Who Is the Man Behind Bitcoin?
Who Is the Man Behind Bitcoin?
A new HBO documentary claims to have solved one of the great mysteries of the internet age.
In the 15 years since Bitcoin was created, a question has stalked the greater cryptocurrency space—who (or what) invented the pace-car digital currency that has forcefully woven itself into the financial fabric of the West?
The filmmaker Cullen Hoback believes he knows the answer. His new documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, airs October 8 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and is expected to reveal a name not yet put forward throughout years of rampant speculation by other filmmakers and journalists and investors.
In an interview with Fast Company, Hoback hinted that the figure is sure to raise “a fair amount of controversy.” That likely rules out long-rumored creators of the currency including the Australian cryptographer Craig Wright, the deceased software engineer Hal Finney, and the laborer Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, who shares a name with the author of the Bitcoin protocol paper.
Despite Hoback’s belief that he has cracked the case, those who have hunted Nakamoto’s identity for years will remain skeptical until evidentiary proof is put forward. In the cryptocurrency community, that evidence would come in the form of a transaction from the very first Bitcoin wallet created. The wallet, which received a 50 BTC award for mining the first block on the Bitcoin blockchain in 2009, has never sent a transaction out.
“Until someone signs the private keys linked to Satoshi’s addresses, all of this remains mere conjecture,” the Bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack told POLITICO.
The “genesis wallet,” as it is termed, holds nearly $6 million worth of Bitcoin (100.15 BTC to be exact), though some of it is unspendable. Sleuths believe Nakamoto possibly owned thousands of wallets in the early days of Bitcoin meaning it’s difficult to ascertain just how much BTC the creator mined and kept over the years.
But the genesis wallet and its first transaction are regarded as the ultimate key that could definitively prove the protocol’s creator. And yet the wallet has remained untouched for years despite occasionally receiving BTC from anonymous users as tribute. In January of 2024, for example, someone sent almost 30 BTC (nearly $2 million USD) to the wallet.
American software engineer and cryptography activist Hal Finney, who passed away in 2014, was long considered by some to be the real Nakamato. His tweet “Running Bitcoin,” posted only two days after the Bitcoin software was published spurred many amateur investigators to dig into Finney’s transactions on the blockchain. One transaction in particular, the first between two users, linked Finney to an early wallet that is widely credited as being owned by the anonymous creator of Bitcoin.
But for a variety of reasons, Finney fell out of favor for those hunting the real Nakamoto. Wright, the Australian cryptographer mentioned above, is a controversial figure in the cryptocurrency community who stepped forward, repeatedly, to claim he was the inventor of Bitcoin. After years of speculation, Wright was sued in the High Court of London by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance. Following months of hearings this year, Justice Mellor of the High Court ruled that Wright had “lied to the court extensively and repeatedly” before judging that Wright was not the inventor of Bitcoin.
The true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto could send major waves through the financial and political apparatuses of the West. The former President Donald Trump has spoken positively of the currency, and Bitcoin has been promoted by major celebrities and financial groups throughout the United States and beyond. The Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first-ever Bitcoin ETF in January of 2024, marking a significant turning point in the adoption of a currency that was long seen as nefarious in origin and use.
Whoever Nakamoto is, he left a small, quotable trail on the forum BitcoinTalk. Before abandoning his account in 2010, Nakamoto authored over 100 posts on the forum ranging from the technical to the philosophical. In one of their last posts, Nakamoto responded to an article in PC World that pondered the role Bitcoin could play as WikiLeaks struggled to maneuver against censorship and debanking.
“WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet’s nest, and the swarm is headed towards us,” wrote Nakamoto.
Ironically enough, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is back on the global stage this week with his first verbal statement since reaching a plea agreement with the U.S. government in June. The colliding of these two worlds at such a precarious moment in the history of the West is interesting if not poetic.
“Satoshi gave the world a profound gift in Bitcoin,” remarked McCormack, “but deliberately chose to remain anonymous—a decision that must be respected. Efforts to unmask them are not just irresponsible but potentially dangerous.”
Nakamoto’s identity, should it be revealed, could be the greatest of October surprises. A once-in-a-lifetime event that could reverberate through the institutions in ways that challenge the remarkable ousting of President Biden this summer. With a broader conflict erupting in the Middle East and the U.S. presidential election around the corner, Nakamoto may yet have one last ace up his sleeve to shift the tone and tenor of macro and micro events worldwide.
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