‘I have moved on to other things.’ So announced a shadowy figure, Satoshi Nakamoto, in a cryptic email in April 2011 before he disappeared from the face of the Earth and set off what’s been called ‘the greatest mystery of the internet age’.
For Nakamoto was the pseudonym of the creator of Bitcoin, the multi-billion-dollar cryptocurrency that yet may revolutionise how the world does business and become its global currency.
Nakamoto’s achievement gives him more than just bragging rights, for he holds about a million Bitcoin, currently worth £48billion – and if it continues to appreciate in value, could make him the world’s first trillionaire.
Not for nothing, then, has there been intense interest in who he may be.
For years, the internet has been gripped by what amounts to a great nerd hunt that, at one time or another, has fingered as Nakamoto a Japanese mathematician, a Finnish sociologist, an Irish student and an Australian computer scientist living in suburban Surrey.
If Bitcoin’s creator is British, then – many agree – the most obvious candidate is Adam Back, a veteran cryptographer with a PhD in computer science from Exeter University
Some have even speculated it could be Elon Musk, sci-fi novelist Neal Stephenson or the US National Security Agency, arguing that the latter might have created Bitcoin as a honeytrap for criminals.
Now a television documentary claims none of these fit the bill and the real Nakamoto has been hiding in plain sight for years: Canadian Peter Todd, a Bitcoin developer and crypto expert.
Todd, 39, from Toronto, is reportedly a self-taught tech prodigy who claims he learned to write computer code before he could read. He also has some extreme political views – stating Israel should ‘nuke’ Iran – and has a reputation in the cryptocurrency world for being endlessly contrarian, not to say arrogant.
‘He always wants to make sure he can prove he’s the smartest guy in the room,’ an associate tells the programme.
Unfortunately for HBO‘s documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, Todd denies being Nakamoto. When accused of this on camera by film-maker Cullen Hoback, he laughs off the notion as being ‘ludicrous’.
However, he also told Hoback that if he were Nakamoto he wouldn’t want to be identified as Bitcoin’s inventor, as it would expose him to kidnappers and other criminals. Todd said he would have destroyed any evidence that pointed his way.
Hoback, who spent three years flying around the world speaking to early Bitcoin collaborators, insists Todd didn’t cover up his tracks properly.
He trots out a string of clues — none of them conclusive proof but, taken together, certainly curious — that could identify Todd. Most significant may be an online exchange from 2010 on a Bitcoin forum in which Todd responded to a post by Nakamoto in a way that appeared to be continuing his train of thought.
Todd, Hoback believes, had accidentally posted from the wrong account and given away that he was Nakamoto.
Three days later, both accounts went silent.
The documentary reveals that on an old CV Todd claimed to be proficient in a programming language used to create the original Bitcoin code, only to later deny he knew it. Todd also allegedly created a fake person’s online account to add a feature to Bitcoin without being identified as the tinkerer.
Hoback combs through Nakamoto’s posts and finds he uses British English – spellings such as ‘favour’, ‘neighbour’, ‘grey’ and ‘cheques’, or words and phrases such as ‘bloody hard’ or ‘flat’, instead of apartment –which Canadians commonly do.
Although Todd was aged 22 and studying for a fine arts degree when Nakamoto unveiled Bitcoin, the documentary reveals that most of those posts were put online during summers – when, of course, a student would have far more free time.
A television documentary claims the real Nakamoto has been hiding in plain sight for years: Canadian Peter Todd, 39, a Bitcoin developer and crypto expert
Todd posted on social media denying claims he is Satoshi Nakamoto
‘What if the real reason for using [the false name] Satoshi, for the [sake of] anonymity, was so that people could take Bitcoin seriously’ and believe it was created by a famous cryptographer and ‘not some kid still in school’, says Hoback.
In denying he’s Bitcoin’s creator, Todd did at least concede that the real Nakamoto would say that. However, in the days since the programme was released on HBO, plenty of other people in the cryptocurrency world have disputed its conclusion, insisting that – yet again – Nakamoto sleuths have unmasked the wrong person.
Every other would-be Nakamoto who’s ever been ‘revealed’ has met a similar fate. But if not Todd, who could it be?
Some continue to believe Nakamoto is British – and not only because of the numerous British English spellings and words that he used online before he worried about covering his tracks. Nakamoto’s comments tended to appear online after normal business hours ended in the UK (which would have been in the middle of the working day in North America).
Most revealingly, some believed, Nakamoto read a British newspaper: when he created the first 50 Bitcoins, known as the ‘genesis block’, he permanently embedded a brief line of text into the data which read: ‘The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks’.
This was a reference to a headline in a Times newspaper article saying that the UK government had failed to stimulate the economy and many observers reckoned Nakamoto’s subliminal message was that it was time to try something new, like Bitcoin.
And if Bitcoin’s creator is British, then – many agree – the most obvious candidate is Adam Back, a veteran cryptographer with a PhD in computer science from Exeter University.
Like Todd, he was a computer prodigy from an early age, teaching himself BASIC coding on a Sinclair ZX81, an early home computer. He then graduated to reverse-engineering video games, dismantling the programming to see how they work.
He is one of the original cypherpunks, a group of activists who advocated using strong privacy enhancing technology – like supposedly untraceable cryptocurrencies – to bring about political and social change.
Back, 54, and now living in Malta, invented Hashcash, a forerunner of Bitcoin, in 1997, and played a part in Bitcoin’s early development. He was one of the first people known to have communicated with Nakamoto Nakamoto, although these email exchanges could have been faked to suggest they were different people.
He is still an enthusiastic apostle of Bitcoin and runs a company called Blockstream which helps people ‘mine’ the currency – an energy-intensive process in which computers have to solve extremely complicated mathematical problems.
Although he denies being Nakamoto or even knowing who he is, some have never been convinced and an online video identifying Back as Nakamoto has been watched nearly 1.5 million times since it was released in 2020.
It claims that the entrepreneur was filing myriad patents for digital inventions each year until 2005 when he suddenly stopped, ‘disappearing’ until 2010 — a year after Bitcoin was released.
The video also pointed out that both Nakamoto and Back leave double spaces after typing each sentence and that he had a history of leaving political messages in computer code – just like the reference to the newspaper headline in the Bitcoin code. The fact that Back moved to Malta, famous for its low tax status, in 2009 – the year of Bitcoin’s release – was also noted.
And Back just happens to have been Peter Todd’s mentor, helping the Canadian understand cryptography, the hiding and coding of the information central to cryptocurrencies.
Historically, Back has avoided media attention but, surprisingly, was happy to feature prominently in the HBO documentary.
It’s hard to watch Back, looking somewhat shifty and often laughing nervously in the programme and not conclude that he knows far more than he’s letting on about the mystery.
Indeed, the film-maker Hoback tells him that he initially believed Back and not Todd was Nakamoto. Back seems relieved, not to say amused, when Hoback – who might have felt he needed to put a new name in the frame – finally tells the two friends which of them he suspects.
The Englishman certainly appears to know who Nakamoto is not, publicly branding Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist and businessman living in Surrey, a liar for claiming to be Nakamoto. Wright sued him for defamation but abandoned the lawsuit in 2020 and had to pay Back’s legal costs.
In March this year, a High Court judge in London endorsed Back’s contention by ruling that Wright is not Nakamoto, referring him to prosecutors for alleged perjury.
We may never know the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto and, besides, the Bitcoin bubble may yet implode and its value crash – and then who would want to own up to being the real Nakamoto?