HBO reveals the true identity of the creator of Bitcoin

Today, Tuesday, October 8, 2024, HBO will air a documentary that promises to reveal the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. 

The documentary will be broadcast at 9 PM Eastern Time in the USA, which is 3 AM on Wednesday, October 9 Central European Time (CET), on Max, HBO’s streaming service.

HBO: the true identity of the creator of Bitcoin

The Bitcoin protocol was made public on October 31, 2008, by a certain Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto then created and released the first Bitcoin software and was also the first to mine blocks of the Bitcoin blockchain, starting from January 3, 2009. 

Satoshi Nakamoto, however, is a pseudonym, and nothing has been known about his true identity since then. 

Over the years, many hypotheses have been proposed, but so far none have gathered sufficient evidence to be considered correct. 

Nakamoto deliberately avoided revealing his true identity, and he did it so well that probably not even his closest collaborators know it. 

To tell the truth, it sounds a bit strange that, so many years later, someone has finally managed to discover it, especially because Satoshi completely disappeared in 2011 without leaving any trace of himself. 

The HBO documentary on the identity of the creator of Bitcoin

The HBO documentary that promises to reveal important information regarding the true identity of the creator of Bitcoin is titled “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery“, and it was filmed by Cullen Hoback.

Hoback is an American documentarian who has already been nominated for the Emmys, and is especially famous for having directed and produced the docuseries “Q: Into the Storm” in 2021, with which he effectively exposed the QAnon conspiracy theory.

In total since 2003, he has directed or produced as many as 11 investigative documentaries, with a horror non-fiction style and a comedic tone.

In particular, over time he developed an interest in freedom of expression and the control of one’s digital identities, something that probably brought him into contact with the libertarian and cypherpunk environment. 

In a recent tweet, he explicitly stated that he was tracking someone who had disappeared, wondering if his followers were curious to know who is behind Bitcoin, and adding the hashtag #Satoshi.

The documentary delves into the origins of Bitcoin and the identity of its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, promising to reveal clues never seen before. 

The discovery of Satoshi’s identity

All this has led to the assumption that in his documentary Hoback will reveal key details for the identification of the creator of Bitcoin. 

Furthermore, Hoback himself later explicitly confirmed that the documentary will mention a specific name. 

The documentarian also stated that he has already sent the footage to some journalists, so much so that, for example, Politico has already published an article in which it is claimed that the documentary asserts having identified the creator of Bitcoin.

However, Politico seems to raise a doubt about whether the Bitcoin community can accept the results that will be shown in the documentary. 

On the other hand, we are not talking about evidence, but about clues, so although the documentary will focus on a specific name, it seems unlikely that it can reveal with certainty the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. 

The hypotheses: bets open on Polymarket

On Polymarket people have been betting for days on what this name could be.

The first name that has been heavily bet on is that of Len Sassaman, a U.S. cryptographer who died by suicide in 2011. 

For a long time, there are those who claim that Sassaman could be Satoshi, both because he died shortly after Nakamoto’s disappearance, which happened precisely in April 2011, and because he had a writing style similar to that of the creator of Bitcoin. 

However, the clues leading to Sassaman are few, albeit good, and the widow has repeatedly denied that he could be the creator of Bitcoin. 

Now, however, on Polymarket the bets are focusing on Nick Szabo, another American cryptographer still alive. 

Szabo was already talking about “smart property” in 1994, and in 1996 about smart contracts. Additionally, in 1998 he designed a decentralized digital currency called “Bit Gold”. This digital currency was never implemented, but Bit Gold is still considered a direct precursor to the architecture of Bitcoin.

Szabo, however, has already denied several times being Satoshi. 

The third name mentioned on Polymarket is Adam Back, a British cryptographer still alive, famous for being the CEO of Blockstream, and especially for being the only person cited in the text of the Bitcoin whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. 

Back, among other things, is also one of the people interviewed by Hoback in the documentary.

The consequences on the price of Bitcoin

It should not be forgotten that Satoshi Nakamoto should have mined more than a million BTC in total. 

So if the name that emerges in the documentary is that of a living person, the markets could react poorly, given that Satoshi’s million BTC have never been moved, but if they were spent, they could cause the price of Bitcoin to crash. 

If instead the name of a deceased person emerged, like Sassaman, or Hal Finney, or Dave Kleinman, the reaction could be neutral or positive. 

In that case, much will depend on the clues, because if they are not strong and clear, the market might also only consider the hypothesis of the documentary as yet another unprovable hypothesis. 

To tell the truth, many believe that the hypothesis that will emerge from the documentary might not be supported by evidence so strong and clear as to definitively close the matter. It is a fairly widespread opinion that what has been said about it so far serves primarily to publicize the broadcast event. 

This scenario also seems to emerge from the Politico article, as it questions whether the results obtained by the documentarian can be easily and widely accepted by the crypto community as certainly true.