Who is Peter Todd, the man described by HBO as Bitcoin's mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto?

Satoshi Nakamoto – the mysterious, anonymous creator of Bitcoin – has successfully kept his true identity secret since publishing the Bitcoin white paper in 2008.

Unlock over $3,000 in perks, including unparalleled access to a community of top Web3 entrepreneurs, creators and investors, giving you world-class networking, priority access to global events, and free access to Forbes.com and ours Forbes “CryptoAsset & Blockchain Advisor” newsletter. Apply now!

Bitcoin has become a $1.2 trillion asset over the past 15 years (although one Wall Street giant has predicted that figure could be much higher). That makes the man, woman or group known only as Satoshi Nakamoto worth nearly $70 billion if they still have control of the 1.1 million Bitcoins they presumably have through a series of wallet addresses keep distributed.

Now HBO documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback has named Peter Todd, a Bitcoin core developer who has been working on Bitcoin since 2010, as who he believes is the real-life identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.

Register now for free CryptoCodex—A daily five-minute newsletter for traders, investors and cryptocurrency enthusiasts to keep you informed and updated on the bull market in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets

ForbesJPMorgan has quietly warned Bitcoin for a $7.5 trillion price quake from Donald Trump and the Federal ReserveFrom Billy Bambrough

“What if the real reason for using the name Satoshi for anonymity was so that people could take Bitcoin seriously and believe that it was made by (a famous cryptographer) and not by a child still in school , was created,” Hoback said during the documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” on HBO, before presenting his theory directly to Todd – who was in his early 20s and in 2008, the year Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper Completed art studies.

“This is what may have happened,” Hoback said on camera with Todd and Adam Back, the CEO of Bitcoin development company Blockstream, with whom Todd has worked since the early days of Bitcoin.

“I think that John Dillon (an anonymous BitcoinTalk contributor who some believe is connected to the intelligence community) was created so that you would have an excuse to replace with fee, a concept that you have been thinking about for years “They also needed some cover for the 2010 post,” Hoback told Todd, referring to Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 125, introduced by Todd in 2015, and a 2010 BitcoinTalk post, in which he replied to Satoshi Nakamoto and which Hoback believes was posted by mistake using Todd's profile.

Hoback's theory is based on a chat log message written by Todd, in which he claims to be the “world's leading expert on how to sacrifice your Bitcoins… I have performed one such sacrifice, and I did it by hand,” Todd wrote.

Hoback characterized the news as an “admission” by Todd that he destroyed his ability to access the 1.1 million Bitcoins believed to be owned by Satoshi Nakamoto, which Todd denies.

“It’s ridiculous,” Todd told Hoback, also denying he was John Dillon. “It will be very funny if you put it in the documentary and a few Bitcoiners watch it.”

Before the documentary aired, leaked clips appeared online and spread on social media site X.

In a statement about this CoindeskTodd denied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto and said Hoback was “grasping at straws.”

Who is Peter Todd?

Todd is a Canadian who began contributing to the Bitcoin code in 2012 and describes himself as a “cryptochronomancer” on X.

During Bitcoin's so-called blocksize war, fought from August 2015 to November 2017, Todd sided with the “small blockers” – along with Adam Back and Blockstream – who wanted and argued to maintain Bitcoin's 1 megabyte limit against the “big blockers”. “who wanted to increase the block size to enable cheaper and faster transactions.

The small blockers won and forced those who chose to increase the block size to “fork” from Bitcoin, creating the cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash.

Todd is the founder of OpenTimestamps, an open source project designed to provide a standard format for blockchain timestamps.

He has worked on so-called “Bitcoin 2.0” projects, including Counterparty, Mastercoin and Colored Coins, and was involved in the launch of the privacy coin Zcash in 2016 alongside NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – by publicly destroying the computer he was using to use it used to create the cryptocurrency.

In 2019, Todd was accused of sexual misconduct by privacy expert Isis Lovecruft, a developer of the Tor identity masking Onion browser, and settled his defamation lawsuit filed in 2020 in response to the allegation.