HBO reveals the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto: The person involved is debunking the fake on the spot, is his personal safety threatened?

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

This question has been constantly asked by crypto believers since the birth of Bitcoin, but the legendary Satoshi Nakamoto has never been decrypted. Even in the context of the emergence of numerous imposters, Satoshi Nakamoto has remained silent, which has also left Bitcoin with a rather mysterious color.

But there are always people who don't believe in evil. Just last week, the famous film and television production company HBO released the latest documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery", which bluntly stated that it would reveal the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. In the end, HBO's "Satoshi Nakamoto" did indeed appear. However, the person involved turned around to fight against counterfeiting, and also threatened that HBO's misrepresentation of a deer brought him personal safety problems.

In this identification blunder, what was left in the end was only an unsolved puzzle and a dusty Bitcoin wallet with a market value of nearly 70 billion US dollars.

On the morning of October 9th, Beijing time, the HBO documentary "Electronic Currency: The Mystery of Bitcoin" was launched. As early as in the preview a few days ago, HBO directly proposed to solve the first unsolved mystery in the crypto world-Who is Satoshi Nakamoto. The value of HBO is self-evident. As the oldest and longest-running subscription television service network in American history, HBO not only has a very high national recognition, but also a frequent visitor to the Emmy Awards for its dramas. "Game of Thrones", "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City" and other popular masterpieces are all from it.

The director of this documentary is Cullen Hoback, who was a master of decryption before. He previously filmed the documentary series "Q: Into the Storm", which investigated the Q Anon conspiracy theory and was nominated for the 2021 Emmy Awards.

Under this double BUFF, there are many people who believe that HBO can reveal Satoshi Nakamoto, and the crypto circle has also set off an earthquake. The prediction market took the lead, and the bets of real money kicked off. Before the release of the full film, the betting amount had reached more than 20 million US dollars, and this bet of over 100 million RMB was also strongly watched by the audience outside the venue.

From the known information, Satoshi Nakamoto is a mystery from head to toe. It is only known that he described himself as a Japanese American living in Japan, born on April 5, 1975. In 2008, he published a white paper entitled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". In January 2009, the Bitcoin network was launched, and then Satoshi Nakamoto gradually disappeared. After 2013, Satoshi Nakamoto completely disappeared in the vast sea of ​​people.

Based on the above information, the market first selected the candidate for Satoshi Nakamoto. At the beginning, the little-known Len Sassaman, a cryptographer who insisted on decentralization, committed suicide in 2011, was at the top of the betting list. Then Adam Back, the inventor of POW, came to the top, but with Adam's timely refutation of the rumor, the highest bet was finally placed on Nick Szabo.

Of course, real money and silver must not come out of thin air. Nick Szab once proposed a new currency called "Bit Gold" in 1998, claiming that it was "completely digital and solved the double payment problem through proof of work". It can be seen that this theory preceded Satoshi Nakamoto by 10 years, and in his subsequent book "Bitcoin: The Future of Money?" 》, the writing style is also quite similar to that of Satoshi Nakamoto, which further increases the credibility of the Nakamoto conjecture.

But it is worth mentioning that Nick Szab has denied that he is Satoshi Nakamoto more than once. So far, the popular candidates for Satoshi Nakamoto in cryptography are basically included in the list, even Craig Wright, who has long been debunked, is on the list, but surprisingly, in the end HBO actually chose someone who was not on the list - Peter Todd.

This name is not familiar to the public, but it is also well-known to industry insiders. Peter Todd is a Canadian software developer, an early Bitcoin Core developer and cryptography consultant. Since 2012, he has started writing code for Bitcoin and calls himself a "crypto timekeeper" on the X platform. In April 2014, he submitted code to Bitcoin Core for the first time, and subsequently proposed several Bitcoin improvement proposals. In 2016, he and Edward Snowden jointly launched the privacy coin zcash, which became well-known in the industry. Currently, Peter is also the founder of the open source timestamp project OpenTimestamps.

From his resume, although this man is outstanding, he does not seem to have a necessary relationship with Satoshi Nakamoto. Why does HBO think he is Satoshi Nakamoto? In this regard, HBO also gave corresponding evidence, such as the regularity of Satoshi Nakamoto's posting time coincides with the student's schedule, and there are more posts on weekends, which is consistent with Peter's student status at the time. For example, a mysterious message showed that Todd destroyed Satoshi Nakamoto's access rights to 1.1 million BTC, etc. Obviously, these indirect evidence cannot prove that Satoshi Nakamoto is Peter Todd. However, HBO's key evidence is even more ridiculous.

In the argument, Peter Todd responded to the input and output mentioned in an old Satoshi email from 2010, and both accounts stopped activity a few days later. Later, Peter implemented the fee replacement function discussed in the post. Therefore, HBO concluded that Satoshi Nakamoto replied with the wrong account, so Peter Todd is Satoshi Nakamoto.

It is obvious that the argument is not rigorous enough and even seems to be taken out of context. After the documentary was released, as expected, the market also set off an uproar against HBO's groundless argument, and opposition voices were heard everywhere.

In fact, regardless of other things, Satoshi Nakamoto claimed to be a Japanese American born in 1975, and was already 23 years old in 2008, but Peter was just a college student under 23 at that time, and was born and raised in Canada. He only joined Bitcoin development in 2014, which does not meet this consensus feature at all. More importantly, the current balance of Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallet has remained at a level of about 1 million coins since 2010 (rumored to be 1.1 million coins), and none of them have been spent. As the founder of other projects, Peter obviously needs to use funds.

Peter Todd himself was even more baffling. On the eve of the HBO documentary, he had already said on a public platform that "I am not Satoshi Nakamoto". Later, he said that the documentary producer Cullen Hoback's testimony was groundless and the arguments were all false. He just replied to Satoshi Nakamoto's email and ridiculed the director of this documentary, "The director who is famous for filming QAnon has also fallen into QAnon-style conspiracy thinking here."

In an interview a few days ago, Peter also mentioned again that the director's identification was just to create an unexpected feeling and attract attention to his documentary. He was also very worried about being caught in the "Satoshi Nakamoto" vortex. After all, a walking million bitcoins is a great temptation for criminals, not to mention the endless criminal incidents of grabbing private keys and harming crypto people. Although there is no concern about personal safety at present, Pete has begun to be disturbed by others. Some people keep asking him to reply with the pet name to obtain a new round of MEME hype, which seems to be entertainment to death.

From the market point of view, industry insiders generally expressed dissatisfaction with HBO's inference this time, believing that the lack of real judgment neither respects Satoshi Nakamoto nor the encryption field.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? This question has a history of 16 years since the beginning of Bitcoin. Up to now, personal theory, organizational theory, and even national conspiracy theory have never stopped around this issue. Just recently, Kyle Bass, a famous American investor, even made a statement that Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, is actually an intelligence agency of the Chinese Communist Party. While it is absurd, it can also be seen that the demonization trend of this issue is also evident.

It is clear that even by 2024, no one can really solve this unsolved mystery, which means that whether Satoshi Nakamoto is alive or dead, this secret may have been buried in the final grave, and HBO's public decryption may not be to solve the problem, but to bring this unresolved answer back to the stage.

But returning to the question, whether the crypto world needs a flesh-and-blood Satoshi Nakamoto is also worth pondering. When Bitcoin was first born, it was at the time of Lehman's bankruptcy and the global monetary and financial system was hit. Bitcoin, as a special peer-to-peer digital currency, officially opened up the thorny road of decentralized faith.

Today, Bitcoin has risen from the initial $0.0008 to $64,000, becoming a behemoth with a market value of over $1.3 trillion that Satoshi Nakamoto may not have imagined. In this, retail investors, institutions, and believers emerge in endlessly. No matter what the purpose is, they all unexpectedly bear public fruits on the flowers of private desires, and this is also the result of Satoshi Nakamoto's invisibility. In other words, Satoshi Nakamoto's invisibility has completely freed BTC from the worship of personal leaders, and has also made BTC truly ownerless Bitcoin, the world's BTC, and further poured into the absolute belief of the crypto world.

On the other hand, the coins with owners, whether ETH, BNB, or DOT, inevitably have leader worship. Take Ethereum as an example. ETH's price can't go up, and it looks for V God. There are doubts about the roadmap, and it looks for V God. The development is not as expected, and it is necessary to criticize his personal life. All of this is obviously not a state that "Satoshi Nakamoto" likes to see.

Another interesting question is, if Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive? Why doesn't he reveal who he is? The possible reason is that the result of revealing is worse than that of not revealing. Imagine if an individual has such a huge fortune and is the founder of the world's largest decentralized digital currency, what will the result be? Direct confrontation with supervision is essential, and personal safety is bound to be difficult to guarantee. The final result is likely to be difficult to end well.

In the final analysis, whether for the market or individuals, keeping this question mysterious is the best answer. The best suspense film always has an open ending, and this ending is also effective for Satoshi Nakamoto. At least for now, crypto people around the world can participate in this historic financial experiment without distraction, and continue to contribute to Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision. Perhaps it's like the saying circulating in the market, "Everyone is not Satoshi Nakamoto, and everyone is also Satoshi Nakamoto."

In any case, at least we should pay tribute to this crypto creator who has never been masked, just as Coinbase said when it rang the bell to go public, "Thank you, Satoshi Nakamoto, no matter who you are."