Who Exactly is Peter Todd, the man HBO identified as Satoshi Nakamoto?

HBO’s documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery has pointed to Peter Todd as a candidate for Bitcoin’s enigmatic creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

At 39 years old, the Canadian is recognized for his extensive involvement as a Bitcoin core developer, consultant, and creator of various cryptocurrency and blockchain applications. Despite the claims made in the documentary, Todd has firmly stated he is not Nakamoto, posting on X, “I’m not Satoshi” both prior to and following the documentary’s release.

In a post on October 8, BitMEX Research critiqued the documentary’s assertions, labeling some evidence suggesting Todd as Nakamoto as “clearly ridiculous” and stating there was “zero reason” to support such claims.

Todd is one of the few individuals who had direct communication with Nakamoto regarding Bitcoin’s code and features before Nakamoto’s disappearance in 2011. These interactions are cited in the documentary by producer Cullen Hoback as potential evidence linking Todd to Nakamoto.

When Nakamoto first released the Bitcoin white paper detailing a decentralized peer-to-peer payment system, Todd was around 23 years old. On a podcast from 2019, he noted that he began discussions with early Bitcoin contributor Hal Finney and Hashcash creator Adam Back at approximately 15 years old.

Since July 2014, Todd has served as a Bitcoin Core Developer at Coinkite, a Bitcoin platform, and has been a board adviser at the digital collectible platform Verisart since 2015. His career began in 2001 as a Linux system support and service developer at Starnix for a brief period, and he held several other temporary roles between 2007 and 2008.

In the same year the Bitcoin white paper was released, he started as an Electronics Designer at Gedex Inc. Todd has held significant roles in the cryptocurrency sector, including being the chief scientist at Mastercoin, a digital currency and communications protocol based on the Bitcoin blockchain, since 2014. He also took on the role of chief scientist at Dark Wallet, an open-source Bitcoin wallet, in the same year.

In 2016, Todd participated in Zcash’s trusted setup ceremony, where he helped establish cryptographic keys for securing wallets and blockchain protocols. He later expressed regret about his involvement, deeming it “pointless” and arguing that the setup should not be labeled as a multiparty computation.

In 2019, Todd faced allegations of sexual assault from cryptographer Isis Lovecruft, which he denied, subsequently filing a defamation lawsuit against her. This case was settled in 2020, with the lawsuit dropped without any financial compensation, in exchange for Lovecruft releasing a statement clarifying that Todd had never sexually assaulted her.

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