COLOMBO (News 1st); A new HBO documentary identifies Canadian developer Peter Todd as Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous founder of cryptocurrency bitcoin.
Cullen Hoback, the award-winning filmmaker behind the documentary, comes to the conclusion by stitching together old clues and new ones, and then confronting both Todd and Blockstream founder Adam Back, another key Satoshi suspect, with the evidence.
If Todd is widely accepted as bitcoin's creator, the revelation would end more than a decade of speculation over the identity of a person whose work spawned a global, multibillion-dollar craze for digital currencies: a mania that has pushed back the frontiers of finance but also enabled widespread fraud and other illicit activities.
Todd is not unknown to enthusiasts of the stateless money system. As a longstanding bitcoin core developer known for communicating publicly with “Satoshi” before his disappearance from crypto forums in 2010, his name has always carried weight in the community.
But he was rarely considered a prime suspect.
A 39-year-old graduate of Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, Todd would have been 23 when the famous bitcoin white paper that first laid out the vision for the decentralized money system was being completed.
Todd previously told a podcast he was about 15 years old when he first started communicating with key crypto influencers, known as the cypherpunks.