Former Bitcoin Dev Peter Todd Denies He’s Satoshi Hours Before HBO Documentary Airs

Leaked clips from HBO’s soon-to-premiere Satoshi Nakamoto documentary seem to finger former Bitcoin developer Peter Todd as the cryptocurrency’s creator – but Todd denies it.

In an email to CoinDesk, Todd said filmmaker Cullen Hoback, best known for identifying the person behind the QAnon conspiracy theory in an earlier series for HBO, was “grasping at straws” in accusing Todd of being Satoshi.

“Yes, that interview did happen and I believe that specific shot isn’t deepfaked,” he confirmed, though he added he had not yet seen the documentary.

“Of course, I’m not Satoshi,” Todd said. “It’s ironic that a director who is also known for a documentary on QAnon has resorted to QAnon style coincidence-based conspiracy thinking here too.”

On Tuesday afternoon in New York, hours before the scheduled premiere of “Money Electric: the Bitcoin Mystery,” the odds on Polymarket’s bet over whom the film will identify as Satoshi overwhelmingly (78.5% at the time of publication) favored “Other/Multiple.” Previously, cypherpunk Len Sassaman and then computer programmer Nick Szabo held the lead on Polymarket’s list of possible HBO-toshi’s.

At the time of the Polymarket bet’s creation, Todd was not listed as a possibility, so anyone who wanted to bet on him being the film’s “reveal” would have to choose “Other/Multiple.”

Even in the clips circulating on social media,Todd calls the theory that he is Satoshi “ludicrous.”

To be clear: Only snippets of the film are circulating online and it’s possible that in the end Hoback reaches a different conclusion about Satoshi’s identity than he does in the scene with Todd.

In that scene, Hoback appears to confront Todd, laying out his theory of how and why Todd hid his supposed involvement in the invention of Bitcoin. Todd shakes his head and laughs at Hoback’s accusations.

“I will admit you’re pretty creative. You come up with some crazy theories. It’s ludicrous,” Todd says in the clip. “But I’ll say yeah, of course I’m Satoshi. And I’m Craig Wright.”

This is clearly a joke, not a confession: Todd has previously made similar cracks that he “is Satoshi,” telling What Bitcoin Did podcast host Peter McCormack in a 2019 interview: “I am Satoshi, as is everyone else.”

As the video clip continues, Todd, still laughing, warns Hoback that he’s drawn an incorrect conclusion.

“This is going to be very funny when you put this into the documentary and a bunch of bitcoiners watch it,” Todd said. “I suspect a lot of them will be very happy if you go this route because it’s yet another example of journalists really missing the point in a way that’s very funny.”

Hoback responds by asking what the point is.

“The point is to make Bitcoin the global currency,” Todd responds.

A few seconds from the scene appear in the official trailer for the film.

Blockstream CEO Adam Back, who appears to be standing next to Todd in the clip, did not respond to a request for comment from CoinDesk.

Though an early Bitcoin developer and someone deeply involved in the early years of Bitcoin, Todd has never been a prime suspect in journalists’ years-long hunt for Satoshi. Figures like Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and Back are most frequently suggested to be the creator of Bitcoin, though all have denied it.

During the McCormack podcast, Todd said that he bought his first bitcoins when the price per coin was 20 cents (which would mean he made the purchase around October 2010, two years after the bitcoin white paper was released).

Back posted on X Monday evening that, “for people betting, they are betting on what the documentary concluded. Which is probably not going to be true, because no one knows who Satoshi is. So they should keep that in mind.”

Previous attempts by the media to unveil Satoshi’s true identity have failed, with outlets incorrectly naming figures like programmer Dorian Nakamoto and known pretender Craig Wright as Satoshi.

Marc Hochstein is CoinDesk’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief for Features, Opinion, Ethics and Standards. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1K and de minimis amounts of other digital assets (details in bio).

Follow @MarcHochstein on Twitter

Cheyenne Ligon is a CoinDesk news reporter with a focus on crypto regulation and policy. She has no significant crypto holdings.

Follow @cheyenneligon on Twitter