Thought Leadership
Award-winning filmmaker Cullen Hoback claims to have unmasked the mysterious creator of Bitcoin: Canadian developer Peter Todd is said to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
Cullen Hoback comes to his conclusion by combining old and new clues. In a dramatic finale, he confronts both Todd and Adam Back, the founder of Blockstream and also a prime suspect in the Satoshi saga, with the evidence he has gathered. When asked about his deep insights into Bitcoin at the time of its creation, Todd replies, “Well, I’m Satoshi Nakamoto.” However, Todd is known to jokingly refer to himself as Satoshi in order to protect his privacy. Todd himself has rejected the speculation, calling it speculative and misleading.
Suspicious forum post: a key indicator?
Hoback presents a piece of evidence that could indicate that Todd is indeed the creator of Bitcoin. This refers to a post that Todd published in an early Bitcoin forum on December 10, 2010. At the time, Todd was about 25 years old. This post was about very specific details of how Bitcoin transaction fees work. Todd was responding to a previous post by Nakamoto. It was one of Todd’s first posts on the forum, and according to him, he was merely correcting a mathematical error made by Nakamoto. Hoback, however, interprets this post differently: to him, it looks as if Todd is seamlessly continuing Nakamoto’s train of thought. In the film, Hoback argues that Todd may have switched between different user accounts and forgotten to log back in under the correct alias.
The 39-year-old Todd was not previously considered a “prime suspect”. Interestingly, he would have been only 23 years old at the time of the publication of the famous Bitcoin white paper.
“For the record: I am not Satoshi,” Peter Todd told CNN in a statement. Todd went even further, calling the movie “irresponsible” and warning that it put his life in danger. He also vehemently denies being the inventor of Bitcoin on X (formerly Twitter).
“Cullen is grasping at straws here,” Todd said. He claims he wasn’t contacted by HBO in advance of the movie’s release and didn’t have a chance to see it before it aired on Tuesday night. “He’s blowing up a couple of coincidences into something much bigger. Ironically, that’s a hallmark of conspiracy thinking.”
Not all crypto enthusiasts on social media seem to be convinced by the theory either.
