During the two months I spent covering the Wright trial, numerous satoshis also appeared in my inbox. “The world is not ready to learn about Satoshi Nakamoto and never will unless certain conditions are met,” one of them wrote in a distorted message.
Heck, I even met candidate satoshi in person in the waiting room outside the courtroom. The man who had introduced himself as Satoshi sat in the public gallery to hear the closing arguments. Before long he nodded, chin down to his chest. One of the other onlookers anointed him with Sleeptoshi.
Many Bitcoiners welcome this strange, crypto version of “I am Spartacus,” preferring that the identity of Bitcoin’s creator remain forever a mystery. Freed from the tyrannical influence of a founder, Bitcoin has evolved into a system of pure anarchy, they say, in which no one’s opinion is worth more than anyone else’s. Everyone is Satoshi and no one is Satoshi.
“Satoshi’s greatest gift to the world was bitcoin,” Jameson Lopp, an early bitcoiner and founder of crypto custody business Casa, told me earlier in the year. “His second greatest gift was to disappear.”
The primary evidence provided in the documentary to support the theory that Todd created Bitcoin is a December 2010 forum thread in which Todd appears to be “finishing Satoshi’s sentences,” as Hoback puts it. The theme of this thread – a way to prioritize transactions based on the fee paid – is something Todd would later build into Bitcoin as a contributing developer.
As corroborating evidence, Hoback points to the similarities in the grammar and syntax used by Todd and Satoshi, as well as the timing of Satoshi’s communications, many of which were composed during the summer when Todd would have no college classes to attend. (Todd disputes the characterization of his availability during the relevant summers.)
Todd is well known in crypto circles for his contributions to the Bitcoin codebase and his vocal advocacy of the technology as an alternative to money – a supposedly surveillance-proof tool for the digital world. At a conference in 2023. watched Todd on a panel say “screw you” to the audience unless they exercise their right to make cash purchases that can’t be monitored by a government or bank. Todd admitted that he had previously tried to develop Bitcoin-like technology before Satoshi beat him to it.
