A new HBO documentary alleges that Bitcoin creator ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ is actually the Toronto-area coder, but Peter Todd says that’s ‘ludicrous’
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Peter Todd, in a documentary that culminates with an accusation that he is Satoshi Nakamato, the pseudonym for the creator of Bitcoin, the Canadian software developer says he’d have destroyed any evidence if he were.
But Todd, a well-known contributor to the digital currency’s core programming, says in HBO’s Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery that filmmaker Cullen Hoback’s theory is “ludicrous.”
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“This is going to be very funny when you put this into the documentary and a bunch of Bitcoiners watch it,” Todd tells Hoback in one scene filmed in a derelict steel factory in the Czech Republic.
In the 100-minute doc, which diverts for lengthy stretches to explore the history and spirit of Bitcoin, Hoback pieces together largely circumstantial evidence – including the use of British/Canadian English in forum posts by Satoshi – to make his assertion about Todd’s alleged secret identity.
Todd glibly admits to being Satoshi at points, but he’s also repeatedly done the same publicly and online over the years, usually to deflect the matter and respect the privacy of the creator who digitally disappeared 13 years ago.
Libertarian, naysayer, consultant
The 39-year-old from the Toronto region, according to his GitHub and LinkedIn profiles, is an integrated media graduate of the Ontario College of Art & Design who studied physics before ultimately choosing to use his self-taught coding skills for Bitcoin.
In Money Electric, Hoback identifies Todd as the son of an economist and that his Australian mother got him interested in cryptography.
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Driving together in a car, Hoback remarks that he learned to code before he learned to read.
“Yep,” Todd responds during a car ride filmed in Latvia. “I happened to be a young libertarian. It was very obvious to me that control of money was a problem for freedom of speech.”
He’s well-known within the Bitcoin world not only for being an outspoken small blocker – an individual who believes that the currency’s digital blocks should remain small so anyone can run a full node – but largely for the creation of replace-by-fee (RPF).
The service, created years after Satoshi disappeared from the Bitcoin world, allows users to pay more to have transactions prioritized on the Bitcoin network.
Todd also helped beef up the currency’s privacy and launched OpenTimestamps, providing a standard format for time-stamping the blockchain.
His GitHub lists him as an applied cryptography consultant – “what the cool kids call ‘blockchain tech,’” it reads in parentheses.
Over on LinkedIn, in addition to decentralized consensus consultant and Bitcoin core developer, he’s listed as the “Chief Naysayer” at Bitcoin security provider Coinkite, chief scientist at the anonymous wallet service Dark Wallet, chief scientist at the Mastercoin research project.
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It’s on an active X account, where he refers to himself as a cryptochromonancer, that some of the confident if not somewhat brash intellectualism displayed in the documentary is more on display.
Prior to the doc’s release and since, when not posting niche digital currency content and pumping the use of cash over credit cards, Todd shared both pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel content.
In an Oct. 1 thread, he wrote that “Israel should nuke Iran while they still can.”
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He’s also not a fan of Justin Trudeau, calling him “an embarrassment” in a recent reply.
One piece of exceedingly circumstantial evidence pointing to Satoshi’s possible Canadian roots is his appreciation for pineapple pizza. A Bitcoin-related company founder on X noted that Satoshi once posted in the forum about pineapple and jalapenos as good pizza toppings.
Todd admitted to liking both.
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Why Satoshi is important
It’s not so much the person as it is what they may or may not possess.
As reported by Bloomberg, their Bitcoin wallets hold around one million which is worth about US$62.4 billion at current prices.
While any movement of those tokens would crash the price for everyone, they haven’t moved in years. Similarly, Satoshi went silent in 2011 and hasn’t been heard from since, which has only fuelled speculation about their identity.
It could also impact how the world’s largest cryptocurrency, now valued at over $1.2 trillion, is integrated by governments and corporations.
– With additional reporting from Bloomberg
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