Following the release of the HBO documentary “Money Electric: The” on Tuesday night. Bitcoin BTC
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‘Mystery’ Former Bitcoin Core developer Gregory Maxwell undermines the case of filmmaker Cullen Hoback that the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin was Peter Todd, another early Bitcoin developer. pointed out an overlooked detail.
Billed as a “global investigation” to “unravel one of the Internet’s greatest mysteries,” the nearly two-hour documentary interviews several people involved in Bitcoin and investigates various leads before finally focusing on Todd. . It was immediately rejected.
The crux of Hoback’s case centered around a response he sent to Satoshi on the BitcoinTalk forum in 2010. He claimed Todd accidentally ended Satoshi’s posts on his account. Both accounts remained silent for several days afterwards, with Todd later implementing a Bitcoin-for-fee swap feature that was discussed as a concept in the thread. Fee-for-replacement allows senders to process unconfirmed transactions faster by replacing them with another transaction with a higher transaction fee.
Among the supposed supporting evidence, Hoback cited Todd’s use of the pseudonym “John Dillon” to push for replacement fees, the British/Canadian spelling used by both Satoshi and Todd, and Todd’s tight posting schedule on weekends to accommodate his student timetable.
Hoback also claimed that Todd had discussed “sacrificing” Bitcoin, which he said involved destroying Satoshi’s coins, estimated to be worth about 1.1 million BTC, which he said were worth about $68 billion on paper.
In a discussion thread hours after the documentary aired, Maxwell wrote: “At the time, Petertodd’s account was named ‘retep’ and had no immediately obvious link to his identity. If there had been a mistake, he wouldn’t have just given up on the account and changed his name to his legal name later!”
Maxwell also warned others against accusing Satoshi, reminding people that it often resulted in people’s families being threatened and robbed.
Todd responded to X: “Good point Gregory Maxwell.” “If Cullen Hoback had actually wanted to find Satoshi, he would have presented his theory to Adam Back and me to make sure there were no minor flaws like this. ”
Back is the creator of the Hashcash proof-of-work system to combat email spam, which Satoshi later incorporated into Bitcoin’s consensus algorithm. He is also one of the candidates speculated to become Satoshi, something he has repeatedly denied.
“But he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to make a profitable documentary. So he didn’t ask us if his theory was flawed,” Todd added Wednesday.
Polymarket bettors lose
Ahead of the film’s airing, decentralized prediction platform Polymarket generated more than $44 million in trading volume as users guessed who the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin was in the documentary.
Top frontrunners included Len Sassaman, Nick Szabo, Adam Back and David Kleiman. At one point during the day, Sassaman, Szabo and Back were all essentially tied with each scoring percentage at around 8%. Todd has not been nominated as a competitor by Polymarket users.
After the massive release of the HBO documentary became public knowledge, there was no shortage of scrutiny online, with many community members choosing to criticize and debunk the film’s conclusions, as they have done for similar releases in the past.
The mystery surrounding Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator appears to remain a mystery for now, and many advocates argue it should remain that way.
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