Blockchain & Cryptocurrency , Next-Generation Technologies & Secure Development

Will the Real Satoshi Nakamoto Please Stand Up?

Is Peter Todd truly Satoshi Nakamoto, or just the next name in a long list of conspiracy theories that are eventually debunked?

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HBO documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery" reignited speculation about the identity of Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator, who disappeared in 2010. Director Cullen Hoback's film claims that Canadian developer Peter Todd is the mastermind behind the cryptocurrency.

The claim is far from conclusive, despite an eyebrow-raising moment in the film, where Todd admits to being Nakamoto on camera, seemingly tongue in cheek.

Hoback pulls together age-old theories and newer discoveries, including Todd's participation in the Bitcoin community during its early days, technical knowledge aligning with the skills needed to create such technology and his use of British-Canadian spellings such as "favour" and "neighbour." The documentary also references a 2010 BitcoinTalk forum post, where Todd purportedly continued Nakamoto's thoughts mistakenly using his own account - a theory critics dismissed as an overinterpretation, arguing that Todd was likely just responding to Nakamoto in a technical discussion, as he had done in the past.

The film's climax has Hoback confronting Todd and Adam Back, another figure theorized to be Nakamoto. As Hoback questions Todd - almost forcefully - about his perceptions of Bitcoin's origins, Todd replies: "Well, yeah, I'm Satoshi Nakamoto." Todd's comments appear to be more rhetorical than literal, as he has previously used the phrase "I am Satoshi" to pay homage to the creator's commitment to anonymity.

Todd himself has denied that he is Nakamoto. He told BCC: "I am not Satoshi. When I first read the Bitcoin whitepaper, my reaction was "Dammit! I should have thought of that," he said.

Many in the crypto community support this view, saying that while Todd's contributions to the community are invaluable, his cryptographic knowledge doesn't reach the level needed to make Bitcoin. Todd's timeline within the Bitcoin ecosystem weakens the theory further - the alleged creator did not buy Bitcoin until 2010, two years after its release. Bitcoin addresses linked to Nakamoto contain about 600,000 to 1.1 million tokens, worth about $70 billion.

Todd has been in the crypto ecosystem for over a decade. He is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, in his early 20s when Nakamoto in 2008 published his white paper on Bitcoin as an outline for the peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Todd has since become an important figure in Bitcoin circles for his work on privacy technologies such as OpenTimestamps and Zcash. He has reportedly been speaking to crypto experts since he was 15 years old and also exchanged messages with the elusive Bitcoin creator during the early days of Bitcoin.

Jameson Lopp, co-founder of Bitcoin company Casa, joked about the findings of the documentary, commenting that Nakamoto is probably "having a laugh" at the latest theories.

What may be closer to reality is Hoback's own acknowledgment of the speculative nature of his investigation. In an interview with Politico, he said that digital forensics could only take an investigation so far and that real answers often lie outside those connections.

Todd's naming is the latest among a string of others. Crypto-based prediction markets favored late American privacy advocate Len Sassaman as the most likely candidate. Newsweek in 2014 supposedly identified Japanese-American Dorian Nakamoto as Satoshi Nakamoto. Even Elon Musk faced speculation after a former SpaceX employee suggested that the Tesla chief was Nakamoto, a claim Musk denied. Adam Back, another potential candidate and a core developer, reportedly said before the documentary aired that "No one knows who Satoshi is. And that's a good thing."

"He cannot be found, and any claims to the contrary are all constructed around circumstantial evidence - or fabricated in cases like Faketoshi," said Samson Mow, the CEO of JAN3, a company that works on the adoption of Bitcoin by nation-states. "Faketoshi" refers to Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, who had forged documents and lied "extensively and repeatedly" about being Nakamoto. A U.K. court ruled that he was not the inventor of Bitcoin and forced him to update his website and socials with a legal notice saying so.

While the documentary shines a light on the debate, it does not come up with definitive proof. Nakamoto's identity remains a mystery, and that is probably Bitcoin's biggest strength. His anonymity made the cryptocurrency more decentralized, shaped by the community and free of the influence of any particular individual. If Todd and others conjectured to be Nakamoto embraced that anonymity, it would likely be the biggest homage to Bitcoin's ethos.