There are two ambitious missions behind filmmaker Karen Hoback's new documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” which HBO released Tuesday.
The first is to solve one of the internet's great mysteries by finally revealing the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous programmer who created Bitcoin in 2008.
The film's second mission is to make the case that the identity of Bitcoin's creator actually matters. Arguing that for all its flaws, Bitcoin represents a significant technological advance with far-reaching implications, and that there are good reasons to care about it, independent of sexual preference. That's it. Who created it?
Let's start with the first part. The mystery of Nakamoto's true identity has been the subject of intense debate and painstaking investigation among Bitcoin enthusiasts and cryptocurrency journalists for more than a decade. However, nothing conclusive has been proven, and several attempts to solve the case have failed. The most infamous was a 2014 Newsweek cover story that placed the blame on physicist Dorian Nakamoto, which turned out to have nothing to do with Bitcoin. The water just got cloudy.
(My former colleague Nathaniel Popper suggested that Nick Szabo, who developed a digital currency similar to Bitcoin in 2015, was likely Satoshi Nakamoto, but Szabo denies this. (There is no conclusive evidence.)
Hoback, who spent years diving down the rabbit hole of QAnon conspiracy theories in his previous film, “Q: Into the Storm,'' took a similarly thorough approach this time around. He and a camera crew spent three years traveling the world interviewing early Bitcoin contributors, tracing digital breadcrumbs buried in old bulletin board posts, and piecing together evidence.
They floated the theory that Nakamoto was Peter Todd, a Canadian programmer who contributed to Bitcoin's early days.
“I'm very confident,” Hoback told me in an interview this week. “Based on the evidence, I believe Peter Todd was Satoshi. He may have divulged the secret to others, but everything is consistent with his thinking.”
Mr. Todd is not one of the usual suspects that detectives name. (In the prediction market Polymarket, where Bitcoin fans were betting on who Nakamoto would be in the film ahead of Tuesday's release, Todd's name was nowhere to be found on the list.) And some Bitcoin believers Some may scoff at the idea of who Mr. Nakamoto is. Todd, a crypto guru who was only 23 years old when the Bitcoin white paper was released, could have come up with such a sophisticated system.
But Hoback has marshalled a wealth of evidence to support his theory. The most convincing clue is a 2010 exchange on a Bitcoin forum, in which Todd responded to Nakamoto's post in a way that seemed to follow the Bitcoin creator's train of thought. , probably indicating that the two are the same person. It means you posted it from the wrong account by mistake. Shortly after, Mr. Todd's account went dark and Mr. Nakamoto disappeared.
The film also points out several other inconsistencies in Mr. Todd's story. Namely, his old resume claiming proficiency in C++, the programming language used to write the original Bitcoin codebase, although Todd later denied knowing it. A fake account he may have created to cover his tracks while establishing a new Bitcoin feature known as fee-based substitution. And there are some similarities in word choice and writing style between him and Mr. Nakamoto.
Then there's Todd's on-camera reaction when Hoback confronts him with his theory. he stammers. he scoffs. He calls the idea “ridiculous.” But he hasn't exactly pardoned himself or named a more plausible suspect.
“We gave him every opportunity to explain why he made that post in 2010,” Hoback told me. “And not only does he not answer the question, he's speechless. Peter is never speechless.”
Although appealing, none of these options are decisive. And filmmakers who spend years of their lives solving mysteries, as Mr. Hoback has done here, have a vested interest in reaching a tidy conclusion. Proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Todd is Mr. Nakamoto requires either catching Mr. Todd using the private keys of Mr. Nakamoto's Bitcoin wallet, or an indisputable forensic link between the two. It is necessary to dig up the evidence. That didn't happen here.
But we found the evidence to be compelling enough to support the idea that Mr. Todd was materially involved in the creation of Bitcoin, at least until a better theory emerges.
On Tuesday, Mr. Todd sent me an email denying the film's central claims.
“Just to clarify, I'm not Satoshi,” he wrote. (He added: “That's a useless question. Satoshi would just deny it.”)
He said the 2010 message board post that the film cited as evidence of a connection to Nakamoto was “just a coincidence.”
“I'm not Satoshi, so this is just a reply to one of Satoshi's posts with some minor modifications,” he wrote.
Now, regarding the second question this movie raises, who cares who Mr. Nakamoto is?
Bitcoin's successes and failures as a cryptocurrency to date (and there have been plenty of both) have not depended on the identity of its founder. Nakamoto stopped contributing to Bitcoin's development in 2011 and has not participated in the most important discussions about the project's future. Knowing who he is won't deter many Bitcoin fans who think it's the “one true currency,” nor will it convince crypto skeptics who think it's all a scam. But not.
Both in the film and in interviews, Mr. Hoback has argued that his concern for Mr. Nakamoto's identity boils down to money and power.
According to many estimates, Mr. Nakamoto controls or had control of a digital treasure trove of more than 1 million bitcoins, about 5 percent of the total supply. At current prices, the stash is worth more than $60 billion, making its owner one of the richest people in the world.
Most of the coins in the so-called Satoshi wallet have never been touched. But they are not destroyed either. If Mr. Nakamoto is still in control of these wallets and has a way to retrieve their contents, it means there is a ten-billionaire hiding in plain sight who could emerge at any time. may mean.
“Would you like to know if there is an anonymous person who controls one-twentieth of the earth's gold?'' Mr. Hoback asked me.
Of course I think so, but I would like to know more about what Mr. Nakamoto thinks about what has happened to Bitcoin in the 16 years since he created it.
It's easy to lose sight of what a wild ride it was. In less than 20 years, Bitcoin has created a multitrillion-dollar cryptocurrency industry, enabled fraud and illegal activity on a previously unimaginable scale, and created or destroyed world-historic wealth. , adopted as legal tender in several countries, sparking intense regulatory battles, becoming part of the retirement savings of millions of Americans around the world, and hardcore Bitcoin believing it will replace the US dollar. Created a tribe of coins “maximalists”.
This is a great story, and I hope that someday Mr. Nakamoto will come out of the shadows and tell this story. Until then, we can only wonder and admire the work of people like Hoback who go looking for clues.
