Who is Peter Todd? Man named as Bitcoin founder denies allegations in new documentary

The new HBO documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery has named Peter Todd as Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto, but he’s since spoken out. 

There was already plenty of skepticism surrounding Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery due to the claim it was set to reveal the biggest mystery in the cryptocurrency world to date. Ever since Bitcoin’s launch in 2009, the pseudonymous inventor’s identity has been kept firmly under wraps. 

All that being said, there was some hope, as the new documentary is helmed by Cullen Hoback, the filmmaker who successfully exposed the authors of the QAnon conspiracy theory in the 2021 HBO series Q: Into the Storm.

Last week, rumors started circulating that the late cryptographer Len Sassaman would be named as the founder, while others suggested Nakamoto represented a group of people. But Money Electric has put another name forward altogether. 

Who is Peter Todd?

Peter Todd is a 39-year-old Canadian Bitcoin core developer and cryptography consultant who has been publicly involved in the cryptocurrency since 2010. Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery names him as the leading candidate to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto, an allegation he strongly denies (more on this in a bit). 

HBO

Todd has been involved in a number of blockchain projects, and is the founder of OpenTimestamps, which aims to provide a standard format for blockchain timestamping. He’s also worked on Bitcoin 2.0 concepts – referring to innovations or upgrades that build on the original Bitcoin protocol. 

Ultimately, his work is focused on enhancing security and privacy, often highlighting potential vulnerabilities and working on solutions to reduce risks. 

He’s been in this world from a very young age, telling the What Bitcoin Did with Peter McCormack podcast that he was emailing people like early Bitcoin contributor Hal Finney and Hashcash inventor Adam Back when he was just 15 years old. 

“My dad’s an economist by training,” he said. “So initially, really early on, I got interested in the freedom project, which is a decentralized censorship resistant publication network. Long story short is, it lets you make a website that no one can take down.”

Todd added, “I was one of many, many people trying to create decentralized currency. And, really failed at it.” 

In 2019, privacy-tech expert Isis Lovecruft, known for their work on the Tor identity-masking Onion browser, accused Todd of sexual misconduct. In response, Todd filed a defamation lawsuit, which was settled in 2020.

Why Todd is accused of being Nakamoto

In Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, Hoback puts forward the theory that Todd is actually the Bitcoin founder based on a collection of circumstantial evidence. One of those is a thread on the bitcointalk.org forum. 

Just before midnight on December 9, 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto discussed the concept of replace-by-fee, whereby a user intentionally broadcasts a “double-spend” transaction with the same inputs and outputs but with a higher fee to incentivize miners to include the newer transaction in a block.

Then, just an hour and a half later, Todd replies, writing, “Of course, to be specific, the inputs and outputs can’t match *exactly* if the second transaction has a transaction fee.”

In the new documentary, Hoback theorizes that this wasn’t a reply but a continuation of the founder’s original post. “Someone who had just created this account, and never posted about Bitcoin before, was finishing Satoshi’s sentences,” he says. 

Not long after this, Nakamoto stopped posting online entirely, while Todd vanished from the forum for several years. Hoback suggests Todd may have accidentally posted under his name rather than the alias.

In 2014, he replied to someone named John Dillon, who is speculated to have been a creation of Todd’s to cover his identity further. 

Other evidence raised is Nakamoto’s use of British spellings and vocabulary pointing to a Commonwealth background, which fits Todd’s Canadian origins. 

There were also a lack of citations in the 2008 Bitcoin white paper, which indicates it was likely written by a younger individual, and Todd was a student at the time. Speaking of which, many of Nakamoto’s writings were published in summers, which would fit an academic schedule. 

Todd says Bitcoin accusation is “dangerous” 

Despite the evidence put forward by Hoback, Todd strongly denies the allegations that he’s the Bitcoin founder, laughing it off in Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery.

When Hoback confronts him with the idea, Todd replies, “I will admit, you’re pretty creative. You come up with some crazy theories. It’s ludicrous, but it’s the sort of theory someone who spends their time as a documentary journalist would come up with.”

“I’ll warn you, this is going to be very funny when you put this into the documentary and a bunch of Bitcoiners watch it,” he adds. “It’s going to be yet another example of journalists really missing the point in a way that’s very funny.”

When asked what’s the “point,” Todd says, “The point is to make Bitcoin the global currency. And people like you being distracted by nonsense could potentially do good on that.”

CNN asked Hoback why Todd might agree to be interviewed if he’s the real Nakamoto, to which he replied, “I think there’s a psychology to these individuals who have done something that has a massive impact in the world – create these massive global movements – and they’re harboring the secret. 

“And imagine if you were harboring that secret. Would you want some credit for it? And would you at some point maybe believe: ‘Hey, I’ve gotten away with it this long. Going on camera and talking to these guys it’ll probably be even better cover.’ 

“Who would believe that Satoshi would actually go on camera? And if you look at Peter Todd specifically… he’s really into game theory. He’s really into creating alternate identities. And he likes the cat-and-mouse game. 

“He likes to outsmart people and has to prove he’s the smartest guy in the room. I think that’s part of why he went on camera.”

However, Todd continues to clap back at the claims. In an email to The New Yorker about the 2010 forum post, he said, “That post is simply me noticing a small mistake in one of Satoshi’s posts, and correcting it. Pointing to a one-off event like that as evidence of someone being Satoshi is QAnon-level conspiracy thinking.”

Ahead of the documentary, he told The Washington Post that he’s planning on a trip to avoid potential danger. Whoever the founder is, they’d be one of the richest people on the planet if they still had access to the one million Bitcoins they’d mined – valued at approximately $65 billion. 

“Not only is the question dumb, it’s dangerous. Satoshi obviously didn’t want to be found, for good reasons, and no one should help people trying to find Satoshi,” he said. “Falsely claiming that ordinary people of ordinary wealth are extraordinarily rich exposes them to threats like robbery and kidnapping.”

Hoback himself points out that while Todd is his leading nomination, he wants to leave it up to the viewers to decide what they believe is true. “We’re making a very strong case,” he told the outlet. “And ultimately, I want to leave it up to the audience to draw their own conclusion.”

Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery is streaming on Max now. For more documentary news, read about where the Menendez brothers are now, whether Jailbreak’s Vicky White was manipulated, and where Janel Grant is now.