Who invented Bitcoin? HBO doc ‘Money Electric’ tackles the Satoshi mystery
Who invented Bitcoin? That question has become a compelling mystery for the digital age, similar to what happened to DB Cooper or who Deep Throat was in the Watergate scandal.
Documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback thinks he has the answer. His new HBO documentary ‘Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery’ examines the rise of cryptocurrencies and the efforts to discover the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. name of the plume used by the author of the 11-page white paper which sparked Bitcoin and the broader crypto craze after it became widely distributed online on October 31, 2008.
For Hoback, diving into crypto-mania came a natural after he scoured the internet underworld in his 2021 HBO docuseries “Q: Into the Storm.” That six-episode series posited a theory about the people behind the dangerous and fueling delusions spread under the name QAnon. Both “Q” and “Money Electric” emerged from Hoback’s interest in how the digital revolution is changing culture and the social order. The rise of crypto is fueled by the desire of many to create a decentralized financial system – governed by publicly available Blockchain ledgers instead of institutions like the Bank of America or Goldman Sachs – and the growing demand for simpler ways to carry out financial transactions online and across borders.
“I have been speaking about digital rights and digital privacy issues for the past decade. So making a movie about Bitcoin was something I wanted to do for a while,” says Hoback Variety. “I wanted to discuss what [crypto] tried to be versus what it became. It tried to be digital cash. It really became more of a kind of digital gold.”
“Money Electric” follows Hoback’s investigative efforts to shed light on the Satoshi question. He went into it without any certainty that he would reach a definitive conclusion. But after immersing himself in crypto culture, he came to believe that the father of Bitcoin is Canadian crypto developer Peter Todd.
Todd dismissed Hoback’s claim. On October 9, one day after ‘Money Electric’ debuted on HBO, Todd said bluntly to the BBC: “I am not Satoshi Nakamoto,” calling the claim “ridiculous.”
Todd is a well-known figure in the crypto conference circuit. He spoke to Hoback on camera for “Money Electric.”
“We filmed with him several times. He likes to be on stage. He likes to talk about Bitcoin. You can tell that over the last decade, once he got a microphone, he kind of took advantage of that opportunity,” Hoback said. “Assuming he’s Satoshi, I think when you’ve gotten away with something for so long and you’ve muddied the waters so well, you probably think no one’s going to get you again.”
Cullen Hoback, director-producer of HBO documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery”
Hoback says he pursued the Bitcoin story because the call to end the Satoshi mystery not only made for a compelling story, but also because of its broader significance. Bitcoin’s inventor is known to have owned 1.1 million coins – or 5% of the 21 million Bitcoins that will one day be mined, according to the protocols laid out in the white paper. At current Bitcoin prices – valued against the dollar at $68,140.74 at the end of trading Friday – these assets represent enormous wealth. There is speculation that whoever is behind Bitcoin destroyed or deliberately left behind those 1.1 million coins. Hoback is skeptical.
Hoback financed the first year of “Money Electric” out of his own pocket until HBO came on board. The slow but steady march of crypto products into mainstream financial systems – El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 – has sparked wider interest in the topic. Filmmaker Adam McKay is an executive producer with Hoback on “Money Electric,” as he was on “Q: Into the Storm.”
“I only really wanted to tell the story if I felt like we could at least formulate a compelling theory about who was behind Bitcoin,” he said. “I picked up where other researchers left off and put together a shortlist. And I said, ‘Okay, if I can get access to some of the players in this network, one of them will probably be Satoshi or know who created Bitcoin.’ But what really motivated me was the global adoption story. When El Salvador announced that they were going to use Bitcoin as legal tender, it really breathed new life into the story for me.”
Crypto markets have been on a wild ride in recent years. The trading price of Bitcoin and other tokens fell sharply in the spring of 2022, but the markets have recovered significantly. Nevertheless, it remains a volatile world vulnerable to theft, hackers, and the loss of the all-important electronic digital “keys” that crypto owners guard as carefully as others would the key to a physical safe. The implosion of prominent crypto trading exchange FTX and the conviction of founder Sam Bankman-Fried have also put the potential for fortunes to be made through smart token trading – and the potential for massive fraud – in the spotlight.
“What I find interesting about Bitcoin is that it is a crossroads of unlikely allies,” Hoback said. “You’ve got your libertarians, you’ve got your financial industry guys, you’ve got your stock market guys and you’ve got your technologists. You have nerds who sit behind their computers all day, and then you just have people who are looking for somewhere to put their money, hoping that this is some kind of way out of the rat race.”
(Top Image: Peter Todd in “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery”)
