A new HBO documentary claims to have identified the creator of Bitcoin, a mystery that has captivated the cryptocurrency world for over a decade. But the man named in the film, Canadian developer Peter Todd, is rejecting the claim, calling it “ludicrous.”
In “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” filmmaker Cullen Hoback names Todd as the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous figure behind the launch of Bitcoin in 2009.
Hoback’s conclusion is based on several pieces of evidence, including a forum post that he claims links Todd to Satoshi and Todd’s own comment about destroying a large number of digital coins.
However, Todd firmly denied the claim.
“I am not Satoshi Nakamoto,” Todd said on social media.
He explained that he was too busy with school and work during Bitcoin’s early development to have been involved.
The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has long been a topic of speculation. Whoever they are, they are thought to control a Bitcoin wallet holding 1.1 million coins, now worth around $69 billion. If that fortune could be accessed, it would make Satoshi one of the 20 richest people in the world.
Peter Todd, a respected developer in the Bitcoin community, has never been widely regarded as a primary candidate for being Satoshi until now.
Ahead of the documentary’s release, over $44 million in bets were placed on the crypto market platform Polymarket, wagering on who the film would identify as Bitcoin’s creator.
This is not the first time someone has been accused of being Satoshi. In 2014, Newsweek named Dorian Nakamoto, a Japanese-American man living in California, as Bitcoin’s creator. Nakamoto denied the claim and the theory has since been debunked.
In 2015, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright claimed to be Satoshi, but his evidence was rejected by the cryptocurrency community, and a U.K. High Court later ruled that there was “overwhelming” evidence he was not.
For now, the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains one of the great mysteries of the cryptocurrency world. Whether the documentary’s claims hold any truth may never be known, as Todd and many others continue to deny any involvement.
