The HBO documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” revealed that Canadian Bitcoin developer Peter Todd was Satoshi Nakamoto, but the crypto community is not convinced.
Cullen Hobak, the producer of the highly anticipated documentary, provides several alleged pieces of evidence in the 100-minute feature that led to the conclusion that Todd, one of the earliest figures in the cryptocurrency world, was the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.
Todd is a Bitcoin Core Developer contributing to the cryptocurrency space for several years. He first became involved in cryptography and blockchain-related technologies at a young age, developing an interest in these fields as a teenager.
His first documented engagement with Bitcoin was in the late 2000s, when, at around 23 years old, he was already active in the crypto community, shortly after the publication of the Bitcoin white paper in 2008.
In a 2019 podcast episode of What Bitcoin Did, Todd revealed that he was around 15 years old when he began communicating with early Bitcoin contributors like Hal Finney and Hashcash inventor Adam Back. These early interactions helped shape his later contributions to the Bitcoin space and crypto in general.
In a 2018 interview with crypto.news, Todd revealed that he had worked as an analog electronics designer and geophysics startup before turning to Bitcoin.
He officially began working as a Bitcoin Core Developer at Coinkite in July 2014 and went on to hold major roles, including serving as chief scientist on projects such as Mastercoin and Dark Wallet.
Why Todd Satoshi?
The main reason behind Todd’s name comes from a body of circumstantial evidence gathered by Hobak, one of which is his cryptic online posts – notably one in which he describes himself as “the world’s leading expert on how to sacrifice your Bitcoins” – which is interpreted as a veiled confession, suggesting that he may have destroyed access to the estimated 1.1 million BTC attributed to Nakamoto.
The documentary further fueled speculation with claims that Todd posted from Satoshi’s account to the BitcoinTalk forum in 2010, allegedly by accident.
Additionally, Todd is considered one of the leading advocates of Replace by Fee (RBF), a controversial topic within the community that proposed a mechanism to replace a past transaction with a new transaction offering higher fees. The documentary implied that this technical suggestion could only have come from someone with extensive knowledge of Bitcoin’s original code, like Nakamoto.
Community Debunks Claims, Just Like Todd
Despite these theories, Todd continued to categorically deny being Nakamoto, even before the documentary aired. Most recently, on October 8, he responded to a comment on X asking him to deny HBO’s claim, to which the developer responded “I’m not Satoshi.”
The crypto community was quick to debunk HBO’s claims. Web3 researcher Pix highlighted several key points where the documentary went wrong.
First, Pix noted that in 2008, Peter Todd was still finishing his fine arts degree and was not even involved in the crypto field, making it unlikely that he had needed to use a pseudonym like Satoshi Nakamoto.
Then, Pix debunked HBO’s claim regarding a 2010 BitcoinTalk article, which suggested Todd accidentally revealed himself as Satoshi by not switching accounts. Pix argued that a follow-up message posted 13 hours later was more likely a simple comment rather than evidence of a forgotten account change.
Pix also addressed the RBF connection, explaining that Todd introduced RBF in 2014, years after Satoshi had already left the scene. HBO’s suggestion that this feature had been planned in advance by Satoshi was dismissed as a major breakthrough.
Finally, Pix addressed the “sacrifice bitcoins” post, clarifying that Todd’s cryptic comment was a joke about the integrity of the blockchain, not an admission of destroying access to Satoshi’s 1.1 million BTC . According to Pix, this key piece of evidence was taken out of context, further discrediting HBO’s claims.
Among the other non-believers was CryptoQuant researcher Ki Young Ju, who called the documentary “disgusting.”
“It’s baffling that they came to this conclusion when not all #Bitcoin experts agree,” Ju wrote in an October 9 X article.
BitMEX Research also joined the skeptics, calling the evidence presented by HBO “clearly ridiculous” and stating that there was “no reason” to believe that Peter Todd is Satoshi.
Prominent figures in the community like Adam Back, who has long been associated with the early developments of Bitcoin, and Satoshi himself, have also not supported this theory. Back, who was featured in the documentary, stopped short of giving credence to the speculation and simply said, “No one knows who Satoshi is.”
Other market watchers called the conclusion shoddy journalism.
A surprise for Polymarket punters
Polymarket, a popular prediction market platform, had listed the odds of who the HBO documentary would identify as Satoshi Nakamoto. However, Peter Todd was not initially included as a betting option.
Punters have primarily focused on figures such as Nick Szabo and Len Sassaman, both frequently considered the creators of Bitcoin. Other contenders included Hal Finney and Elon Musk, among others.
This omission is another testament to how the documentary’s claim about Todd was actually unexpected and widely dismissed.
