Bitcoin Mystery review — Satoshi ‘Whodunnit’ Lacks Killer Blow

★★★★☆ | Cullen Hoback’s documentary is an entertaining film and uses the same tactics as a crime drama to keep the suspect under wraps until the end.

Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery caused a huge sensation when a trailer was released by HBO, with the documentary promising to eventually unmask Satoshi Nakamoto.

This is a film by Cullen Hoback, who says he first became interested in BTC seven years ago and was concerned about the dangers of digital surveillance.

At 100 minutes long, it’s a pretty big watch, and in its debut on a mainstream network, it has to walk a tough tightrope between catering to two different audiences.

For those with little knowledge of Bitcoin, there are nifty graphics explaining how blockchains work and a brief but elegantly written canter about the cryptocurrency’s 15-year history.

Archival footage from TV shows and movies is also used cleverly; BTC mining is depicted using a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory featuring a golden ticket.

But the main purpose of this documentary is not to explain how Bitcoin works – this has been done before – instead the aim is to describe its pseudonymous founder.

Explaining why this is so necessary, Hoback argues that Satoshi’s stash of one million BTC makes this an urgent issue due to the integration of cryptocurrency into traditional finance, as it could cause mass panic if suddenly spent.

Suspects

In some ways, Money Electric comes across like a whodunnit, featuring interviews with some of the industry’s most well-known faces.

There’s a conversation with JAN3 CEO Samson Mow, who is portrayed as a “Bitcoin ambassador” as he flies from country to country and encourages governments to adopt it as legal tender.

Mow describes fiat as “a house of cards built on a house of cards built on a house of cards” while sitting on a private jet; Ammunition for critics who say he’s talking about BTC.

This leads us to Blockstream co-founder Adam Back, who has been described as Mow’s boss and claims that he may have been the first person Satoshi Nakamoto contacted about his big idea.

Hoback delves deep into Back’s past and spends a lot of time examining evidence that could indicate he is Satoshi, bringing up many intriguing results along the way.

The filmmaker notes how the cryptographer moved to Malta, which coincidentally was a tax haven around the time BTC was created.

Back is also British – and that’s important, given how Satoshi uses the UK spelling and includes a headline from the London Times in Bitcoin’s genesis block.

Although he claims to have been a latecomer to BTC – an “embarrassing latecomer” by joining the BitcoinTalk forum four years after the cryptocurrency’s creation – Hoback points out that Back edited the Bitcoin Wikipedia page long before that. From where? Naming people who could potentially be Satoshi Nakamoto without naming themselves.

At one point, Back looks physically uncomfortable when Hoback openly asks who Satoshi might be. Another strange moment occurs at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami when Mow taunts Back by claiming that he was the one who created BTC.

CullenHoback | Source: HBO trailer Unmasking ‘The Criminal’

But just as a good crime drama has a scene where the real killer is long before he’s caught – so the audience is aware of who he is but doesn’t suspect him – Hoback spends some time with Peter Todd as he heads into the cave for a moment. Abandoned World War II bunker.

The early parts of the documentary show how he learned to code at a young age and became a controversial figure in the Bitcoin space; Todd jokingly tells Hoback that he is Satoshi. Controversial emails that Todd wrote with a man named “John Dillon” who claimed to work in a relatively high position in intelligence were also revealed. Watching this, he didn’t seem like a serious suspect until the finale of the documentary.

For someone knowledgeable about Bitcoin, you could argue that all you need is the last 20 minutes of Money Electric. It features Back and Todd exploring steel mill ruins in the Czech Republic, and Hoback confronting the duo about everything he learned during filming.

Hoback had a dramatic realization while perusing the BitcoinTalk forum; This shows Todd finishing one of Satoshi’s sentences a few days after opening an account on the website. The producer thinks Todd may have posted using the wrong profile, which means a simple human error could have exposed his secret.

When confronted with this theory, Todd laughs and Hoback comments that he seems to have a pretty good memory, considering the mission in question was 13 years ago.

However, after this, there is a return to the important interviews conducted at the beginning of the documentary; Breadcrumbs that lead Hoback to believe Peter Todd is Satoshi Nakamoto. There is an email he sent to Adam Back in 2001 when he was a teenager; Roger Ver claims that Todd “always wanted to prove that he was the smartest guy in the room” and raises questions about his ties to John Dillon. There’s a clip where Todd denies being able to code in C++, even though an old bio says he has that skill.

Hoback continues to argue that Peter Todd and John Dillon may be the same person; Todd dismisses this theory, calling it “ridiculous.”

“It’s going to be hilarious when you put that into the documentary,” Todd says with a laugh. “Bitcoiners will be happy if you go this route; journalists are truly hilariously missing the point.”

A final piece of evidence shows a message in which Todd describes himself as “a world-leading expert on how to sacrifice your Bitcoins” – perhaps an admission that he no longer has access to Satoshi Nakamoto’s stash – and Hoback suggests Todd has turned to that alias He fears that Bitcoin will not be taken seriously due to his young age.

Peter Todd | Source: HBO trailer A definitive answer?

Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery is a well-produced documentary with a surprising conclusion, after which Todd claims that there are “hundreds, even thousands of people who could create Bitcoin.”

At first, it’s easy to worry that this will be another cliche movie; One of the first images shows a hooded man wearing an anonymous mask. This is followed by a mix of newscasters declaring the death of BTC, complete with charts showing how this coin has increased in value over the years.

But Money Electric is a literate series that doesn’t shy away from tackling the complexities of BTC. The downsides of cryptocurrency are acknowledged, but key players in the industry are given plenty of time to express their opinions. We have been witnessing Bitcoin’s excesses over the years, with Hoback describing Bitcoin’s excess and the “orange fuzz” as “pretty annoying.” There’s a brief omission on NFTs, mentions of Ethereum’s embarrassing conferences, and critiques of how central bank digital currencies could spy on all our transactions.

Hoback’s results are compelling and unexpected; So much so that Todd’s name wasn’t even mentioned in Polymarket bets speculating on who would be identified as Satoshi. But realistically, this documentary failed to deliver a killer blow that would settle this issue once and for all, and the crypto community is already starting to poke holes in the documentary’s narrative.

For now, it’s safe to say that Satoshi’s identity is far from certain, but there is a prescient quote from Peter Todd who gives up early in the film.

“It’s unlikely it will collapse on us, but it will one day.”