A new HBO documentary will have crypto investors check the price of Bitcoin on sites like Yahoo Finance, Forbes, Bloomberg, and Binance. The documentary claims that Peter Todd, a Canadian programmer, is the true creator of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin's whitepaper was written by Satoshi Nakamoto, but the true identity behind this name has been debated.
The documentary, "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery," was made by filmmaker Cullen Hoback, who views a 2010 forum post as evidence that Todd is Bitcoin's true creator. Todd replied to a post by Nakamoto as if continuing his train of thought, possibly accidentally replying from the wrong account.
Nakamoto released the white paper in 2008 and interacted with forum users in 2009 and 2010. Nakamoto's account then stopped posting to the Bitcoin community. He had "moved on to other things." Todd's account stopped posting, too. Hoback says that the pair's spelling and grammar are similar.
So, is Todd the real creator of Bitcoin?
Todd has denied he created Bitcoin. Yahoo Finance reports that Todd told Hoback, "I will admit you're pretty creative. You come up with some crazy theories. It's ludicrous."
Todd joked, "But I'll say, yeah, of course, I'm Satoshi. And I'm Craig Wright."
Wright is an Australian computer scientist who has actually claimed to be Nakamoto.
Todd also spoke to the New York Times. He said, "For the record, I am not Satoshi. It's a useless question, because Satoshi would simply deny it."
What about Craig Wright?
Wright was recently forced to update his website with a legal notice saying that he didn't invent Bitcoin. He had previously claimed he was Nakamoto.
A court order said that Wright must display the notice on his website for six months. It said that Wright lied "extensively and repeatedly" in court proceedings, claiming to be Nakamoto. Wright "attempted to create a false narrative by forging documents."
The court said that Wright's lies constituted a "most serious abuse" of the UK's legal system.
Judge Justice James Mellor oversaw the case brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), which is a non-profit organization. COPA represents Bitcoin developers. The group is supported by exchanges, including Coinbase and Kraken, as well as the software company Microstrategy and the crypto project Worldcoin.
The six-week trial centred on intellectual property rights, and COPA's lawyers aimed to prove that Wright was not the true author of Bitcoin's white paper. It began after Wright emailed crypto developers and businesses in 2020, asking them to take the white paper off their websites.
How do we know that Wright didn't create Bitcoin?
Phil Sherrell, partner and head at Bird & Bird, the legal team representing COPA, and his team tried to show that handwritten notes were not legitimate. Wright's evidence includes ideas about Bitcoin that he claimed were written in the early 2000s. Sherrell's team found the printer of the notepad in China and saw that it hadn't been released until years after Wright's supposed notes.
They also found that computer documents were not typed before 2008, as Wright had claimed, showing that some fonts weren't created until years later.
The case ruling means that Wright can't bring any further lawsuits in the UK. In the weeks following the ruling, Wright abandoned multiple lawsuits connected to his claim.
So, who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
Financial Times recently said that the identity of Nakamoto "remains the biggest mystery in the global crypto industry."
After Nakamoto's last public interactions with the Bitcoin community in December 2010, some unverified private messages from 2011 have surfaced.
Nakamoto has been called a "philosophical figurehead" in the Bitcoin space. Both sides in the Bitcoin Cash debate claim to be upholding Nakamoto's original vision. Bitcoin Cash allows a higher number of transactions and reduces fees and transaction times.
Back in 2014, Newsweek claimed to have found Nakamoto's true identity. It said that Dorian Nakamoto, a physics graduate from California Polytechnic, created Bitcoin.
Dorian himself said that he was not involved in Bitcoin. There was a media circus around the supposed news, nonetheless, with which Bitcoin users sympathized. Dorian received 102.23 bitcoins worth approximately $34,500 in 2014.
Nick Szabo is another who has been called the true creator. Szabo is a computer engineer and legal scholar. He pioneered smart contracts and also conceptualized Bit Gold, a precursor to Bitcoin.
The author Dominic Frisby claimed that Szabo is Nakamoto in his book Bitcoin: The Future of Money? Frisby worked with a stylometrics expert who said that Szabo's writing style was similar to Nakamoto's.
Szabo used to work for DigiCash, which Frisby thought was further evidence.
Is Nakamoto a real name?
No one knows for sure. It has often been referred to as a pseudonym, but there's no conclusive proof either way. Some people believe Nakamoto is a group of people rather than one person.
Does Nakamoto himself own bitcoins?
No one knows this either. Nakamoto may use multiple addresses to mine Bitcoin.
What did the Bitcoin white paper say, anyway?
The paper was entitled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System and described a peer-to-peer network that could prevent double-spending. Crypto was not new at the time of the paper's publication, but Bitcoin addressed this issue. Before Bitcoin, digital currencies could be duplicated and used in multiple transactions. Third parties had been trusted to verify whether the currency had already been spent, but Bitcoin's decentralized approach solved the issue with multiple methods, including ledges, timestamps, and cryptography.