Peter Todd stands on the first floor of a ruined industrial building somewhere in the Czech Republic and chuckles to himself. He has just been accused on camera of being Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, whose identity has remained a secret for 15 years.
In the final scene of the modern HBO documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Secretdocumentarian Cullen Hoback confronts Todd with the theory that he is Satoshi. In Hoback’s previous work exposed the figure behind QAnon. Here he tries to repeat the Bitcoin trick.
“I’ll admit, you’re quite creative – you come up with some crazy theories,” Todd tells Hoback, before dismissing the idea as “ridiculous.” “I’m warning you, it’s going to be very funny when you put it in a documentary.”
The film does not claim to have conclusively unmasked Bitcoin’s creator, in the absence of irrefutable proof. “For the record, I am not Satoshi,” Todd states in an email. “That’s a useless question because Satoshi would simply deny it.”
The hunt for Bitcoin’s creator has produced a wide range of Satoshis over the years, including Hal Finney, the recipient of the first-ever Bitcoin transaction; Adam Back, a pioneering technology designer cited in the Bitcoin white paper; and cryptologist Nick Szabo, to name just a few. Fingers are pointed at some; others choose themselves. Although Satoshi had many faces, no consensus emerged around any of them.
“People basically suspected everyone of being Satoshi,” Todd notes at the beginning of the documentary. “The problem with this type of stuff is that people play all these crazy games.”
WIRED has its place in the history of the Satoshi hunt. On the same day in December 2015, WIRED i Gizmodo separately nominated Australian computer scientist Craig Wright as a potential Satoshi. The original story, based on a trove of leaked documents, suggested that Wright “either invented Bitcoin or is a brilliant fraudster who really wants us to believe it.” A few days later, WIRED published a second article pointing out discrepancies in the evidence supporting this second interpretation.
In March, a British High Court judge categorically ruled that Wright was not Satoshi, closing a case brought by a group of crypto companies to prevent the Australian from bringing burdensome legal claims.
In the two months I spent writing about the Wright trial, many Satoshis also appeared in my inbox. “The world is not ready to learn about Satoshi Nakamoto and never will unless certain conditions are met,” one of them wrote in a garbled message.
Hell, I even met the potential Satoshi in person, in the waiting room outside the courtroom. A man who identified himself as Satoshi sat in the public gallery to listen to closing arguments. He soon nodded, resting his chin on his chest. One of the other spectators anointed him “Sleeptoshi”.
Many bitcoiners welcome this strange, crypto version of “I’m Spartacus”, preferring that the identity of Bitcoin’s creator remain forever a secret. Free from the domineering influence of its founder, Bitcoin has evolved in a system of unadulterated anarchy, as they say, where no one’s opinion is worth more than any other. Everyone is Satoshi and no one is Satoshi.