HBO’s latest documentary, “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” airs on the Max streaming service Tuesday night and promises to uncover the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin. .
Directed by Cullen Hoback, the documentary explores Bitcoin’s origins and introduces several figures from the early days of Bitcoin’s development, including Blockstream CEO Adam Back.
Hoback ultimately focuses on Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd, presenting a series of clues that suggest he may be the cryptocurrency’s elusive inventor.
Primarily, Hoback focuses on forum posts posted by Todd in response to the pseudonym Satoshi. The director actually believes that Todd is continuing Satoshi’s ideas. As if the same person was using multiple accounts.
He also mentions Todd’s writing style in relation to Satoshi, Todd’s teenage efforts to turn his early Hashcash experiments into a functional currency, and what he describes as the layman’s level C++ code behind the Bitcoin protocol. Finally, he suggests that he used the pseudonym Satoshi to get people to take Bitcoin seriously.
However, like previous attempts to uncover Satoshi’s identity, the film failed to provide hard evidence, and critics dismissed the theory as speculation based on faulty assumptions.
“Cullen might have a good reason,” said Samson Mow, CEO of Bitcoin technology company JAN3 and former chief strategy officer of Blockstream, who appears in the documentary. decryption. “I told the documentary it might not have been Peter.”
Just before the documentary aired on Tuesday, Todd responded to a post made by BitMex Research on Twitter (aka X). declaration: “I am not Satoshi.”
a familiar story
The documentary follows already well-trodden paths in the search for Nakamoto, including the late Hal Finney, a cryptographer and early Bitcoin adopter previously credited with making significant contributions to Bitcoin’s development. We take a look again at a name that has long been associated with .
Despite its high production values and compelling interviews, “Money Electric” has been criticized for relying too heavily on circumstantial evidence and confirmation bias, reminiscent of the infamous 2014 Newsweek debacle that misidentified an unrelated man as Nakamoto. .
Skepticism grows.
The documentary’s release was met with a muted reaction from the cryptocurrency community, many of whom were skeptical of its claims to reveal Satoshi’s true identity.
Previous speculation surrounding Nakamoto’s identity has at times resulted in market volatility. Money Electric’s lack of convincing evidence appears to limit such reactions this time around.
Bitcoin has been trading unchanged for the past 24 hours at $62,200, according to CoinGecko data.
The identity of Bitcoin’s creator continues to be one of the biggest mysteries of modern finance, and Money Electric will likely join the list of documentaries that fail to provide definitive answers.
“At this point, it doesn’t matter who Satoshi is,” Mow said. “Bitcoin has outgrown its creator’s needs.”
Editor: Andrew Hayward
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