Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, the much-awaited HBO documentary, released yesterday, has attracted severe criticism, as its revelation of the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto has been rejected by experts as baseless. The documentary attempted to present Peter Todd as Satoshi, as against the popular expectation that it would name Nick Szabo, Len Sassaman, Adam Back, or David Kleiman. The attempt has not succeeded as it failed to present enough evidence to back the bold revelation. Has the documentary genuinely tried to unmask Satoshi, or is it just another conspiracy theory? Let’s look a little closer!
Key Proofs Presented by the HBO Documentary
The documentary mainly presented three pieces of evidence. The first one pointed out that Peter Todd accidentally continued Satoshi’s post in 2010 on the BitcoinTalk forum. The second revealed Todd’s email exchanges with Hal Finney, the recipient of the first Bitcoin transaction. The third highlighted emails between Todd and a figure linked to US intelligence.
Peter Todd Denies HBO Doc’s Allegations
Todd strongly denied all the evidence the HBO documentary presented to connect him with Satoshi. Regarding the primary allegation that he accidentally continued Satoshi’s post, Todd retorted that he was just correcting Satoshi’s statement.
Things turned completely against the HBO documentary when many crypto community members came openly to criticize the documentary’s revelation. They likened the identity theory, proposed by the HBO documentary, to conspiracy theories. Some like Ki Young Ju went a step further in their criticism. Ju compared HBO’s theory about Sathosi’s identity to the ‘flat earth’ theory – a widely debunked conspiracy theory introduced without backing from reputed experts.
HBO Documentary Producer Defends His Observations
Notably, despite facing harsh criticism, Cullen Hoback, the producer of the controversial HBO documentary, showed no interest in backing down from his bold claim. Interestingly, he adopted a softer stance against the crypto community, saying that he was just presenting the available evidence. However, he strongly countered Todd’s denial, arguing that Todd was playing a deeper ‘game theory’.
In conclusion, no matter how Hoback tries to defend his work, without concrete evidence to prove Todd as Satoshi, his argument remains just another conspiracy theory. The crypto community cannot be convinced to believe something without solid evidence, only backed by vague allegations.
It seems that Satoshi’s Budapest statue is less likely to gain a face anytime soon.
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