Jeff John Roberts, Fortune Magazine

Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News

In early 2009, a person using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin to the world. His invention sparked a global rebellion against banks and governments, and Bitcoin's value has skyrocketed over the past 15 years, now exceeding a market capitalization of $1 trillion, equivalent to the combined market value of Tesla and JPMorgan Chase. Satoshi Nakamoto has also left us with a mystery. Who is this enigmatic figure that vanished into the mists of the internet? Where has his vast Bitcoin fortune gone?

The search for Satoshi Nakamoto has been ongoing for over a decade, featuring many jaw-dropping spectacles, including Newsweek's infamous cover story in 2014, which claimed to have found Satoshi living in plain sight in Los Angeles. This was completely wrong; Newsweek discovered a confused elderly man whose last name happened to be Nakamoto, but this incident became another fragment in the legend of Bitcoin. It also serves as a classic example of the dangers of "confirmation bias."

Now it's Cullen Hoback's turn. His new documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery aims to finally unveil the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto once and for all. The film premiered on HBO on October 8, following Hoback's 2021 release Q: Into the Storm, which closely examined the Q-Anon conspiracy and pointed out the orchestrators behind it with reasoned arguments.

Hoback is confident (the trailer for Money Electric claims that "the internet's greatest mystery" will be revealed), and overall, his documentary is quite good. It avoids the pitfalls of most other cryptocurrency films. Money Electric is not a fan film made by enthusiasts to promote cryptocurrency. It also does not belittle and mock the cryptocurrency industry without attempting to understand it (a common practice among critics).

Instead, Hoback describes a group of long-time Bitcoin advocates in their own terms: they are the stewards of Satoshi Nakamoto's gift (Bitcoin), which has provided the world with a form of currency free from reckless government control. From this perspective, the villains are JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who despises Bitcoin and appears at both the beginning and end of Money Electric, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has allied with Wall Street against cryptocurrency.

Meanwhile, the protagonists in Money Electric are individuals associated with Blockstream, a company dedicated to promoting the adoption of Bitcoin by individuals, companies, and even nations. At the film's outset, we see Samson Mow, who calls himself a Bitcoin ambassador, helping to persuade the Prince of Serbia and the President of El Salvador to embrace this new form of electronic currency.

There’s also Blockstream founder Adam Back, known for creating Hash Cash, a precursor to Bitcoin. We meet people like Peter Todd, a follower of Back and a core Bitcoin developer. Additionally, there’s "Bitcoin Jesus" Roger Ver, another influential early cryptocurrency figure, who is currently facing tax evasion charges. The film also features cameos from notable figures in business, including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who renamed his other company from Square to Block to express his support for cryptocurrency.

This documentary interviews a large number of Bitcoin veterans, which lends it authority, and its concise treatment of significant events in the development of cryptocurrency also adds to its credibility. These events include the so-called block size debate sparked by Bitcoin's architecture, the rise of Ethereum and altcoins (which critics refer to as "shitcoins"), and the recent actions taken by the U.S. government to hinder the crypto industry.

The "Revelation" of Satoshi Nakamoto's Identity

Money Electric stands out from other cryptocurrency films partly due to its large production budget. Hoback filmed scenes in Malta, Canada, El Salvador, and many other locations, and the director claims to have found Satoshi Nakamoto. Unfortunately, he is almost certainly mistaken.

Hoback's initial direction in the search for Satoshi Nakamoto was correct. He identified the most prominent figures in the "cypherpunk" network, who share a common passion for privacy and cryptography and communicate through a now-famous email list. It was on this email list and an online forum called BitcoinTalk that Satoshi shared his vision for Bitcoin.

At the beginning of the documentary, Hoback presents photos of the cypherpunks most closely associated with Bitcoin, who are the most likely candidates for being Satoshi. They include Back, the founder of Blockstream and Hash Cash, as well as other names familiar to Bitcoin veterans: Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and Wei Dai.

Hoback briefly and dismissively assesses whether these candidates could be Satoshi before turning to Australian conman Craig Wright. Craig Wright entered the cryptocurrency space in 2016, fabricating evidence to claim he invented Bitcoin. Fortunately, this filmmaker did not fall for it and shifted his focus to other candidates. As Money Electric progresses, it first presents Back as a potential Satoshi candidate, followed by Back's Blockstream disciple and partner Peter Todd.

Todd is much younger than other long-considered candidates for being Satoshi; he would have been only 19 or 20 when Satoshi released the Bitcoin white paper. To prove Todd is Satoshi, Hoback presents email exchanges from 2013 between him and an unknown individual named John Dillon regarding Bitcoin technology upgrades.

These emails were leaked in 2016 and caused a minor stir in the cryptocurrency community, as people believed Dillon was a U.S. intelligence operative who paid Todd to infiltrate the Bitcoin network. However, Hoback makes a reasonable argument in the film that Todd and Dillon are actually the same person. Todd orchestrated the entire controversy to promote Bitcoin upgrades.

Hoback sees this as an epiphany and seizes upon the public communication records between Satoshi and Todd as evidence that the latter must be Satoshi, suggesting that Todd seems to be correcting the Bitcoin inventor. In other words, Todd used the trick of replying to his own messages under an anonymous identity once again. To support this claim, Hoback points out that Satoshi's last communication appeared three days after the exchange with Todd, and that Canadian Todd's writings contain British spellings (such as "colour" and "cheque") that also appear in the texts of the Bitcoin inventor.

In the film's climax, Hoback interviews Back and Todd in a dilapidated castle in the Czech Republic (why they are there is unclear) and directly presents his theory to them. Todd does not explicitly deny being Satoshi during the interview but rather speaks ambiguously, seemingly teasing the filmmaker gently.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Hoback and HBO have heavily promoted Money Electric as a film that reveals the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, claiming that after all these years, it finally uncovers Satoshi's true face. Unfortunately, they should have remembered the lesson of Newsweek and the dangers of confirmation bias. It is a very common practice to interpret new information in a way that confirms existing beliefs while rejecting contradictory information.

Currently, there is no conclusive evidence proving Peter Todd is not Satoshi (although evidence will likely emerge soon). However, it is noteworthy that Todd's name has never appeared on the lists of Satoshi candidates among cryptocurrency insiders, and Hoback, as a newcomer to the field, could not have so easily found the inventor of Bitcoin. A person who just graduated high school and has not published any notable works could not write a complex document like the Bitcoin white paper and skillfully implement its contents. Finally, it is hard to imagine Satoshi, a person who has gone to great lengths to avoid public appearances, would choose to participate in an HBO film exploring who created Bitcoin. When Todd tells Hoback in the film, "We are all Satoshi," the filmmaker should have simply recognized this as a familiar refrain among Bitcoin enthusiasts and left it at that.

However, Hoback's biggest mistake lies not in his decision to focus on Todd but in his neglect of a more compelling theory regarding Satoshi's identity. This theory also aligns with Occam's Razor, which states that the simplest explanation is often the correct one.

The film begins by highlighting the original cypherpunks, which is the correct direction for searching for Satoshi, especially the investigation into a person named Nick Szabo. Hoback introduces him as a potential candidate but then dismisses him without basis. He not only ignores long-standing rumors within the Bitcoin community but also overlooks a wealth of compelling evidence.

This evidence includes the work of former New York Times journalist and author of Digital Gold, Nathaniel Popper, who closely observed the early Bitcoin scene and wrote closer to the origin story of cryptocurrency. Popper's reporting (including this 2015 article) points directly to Nick Szabo and is supported by an academic study that conducted a regression analysis comparing the writing styles of Satoshi and potential Bitcoin inventors. The study found a striking similarity between Satoshi and Szabo, who also uses British spellings. If you enjoy indirect evidence, there’s also the fact that the initials of Nick Szabo, NS, are the reverse of SN.

While Hoback's major revelation ultimately fails, Money Electric is still very much worth watching. This filmmaker skillfully tells the story of cryptocurrency (a phenomenon that exists almost entirely online) while cleverly utilizing rich graphics to illustrate the timeline of Bitcoin's development and technical details.

For newcomers to cryptocurrency, Money Electric tells an engaging story and explains Bitcoin in a fair and accurate manner. For long-time cryptocurrency enthusiasts, this documentary offers many familiar faces and sympathy for their culture, while also providing another legend that will become a meme in the coming years.