Former Bitcoin developer points out missing detail undermining HBO’s claim that Peter Todd is Satoshi
2024-10-09

Following Tuesday night’s release of the HBO documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery," former Bitcoin Core developer Gregory Maxwell pointed out an overlooked detail undermining filmmaker Cullen Hoback’s case that Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator is another early Bitcoin developer, Peter Todd.
The nearly two-hour documentary, billed as a “globe-trotting investigation” out to “solve one of the internet’s greatest mysteries” interviewed a series of different people involved in Bitcoin and examined various clues before finally zeroing in on Todd — something the developer immediately denied. 
The crux of Hoback’s case centered around a 2010 reply to Satoshi on the BitcoinTalk forum, in which he claimed Todd accidentally finished Satoshi’s post from his own account. Both accounts remained silent in the days that followed, with Todd later implementing the Bitcoin replace-by-fee feature discussed as a concept in the thread. Replace-by-fee allows a sender to replace an unconfirmed transaction with another one that has a higher transaction fee to get it processed more quickly.
Among the supposed supporting evidence, Hoback also cited Todd using a pseudonym “John Dillon” to push replace-by-fee, the British/Canadian spellings used by both Satoshi and Todd and a weekend-heavy posting schedule that aligned with Todd’s student timetable.
Further, Hoback said Todd once discussed “sacrificing” bitcoins and argued this was in reference to destroying Satoshi’s coins, estimated to be as much as 1.1 million BTC — worth roughly $68 billion on paper.
In a discussion thread in the hours that followed the documentary’s airing, Maxwell wrote that “at the time petertodd's account was named 'retep' and didn't have any immediately obvious connection to his identity. If there had been a slipup he could have just abandoned the account and certainly not later had it renamed to his legal name!”
Maxwell also warned against accusing others of being Satoshi, reminding people they have often resulted in people’s families being threatened and extorted.
“Excellent point by Gregory Maxwell,” Todd replied on X. “If Cullen Hoback had actually wanted to find Satoshi, he would have presented his theories to Adam Back and I to see if there wasn't some trivial flaw in them like this.”
Back is the creator of the Hashcash proof-of-work system to combat email spam that was later incorporated by Satoshi into Bitcoin’s consensus algorithm. He is also among the speculated candidates to be Satoshi — something he has repeatedly denied.
“But he didn't want to do that. He wanted to make a profitable documentary. So he never asked us if there were flaws in his theory,” Todd added on Wednesday. 
Polymarket bettors lose out
Ahead of the film's airing, the decentralized prediction platform Polymarket had generated over $44 million in volume as users speculated who the documentary would suggest was Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator. 
The top frontrunners included Len Sassaman, Nick Szabo, Adam Back and David Kleiman. At one point in the day, Sassaman, Szabo and Back were all essentially tied with each scoring a probability of being named of about 8%. Todd was not named as a contender by Polymarket users.
After the HBO documentary's big reveal became public knowledge, there was no shortage of scrutiny online, with many community members taking to X to criticize and debunk the film's conclusions as they had done in the past regarding similar supposed unveilings.
The mystery surrounding Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator seemingly remains a mystery for now, with many advocates arguing it should stay that way.
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