Tuesday evening, ‘HBO’ broadcast a documentary that would lift the veil on one of the biggest mysteries surrounding Bitcoin: the identity of its creator, now attributed to Peter Todd.
(Boursier.com) — Is Peter Todd Satoshi Nakamoto? While the identity of the creator of Bitcoin has fueled speculation for more than a decade, a new HBO documentary entitled “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery”, directed by Cullen Hoback and broadcast Tuesday evening, has reignited the debate by designating a 39-year-old Canadian developer, as potentially being at the origin of the most famous cryptocurrency.
For years, the name Satoshi Nakamoto has been known as the pseudonym of the individual, or group of individuals, who designed Bitcoin. This mysterious creator launched the cryptocurrency in 2009 before disappearing from the scene in 2011. Peter Todd is therefore Satoshi Nakamoto, according to Cullen Hoback who bases his hypothesis on circumstantial evidence. “Obviously, I made the film. And I mean I’m very convinced,” he told ‘New York Magazine’, stressing however that the absence of electronic traces left by Satoshi Nakamoto considerably complicates any attempt at formal identification after so many years.
Peter Todd, who describes himself as a “cryptochronomancer,” is a well-known figure in the world of cryptocurrencies. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, the developer, involved from the early hours of the development of Bitcoin, would have bought his first Bitcoins when their value was only 20 cents, far from the more than 60,000 dollars today .
Exchanges with Satoshi Nakamoto documented
Todd’s professional background is closely linked to the world of cryptocurrencies. Since 2014, he has served as lead developer at Bitcoin Core and Coinkite. He is also an advisor to digital collections platform Verisart and serves as chief scientist for Dark Wallet, an open-source Bitcoin wallet, as well as Mastercoin, a communications and digital currency protocol. He is also the founder of OpenTimestamps, a project aimed at standardizing timestamping on the blockchain.
One of the particularities that makes Peter Todd suspect in the eyes of director Cullen Hoback is that he is one of the rare people whose exchanges with Satoshi Nakamoto are publicly documented, before the latter’s disappearance in 2011. In December 2010, he was said to have notably responded to a message from Satoshi Nakamoto on a Bitcoin blog regarding transaction fees.
Peter Todd denies
The fact remains that Peter Todd has categorically denied being Satoshi Nakamoto. “I am not Satoshi,” he assured on the social network “If I were Satoshi, I would have destroyed my ability to prove it so that I would never have the temptation to do it,” he explains in an interview in the documentary. “But you’re not Satoshi?” asks the director. “Oh no, I’m Satoshi, we’re all Satoshi,” he replied wryly.
Other personalities such as Hal Finney, Adam Back, and Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright have also been suspected of being Satoshi Nakamoto. Some investors prefer that the mystery remain intact, considering that the anonymity of the creator is an integral part of the magic and decentralized philosophy of Bitcoin…
