Guy Identified by HBO Film as Bitcoin Inventor: Nope, Not Me

The creator of an HBO documentary that began streaming on Tuesday had promised to shed light on one of the biggest mysteries in cryptocurrency—the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym for the unknown inventor of bitcoin. Now that Cullen Hoback's Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery is officially out there, however, the man he's identified as Satoshi is pushing back on that revelation. "I'm not Satoshi," Canadian crypto expert Peter Todd wrote flatly Tuesday on X, per the BBC. Todd is shown being confronted by Hoback in the film, laughing at what he says is the "ludicrous" idea that he created the cryptocurrency and is worth about $69 billion today thanks to his supposed crypto wallet's stash (if he still controls it).

The New York Times notes that Todd's name hasn't been one of the usual ones offered up in trying to determine who bitcoin's creator is, with some critics pointing out that Todd was in his early 20s when bitcoin came out and likely wouldn't have been sophisticated enough to conjure up such an elaborate payment system. One of the pieces of evidence offered in the documentary is a 2010 post by Todd in a bitcoin forum that seemed to complete a previous Satoshi post, making some speculate that he posted from the wrong account by mistake; Todd vanished from the forum soon after, which he now blames on just being busy with work and school.

Per Bitcoin.com News, some crypto experts slammed Hoback's theory after the film started streaming. "What a bust. Wild speculation, lacks understanding of the tech that rules it out, no smoking gun," one wrote on X. Hoback, however, doesn't seem deterred in his claim that Todd is his guy. "I'm very convinced," he told the Times earlier this week. "Everything lines up with him." A commenter on Todd's "I'm not Satoshi" tweet also notes, "That's exactly what Satoshi would say." Todd himself acknowledges just that to the Times: "It's a useless question" to ask him if he's Satoshi, "because Satoshi would simply deny it." (More Satoshi Nakamoto stories.)