HBO points to Peter Todd as Satoshi, but the crypto community is skeptical

HBO’s documentary ‘Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery’ revealed that Canadian Bitcoin developer Peter Todd is Satoshi Nakamoto, but the crypto community is not convinced.

In the 100-minute feature, Cullen Hobak, the producer of the highly anticipated documentary, presents several alleged pieces of evidence that lead to the conclusion that Todd, one of the first names in the field of cryptocurrency, is the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.

Todd is a Bitcoin Core Developer who has been contributing to the cryptocurrency space for several years. He first became interested in cryptography and blockchain-related technologies at a young age and became interested in these fields during his teenage years.

His earliest documented involvement with Bitcoin dates back to the late 2000s, when he was approximately 23 years old, when he was already active in the crypto community, just after the publication of the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008.

In a 2019 podcast episode of What Did Bitcoin Do, Todd explained that he was about 15 years old when he started communicating with early Bitcoin contributors such as Hal Finney and Hashcash inventor Adam Back. These early interactions helped shape his later contributions to the Bitcoin field and cryptography in general.

In a 2018 interview with crypto.news, Todd explained that he worked as an analog electronics designer and geophysics startup before switching to Bitcoin.

He officially started working at Coinkite as a Bitcoin Core Developer in July 2014 and later held key roles, including serving as chief scientist on projects such as Mastercoin and Dark Wallet.

Why Todd Satoshi?

The primary reason behind naming Todd stems from the collection of circumstantial evidence assembled by Hobak; one of which was his cryptic online posts – specifically those in which he referred to himself as “the world’s leading expert on how to sacrifice your Bitcoins” – which were interpreted as tacit admissions and suggested he may have destroyed access to the estimated 1.1 million BTC attributed to Nakamoto. was exiled.

The documentary further fueled speculation with claims that Todd accidentally posted from Satoshi’s account on the BitcoinTalk forum in 2010.

Additionally, Todd is considered a key proponent of Fee Swapping (RBF), a controversial issue within the community that proposes a mechanism that would allow a past transaction to be replaced with a new transaction offering a higher fee. The documentary implied that this technical suggestion could only come from someone like Nakamoto, who has deep knowledge of Bitcoin’s original code.

The community debunks the claims, and so does Todd

Despite these theories, Todd continued to stubbornly deny that he was Nakamoto even before the documentary was released. More recently, on October 8, he responded to a comment from X asking HBO to deny his claim, to which the developer responded, “I’m not Satoshi.”

The crypto community was quick to refute HBO’s claims. Web3 researcher Pix pointed out a few key ways the documentary went wrong.

First, Pix noted that Peter Todd was still finishing his fine arts degree in 2008 and was not involved in the field of cryptography, making it unlikely he would need to use a pseudonym like Satoshi Nakamoto.

Pix later refuted HBO’s claim regarding the 2010 BitcoinTalk post; This claim suggested that Todd had accidentally revealed himself as Satoshi by not switching accounts. Pix argued that a follow-up post made 13 hours later was more likely a simple comment than evidence of a forgotten account change.

Communication Between Satoshi and Peter Todd on BitcoinTalk | Source: Pix on X.

Pix also touched on the RBF connection, explaining that Todd introduced RBF in 2014, years after Satoshi left the scene. HBO’s suggestion that this feature was pre-planned by Satoshi was dismissed as a gross exaggeration.

Finally, Pix addressed the “sacrifice bitcoins” message and explained that Todd’s cryptic comment was a joke about blockchain integrity, not an admission that he destroyed access to Satoshi’s 1.1 million BTC. According to Pix, this crucial evidence was wildly taken out of context, further discrediting HBO’s claims.

Among the disbelievers was CryptoQuant researcher Ki Young Ju, who called the documentary “disgusting.”

“Surprising they came to this conclusion when not all #Bitcoin experts agree,” Ju said in an X post on Oct. 9.

BitMEX Research also joined the skeptics, calling the evidence presented by HBO “patently absurd” and stating that there is “zero reason” to believe Peter Todd is Satoshi.

Prominent figures in the community, such as Adam Back, who has long been linked to the initial development of Bitcoin, and Satoshi himself have not supported the theory. Back, who appeared in the documentary, avoided crediting the speculation and simply said, “No one knows who Satoshi is.”

Other market observers dismissed this result as nothing more than sloppy journalism.

Surprise for Polymarket bettors

Polymarket, a popular prediction market platform, listed the possibilities of who will be identified as Satoshi Nakamoto in HBO’s documentary. However, Peter Todd was not initially included as a betting option.

Bettors were primarily focused on names like Nick Szabo and Len Sassaman, both of whom are claimed to be the creators of Bitcoin. Other contestants included Hal Finney and Elon Musk.

This omission is further evidence of how unexpected and widely dismissed the documentary’s claim about Todd actually was.