Not so long ago, cryptocurrency was relatively unknown, and everyone was uninterested in it. At that point, Bitcoin, the first and biggest cryptocurrency, only existed in the mind of its elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. But now, Bitcoin is perhaps more popular than the pope. But as popular as Bitcoin is now, its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, remains unknown to date—or is he?

In a documentary created by HBO, Peter Todd, the Canadian Bitcoin core developer, was named Satoshi Nakamoto, and he admitted it, but what did he do? 

Cullen Hoback, the producer of the HBO documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, confronted two individuals, Peter Todd and Blockstream founder Adam Back, with his evidence of why Todd was Nakamoto. The question was asked point blank, and Todd answered, “Well, yeah, I’m Satoshi Nakamoto.”

But does this admission count as the real deal? Anyone who knows of Todd’s previous history with the question of being Bitcoin’s ghost creator may have a hard time believing that it was an actual admission, and for good reason. 

Peter Todd is known for many things, and one of them is playing around with this particular question. First, Todd started using the phrase “I am Satoshi” to support the creator’s right to privacy. He then publicly denied being the creator of Bitcoin before the documentary's release and even questioned Hoback’s conclusion after some clips from the documentary got leaked online.

Todd went on to deny being Satoshi once more before the documentary's release. This time, it was on X in response to a comment by an X user who called him out to deny being Satoshi. 

But despite his repeated denial, Todd has also previously joked about being Satoshi. In a 2019 “What Bitcoin Did” podcast with host Peter McCormack, Todd said, “I am Satoshi, as is everyone else.”

But while Peter Todd keeps playing around the question, he’s not the only one suspected of being Satoshi Nakamoto. Alongside Nick Szabo, the father of smart contracts, Adam Back, who was also featured in the documentary, is also in the run for the possible persons who could be Satoshi. 

Unlike Todd, though, Adam Back emphatically distanced himself from those speculations. He even went on to describe in detail the reason why it couldn’t be him in an X post.

Len Sassaman is another individual who was previously linked to the Nakomoto name. He used to be a favored candidate on the decentralized prediction market platform, Polymarket, and as of Monday, Sassaman led the odds among the possible candidates. However, his odds dropped right after his widow, Meredith L. Patterson, denied the speculation that her late husband was the famed Satoshi Nakamoto. 

As the days go by and more people are linked to the name, it gets harder to find the truth about Satoshi Nakamoto. At this point, we might all make peace with the fact that we will never know who Satoshi is. However, on the flip side, nothing is impossible, and maybe one day we just might discover who Satoshi is.

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