This weekend I lastly obtained round to watching Cash Electrical, the HBO documentary that “reveals” Bitcoin Core contributor Peter Todd because the true identification behind Satoshi Nakamoto. It’s three weeks outdated by now and already forgotten by the 24-hour social media cycle, however as somebody who wrote a ebook on the origin story of Bitcoin I nonetheless felt I needed to hear them out— maybe simply to touch upon it in a Take. (As I’m certainly doing now.)
Even watching it for that function was a waste of my time. Positive, I might inform you that the proof for Todd being Satoshi may be very skinny and circumstantial at finest, however Rizzo has already finished a adequate job at that. I might additionally inform you that Satoshi’s actual identification is irrelevant to start with, since Bitcoin is a free and open supply protocol that stands by itself, however that’s apparent too. Or I might emphasize as soon as once more that even when Satoshi actually owns the roughly million bitcoin which are generally attributed to him (itself a contested declare), he mined these cash pretty by investing computing energy in mining, similar to anybody else might have finished.
However I didn’t have to look at the documentary to inform you that. The movie simply doesn’t carry something new to the desk. Certainly, the largest insult to Cash Electrical is that Vivek precisely predicted its contents a few week earlier than it even aired: “somebody claims they know […] Satoshi, theories begin swirling, however no convincing proof ever materializes. Inevitably it ends with embarrassment for the accuser.”
Or, as Todd put it within the documentary himself: “The purpose is to make bitcoin the worldwide forex,” however the folks behind Cash Electrical (who, to their credit score, left this half in), “are being distracted by nonsense”.
This text is a Take. Opinions expressed are fully the creator’s and don’t essentially replicate these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.