For a whole week, the US television channel HBO drummed up publicity for a “groundbreaking” documentary that was supposed to reveal the identity behind the pseudonymous Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto. However, the presented clues about Peter Todd are rather meager.
Under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, the famous Bitcoin whitepaper was published in October 2008, followed by the first version of the Bitcoin Core reference implementation in January of the following year. The mysterious Bitcoin founder remained active in online forums for almost two years. Then he suddenly disappeared from the public eye. Since then, rumours about his true identity have been circulating again and again. According to an HBO documentary that aired last night, the early Bitcoin developer Peter Todd may have been the man behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.
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Questionable argumentation of the HBO exposé
The unmasking of HBO documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback is based on two forum posts by Bitcoin Core co-developer Peter Todd. In December 2010, Todd responded to a post in the “Bitcoin Talk” forum. According to Hoback, this had been intended for the Satoshi profile, but Todd had accidentally published the answer via his personal account. After all, the pseudonymous founder had responded to the same post shortly before. A few days after this alleged “accident”, Satoshi vanished. Then in 2015, Todd implemented the Replace-By-Fee (RBF) mechanism discussed in the post.
According to the report, another piece of evidence is a later chat message from Todd. In it, Todd describes himself as “the world's leading expert on how to sacrifice bitcoins.” He claims to have “made such a sacrifice" by his own hand. This comment is supposed to be Todd's “admission” that he destroyed the 1.1 million bitcoins – worth over 64 billion US dollars at today's prices – in Satoshi's Bitcoin wallet. Justifiably, the Bitcoin enthusiast told Coindesk that the documentation was grasping at straws. The arguments are meager, but the implications are not.
Target on innocent Bitcoin enthusiast?
When asked by CVJ.CH, Phil Lojacono, one of the new board members of the Bitcoin Association Switzerland (BAS), commented that “unmaskings” like HBO's put a dangerous target on the backs of the accused and their loved ones. It is widely known that the family of a suspected “Satoshi” is under constant threat. According to Lojacono, suddenly portraying someone with wealth of multiple billions can be very dangerous. “We should avoid that at all costs.”
That is why the founder of the self-financed Bitcoin company Berglinde AG does not want to speculate about the identity behind the Satoshi pseudonym at all. "He made it abundantly clear that he wants to stay anonymous." Lojacono notes that his use of the pronoun “he” corresponds to Satoshi's intention to be represented as a man. This desire for privacy should be respected for ethical reasons. In the end, the identity of the Bitcoin founder is only relevant as a myth anyways.
"All of us are Satoshi (beside Craig Wright). It's an idea and a myth that people can get behind. So yes, [his identity]is relevant in the sense that it should remain a myth. [...] Satoshi's creator story is one of the many beauties of Bitcoin." - Phil Lojacono, Entrepreneur and board member of the Bitcoin Association Switzerland
Ultimately, Bitcoin's ethos also applies here: “don't trust, verify.” Without a transaction from Satoshi's bitcoin wallet, no theory can stand up to this test.
