Satoshi Nakamoto gave the world Bitcoin in early 2009. Since then, his creation has sparked a global uprising against banks and governments, and its value has soared to well over $1 trillion, or comparable to the market capitalization of Tesla and JP Morgan. Satoshi also left a mystery behind. Who is this mysterious person who disappeared into the fog of the internet? And what happened to his huge Bitcoin fortune?
The search for Satoshi has been going on for over 10 years. It caused spectacular misfires, including Newsweek’s infamous 2014 cover story that claimed Satoshi was found hiding in secluded locations in Los Angeles. The discovery was very wrong—Newsweek instead found a confused older man whose last name happened to be Nakamoto—but the episode would become a new piece of Bitcoin lore. It also served as a textbook example of the dangers of confirmation bias.
This time Karen Hoback appears. His new documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, claims to fully reveal Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity. The film premieres at 9pm PT on HBO, the same network that released Hoback’s Q: Into the Story in 2021, which took a close-up look at the QAnon conspiracy and pointed fingers at those who orchestrated it. It will be published.
Hoback isn’t lacking in confidence (the trailer for Money Electric promises to uncover “the internet’s biggest mysteries”), and his documentaries are generally good. This avoids the pitfalls of most other crypto movies. “Money Electric” is not a fan film by groupies trying to promote some tokens. We also don’t look down on or ridicule the cryptocurrency industry without trying to understand it. This is a common approach by those who aspire to be sophisticated critics.
Instead, Hoback paints a picture of how a group of long-time Bitcoin supporters see themselves. As the custodian of Satoshi’s gifts, it gave Earth a form of money beyond the reach of intrusive, prodigal governments. In this view, the villains are JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon (the Bitcoin-hating banker who appears at the beginning and end of Money Electric) and the progressive senators who allied with Wall Street against cryptocurrencies. It’s Elizabeth Warren.
Meanwhile, the people at the heart of Money Electric are those associated with Blockstream, a company that facilitates the adoption of Bitcoin by individuals, businesses, and even countries. At the beginning of the film, we meet Samson Moe, a self-proclaimed Bitcoin ambassador who convinces the Prince of Serbia and the President of El Salvador to accept Bitcoin.
There’s also Adam Back, the founder of Blockstream, who is famous for creating Hashcash, the predecessor to Bitcoin. Also known are Peter Todd, a Buck acolyte and core developer of Bitcoin, and Roger “Bitt,” another influential figure in the early crypto world who is currently facing tax evasion charges. We also meet people like Mr. “Coin Jesus” Wahl. There are also cameos from some of the biggest names in the business world, including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who changed the name of another company from Square to Block as part of his crypto efforts.
The documentary’s interviews with longtime Bitcoiners lend it authority, as does its concise treatment of key events in the evolution of cryptocurrencies. These include the so-called block size war over Bitcoin’s architecture, the rise of Ethereum and altcoins (“shit coins” to detractors), and the U.S. government’s recent campaign to undermine the industry.
Satoshi: “It’s become clear.”
Money Electric also owed much to its huge production budget (director Hoback shot scenes in Malta, Canada, El Salvador, and many other locations) and the director’s efforts to claim Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity. It stands out from other crypto films in that it puts all its effort into it. Unfortunately, his bet is almost certainly wrong.
Hoback’s quest to identify Satoshi begins in the right direction. He identifies the most prominent figures in a network of “cypherpunks” who shared a passion for privacy and encryption and corresponded through the now-famous email list of the same name. On this mailing list and an online forum called BitcoinTalk, Satoshi shared his vision for Bitcoin in addition to his famous white paper.
Early in the documentary, Hoback shows photos of the cypherpunks most closely associated with Bitcoin and most likely to become Satoshi. They are Back, the creator of Blockstream and Hash Cash, as well as other names familiar to longtime Bitcoiners: Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and Wei Dai.
After making a short and half-hearted effort to assess whether these candidates were Satoshi, Hoback announced that he had invented the virtual currency in 2016 with fabricated evidence to claim he invented Bitcoin. The topic then turned to Craig Wright, an Australian charlatan who has appeared on the scene. Fortunately, the filmmaker was not hired and moved on to other candidates. As Money Electric progresses, it first sets its sights on Buck as Satoshi’s candidate, and then on Buck’s Blockstream protégé and friend Peter Todd.
Todd is much younger than other long-term candidates, and is believed to have been 19 or 20 years old when Satoshi Nakamoto released his Bitcoin white paper. To claim that Todd was Satoshi, Hoback used a 2013 email exchange he had with an unidentified person named John Dillon about Bitcoin’s technology upgrades.
The email was leaked in 2016 and caused a minor uproar in the crypto world, as it appeared that Dillon was a US intelligence agent who had paid Todd as part of a plot to infiltrate Bitcoin. However, Hoback makes a plausible case in the film that Todd and Dillon are the same person and that Todd orchestrated the entire controversy to push for the upgrade.
Hoback treats this as a serendipitous moment, from which he seizes the public exchange between Satoshi and Todd (in which Todd appears to correct Bitcoin inventor) as evidence that the latter must be Satoshi. Ta. In other words, Todd was once again using the trick of replying to his own pseudonymous messages. In support of this claim, Hoback points out that Satoshi’s last communication appeared three days after the exchange, and that Todd’s writings, which are Canadian, contain British-style messages that are also found in the Bitcoin inventor’s texts. It is pointed out that the spellings (color, cheque, etc.) were included. .
At the film’s climax, Hoback interviews Buck and Todd in a ruined castle in the Czech Republic (it’s unclear why they’re there) and tells them his theory directly. Todd never explicitly denies that he is Satoshi, but instead appears to be vague and gently troll the filmmakers.
Who is Satoshi?
Based on all of this, Hoback and HBO have been promoting Money Electric as a blockbuster exposé that will reveal Satoshi’s true identity years later. Oops. They should have instead remembered the lesson of Newsweek and the dangers of confirmation bias, the all-too-common practice of interpreting new information to affirm existing beliefs and rejecting anything that contradicts them. .
As of now, there is no conclusive evidence that Peter Todd is not Satoshi (though it may become clear soon). Notably, however, Todd’s name has never come up as a strong candidate among crypto insiders, and Hoback, a newcomer to the field, has conveniently been named Bitcoin’s inventor. It’s hard to imagine encountering one. Also, someone who just graduated from high school and has not yet published anything of note has the sophistication to write a complex document like a Bitcoin whitepaper and execute on it. It is hard to imagine that it was. Finally, it stretches the imagination to think that Satoshi, who has vehemently avoided publicity, would choose to participate in an HBO movie that explores who created Bitcoin. When Todd says “We’re all Satoshi” to Hoback in the movie, the filmmakers should have simply recognized this is a familiar refrain to Bitcoin enthusiasts and left it at that. .
But Hoback’s biggest mistake, even more than his decision to focus on Todd, was that he ignored a much more plausible theory about Satoshi’s identity — the theory that the simplest explanation is usually correct. This is also consistent with the theorem Ockham’s razor.
This movie took a step in the right direction by focusing on the original Cypherpunk, and Satoshi’s search should have stayed there. In particular, they search for a man named Nick Sabo. Hoback introduces him as a possible suspect, but then dismisses him without any convincing reason. He ignores not only long-standing whispers within the Bitcoin community, but also a plethora of compelling evidence.
Evidence of this includes the work of Nathaniel Popper, a former New York Times reporter and author of Digital Gold, a close-up look at the early Bitcoin scene that is much closer to the cryptocurrency’s origin story. Included. Mr. Popper’s reporting, including this 2015 article, clearly points in Mr. Szabo’s direction, with academic research using regression analysis comparing Satoshi’s writings to those of potential Bitcoin inventors. It has been supplemented. The study found an odd coincidence between Mr. Satoshi and Mr. Sabo, who uses the British spelling. In favor of circumstantial evidence, there’s also the fact that Nick Sabo’s initials, NS, are the reverse of SN.
Although Hoback’s big reveal ultimately flopped, Money Electric remains noteworthy. This filmmaker does a great job of telling the story of cryptocurrencies (a phenomenon that exists almost entirely online) with sophistication and passion, while deftly using enough graphics to convey the timeline and technical aspects. I am.
For those new to cryptocurrencies, Money Electric provides a compelling story that explains Bitcoin in an unbiased and accurate way. For long-time crypto enthusiasts, this documentary provides many familiar faces and a sympathetic look at their culture, while also introducing some new legends who will be the subject of memes for years to come. Provide.
