Bitcoin Mystery Review: Satoshi 'Whodunnit' Lacks a Killer Punch

★★★★☆ | Cullen Hoback's documentary is entertaining and uses the same tactics as a crime drama to keep the suspect hidden until the end.

Electric money: the mystery of bitcoin It caused quite a stir when HBO released a trailer, in which the documentary promised to finally unmask Satoshi Nakamoto.

It's a film by Cullen Hoback, who says he first became interested in btc seven years ago, concerned about the dangers of digital surveillance.

At 100 minutes long, it's a heavy watch and, given its debut on a mainstream channel, it has to walk an uncomfortable tightrope between catering to two very different audiences.

For those who know little about bitcoin, there are clever graphics explaining how blockchains work and a concise but elegantly written tour through the cryptocurrency's 15-year history.

There's also clever use of stock footage from TV shows and movies, with btc mining illustrated with a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where a golden ticket is found.

But the real goal of this documentary is not to explain how bitcoin works (that's been done before), but to identify its pseudonymous founder.

And explaining why this is so necessary, Hoback argues that Satoshi's million btc stash makes it a matter of urgency as cryptocurrencies integrate with traditional finance, as there could be mass panic if these coins are suddenly spent.

the suspects

Somehow, electric money reads like a whodunnit novel and features interviews with some of the industry's best-known faces.

There's a chat with JAN3 CEO Samson Mow, who is depicted as a “bitcoin ambassador” as he flies from country to country, encouraging governments to adopt it as legal tender.

Mow describes fiat as “a house of cards built on a house of cards” while sitting on a private jet – ammunition for critics who would say he might be talking about btc.

That brings us to Blockstream co-founder Adam Back, described as Mow's boss, who claims he might be the first person Satoshi Nakamoto contacted about his big idea.

Hoback delves into Back's past and spends a lot of time examining evidence that might suggest he It's Satoshi, who brings many compelling receipts along the way.

The filmmaker points out how the cryptographer moved to Malta around the time btc was created, a country that happens to be a tax haven.

Back is also British, and that's significant given that Satoshi appeared to use British spelling and included a headline from the London newspaper. Times in the genesis block of bitcoin.

Although he claims to be a newcomer to btc, stating that he was “embarrassingly late” in joining the BitcoinTalk forum four years after the cryptocurrency's creation, Hoback notes that Back was editing the bitcoin Wikipedia page long before that. Because? Naming those who could potentially be Satoshi Nakamoto, without naming himself.

At one point, Back appears physically uncomfortable when Hoback bluntly asks who Satoshi might be. There's another awkward moment at the bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, when Mow mocks Back by suggesting that he was the one who created btc.

Unmasking the 'culprit'

But just as a good crime drama introduces a scene with the actual killer long before they're caught, meaning the viewer knows who they are but doesn't suspect them, Hoback spends a little time with Peter Todd as he sinks into An abandoned bunker from World War II.

An early part of the documentary shows how he learned to code at a young age and became a controversial figure in the bitcoin space, with Todd jokingly telling Hoback that he is Satoshi. Also emerging were Todd's controversial emails with a man named “John Dillon,” who he claimed worked in a relatively senior position in intelligence. Seeing this, he didn't seem like a serious suspect… until the end of the documentary.

For someone who knows bitcoin well, one could argue that it is just the last 20 minutes of electric money you need. It features Back and Todd exploring the ruins of a steel mill in the Czech Republic and Hoback confronting them about everything he learned while filming.

There's a cut to Hoback's dramatic realization while scrolling through the BitcoinTalk forum, which appears to show Todd finishing one of Satoshi's sentences, days after he opened an account on the website. The filmmaker speculates that Todd may have posted using the wrong profile, meaning simple human error would have revealed his secret.

Todd laughs when confronted with this theory, and Hoback mentions that he seemed to have a pretty good memory given that the post in question was 13 years ago.

But what follows is a flashback to key interviews earlier in the documentary: the breadcrumbs that led Hoback to believe that Peter Todd is Satoshi Nakamoto. There's the 2001 email he sent to Adam Back as a teenager, in which Roger Ver claimed that Todd “always wants to prove he's the smartest guy in the room” and questions about his ties to John Dillon. There's a clip of Todd denying that he could also code in C++, even though an old biography said he had this skill.

Hoback goes on to claim that Peter Todd and John Dillon could be the same person, a theory Todd dismisses as “ridiculous.”

“It'll be a lot of fun when you put it in the documentary,” Todd says with a laugh. “Bitcoiners will be happy if you go down this route: journalists miss the point in a way that's really funny.”

A final piece of evidence shows a message in which Todd describes himself as a “world-leading expert on how to sacrifice your Bitcoins” (perhaps an admission that he no longer has access to Satoshi Nakamoto's stash) and Hoback suggests that Todd resorted to this pseudonym. He fears that bitcoin will not be taken seriously due to its young age.

A definitive answer?

Electric money: the mystery of bitcoin is a well-produced documentary with a surprising outcome, and Todd subsequently argues that there are “hundreds, even thousands of people who could have created bitcoin.”

At first, it's easy to worry that it's going to be another cliché movie: one of the first images shows a hooded man wearing an anonymous mask. This is followed by a combination of news anchors declaring that btc is dead, complete with charts showing how this coin has accelerated in value over the years.

But electric money is a literate program that is not shy about addressing the complexities of btc. The downsides of cryptocurrency are acknowledged, but key players within the industry have plenty of time to express their point of view. We've witnessed bitcoin's excesses over the years, and Hoback describes bitcoin maximalism and the “orange pill” as “pretty fucking annoying.” nfts are ignored, embarrassing ethereum conferences are mentioned, and criticism is made of how central bank digital currencies could end up monitoring all our transactions.

Hoback's conclusions are compelling and unexpected, to the point that Todd was not even named in a Polymarket bet speculating on who would be identified as Satoshi. But realistically, this documentary has failed to deliver a fatal blow that will resolve this issue once and for all, and the crypto community is already poking holes in the documentary's narrative.

For now, it's safe to say that Satoshi's identity remains far from certain, but there's a prophetic quote from Peter Todd as he breaks down at the beginning of the film.

“It's unlikely to fall on us, but one day it will.”