HBO Plays a $68 Billion Joke

1 hour ago, the top American streaming media HBO finally released a documentary about the founder of Bitcoin. In the trailer that whetted the appetite of all cryptocurrency traders, HBO claimed that this film would reveal who Satoshi Nakamoto is.

In the past, people only talked about the speculation about Satoshi Nakamoto online, but this time it was different. People started to bet money.

As the director of this documentary, Hoback, said, everyone's bet on "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto" has made this topic even hotter, and the betting pool on polymarket has accumulated to 20 million US dollars. Hoback sat in front of the computer, constantly refreshing the betting pool manually, watching the bets in the pool increase. Although he promised that he would not participate in it to earn bets, this documentary undoubtedly increased his fame in the film industry.

It is said that in order to prevent the information from being leaked in advance, Hoback did a lot of confidentiality work in the process of making the documentary. All interviews were conducted in different locations, and the interviewees could only preview the parts related to themselves. In addition, the editing of the film was scattered among multiple editing companies, and no one had complete information about the film.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin? This has been a suspense for more than ten years since the birth of Bitcoin. More than ten years later, HBO gave its own answer. They believe that the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is Peter Todd.

Regardless of whether you know this name or not, you can see how abstract this answer is from the odds. Even in the polymarket option bets, there is Musk's name, but there is no Peter Todd's name.

In short, HBO played a big joke and played a big meme.

Who is Peter Todd?

We still need to see why HBO believes this guy is Satoshi Nakamoto.

In the HBO documentary, director Hoback identified Peter Todd as Satoshi Nakamoto, a candidate who has never been "suspected".

Peter Todd, source HBO

Peter Todd is an early Bitcoin Core developer and cryptography consultant based in Canada, who made his first commit to Bitcoin Core in April 2012. He has been involved in Bitcoin since its early days, particularly in the areas of security and privacy. Todd is widely known for driving several key Bitcoin Improvement Proposals and advocating for improvements to the robustness and security of the Bitcoin network.

Peter began his career in 2008 as an electronics designer at Gedex Inc. After graduating from OCAD University with a Bachelor of Arts in Integrated Media in 2011, he has been working in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. Not just Bitcoin, he has worked on several projects in the cryptocurrency industry over the years, including Mastercoin, Dark Wallet, and Chief Scientist at Coinkite. In development, Todd is a security-focused developer, often highlighting potential vulnerabilities and working on solutions to mitigate risks.

Todd is also an active member of the community, often sharing his insights on Twitter with a large number of followers. His tweets cover a range of topics, including new cryptocurrency developments, industry news, and events. Todd also often appears at many Bitcoin conferences and events, and many people who have heard him speak think that Todd is an excellent speaker and host.

But the answer given by director Hoback obviously fooled everyone. In his "rigorous" deduction process, the most critical evidence and conclusion that can be produced is: in this conversation, Satoshi Nakamoto switched to the wrong account and used Peter Todd's account to reply to everyone.

But in fact, this does not prove that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. As netizens in the community said and Peter Todd clarified, Todd was only correcting or clarifying Satoshi Nakamoto's post at the time, not switching to the wrong account. Such a "deduction" is obviously insufficient evidence.

Some professionals also pointed out that HBO got Peter Todd's timeline wrong throughout the documentary, and mistakenly believed that he was Satoshi Nakamoto. In fact, Peter Todd was not yet 16 years old in 2008, which was very inconsistent with his age. His life and experience were also very different from the Satoshi Nakamoto we all know. What's more, Todd has been a consultant for many projects for a long time. If he is really Satoshi Nakamoto, his Bitcoin wallet cannot have remained completely untouched for so many years.

Peter Todd himself was also extremely dissatisfied with this and publicly denied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto. He repeatedly stated on social media that Hoback's theory was ridiculous.

Peter Todd even sarcastically said in a tweet: "A director famous for filming QAnon documentaries also adopted QAnon-style conspiracy thinking here."

Currently, the attitude of most community netizens is to blame HBO and Hoback, because Hoback's attitude seems very casual, which is a manifestation of disrespect for Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto and encryption. "Peter Todd is Hoback's lifeline. Because he didn't know who Satoshi Nakamoto was, so he just pointed out a name at random."

More thoughtful community members said that Peter Todd might face some life safety because of Hoback's "casualness". After all, Hoback's influence in the film industry is still quite large. Ordinary people do not have the ability to identify the truth. "They may go to Peter Todd for trouble, because everyone knows that it is worth 68 billion US dollars."

No one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is, which is a good thing

Let's go back to September 2008 for a short time. At that time, not long after Lehman went bankrupt, in order to cope with the crisis, the US Treasury launched an unprecedented large-scale rescue, and at the same time the Federal Reserve released a large amount of money, trying to stimulate the US economy by over-issuing currency. Not only the United States, but the whole world also suffered. The US dollars in the hands of various countries have shrunk significantly, causing a series of butterfly effects such as increased exchange rate fluctuations and stock market stampede-style collapse; in an instant, the global economy was deeply mired in the quagmire of recession and could not extricate itself.

Three months after Lehman went bankrupt, a paper signed by Satoshi Nakamoto was published on the Internet. Its title was "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". The paper described in detail how to use peer-to-peer networks to create an "electronic transaction system that does not rely on trust". Bitcoin was born.

Today, Bitcoin has gone through nearly 16 years, from the initial trading price of $0.0008 to the current $62,000, with a total market value of $1.3 trillion. Bitcoin has gradually appreciated by more than 77.5 million times.

And the mysterious founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is said to own about 1.1 million Bitcoins, which is $68 billion, the most unresolved asset in the currency circle. In the past few years, the discussion about who Satoshi Nakamoto is has never stopped.

I personally think the most abstract thing is that I don’t know if you still remember the phrase "not your key, not your coin". When everyone opposed CSW claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, they directly asked him to transfer money using Satoshi Nakamoto's wallet. As long as you can transfer money, it is 100% certain that it is impossible. But this documentary doesn't care about these.

Like all the top suspense films, Satoshi Nakamoto is always an unknown answer, which is the best solution. Maybe it's him, maybe it's her, maybe it's them, maybe it's everyone, maybe we have guessed the answer, or maybe we are still not close to the answer. However, it is this mystery that gives Bitcoin a unique vitality.

Satoshi Nakamoto's anonymity is not only a mysterious attraction, but also symbolizes the decentralized spirit of Bitcoin. This decentralized concept does not rely on any single authority or individual, but distributes power to every participant. It is precisely because Satoshi Nakamoto never exposed himself that Bitcoin has been able to maintain its purity and avoid personality cult and human intervention. Satoshi Nakamoto's retreat has allowed Bitcoin to transcend personal will from the beginning and become part of the global consensus.

Perhaps, Satoshi Nakamoto's identity is not important. What is really important is the concept behind Bitcoin and the changes it has brought to the world. It provides a new financial model, breaks the monopoly of the traditional banking system, and gives individuals more control and freedom.

No one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is, and this may be the best outcome. The power of Bitcoin does not lie in one person, but in everyone. Each of us is Satoshi Nakamoto, and we are all part of this decentralized revolution and historic experiment. Maybe we never need to know who Satoshi Nakamoto is. Bitcoin has grown from an idea to a global phenomenon because it represents much more than a name or an individual. It symbolizes the desire of countless people for financial freedom and privacy, and the power of technology to change the world.

We are all Satoshi.