{"id":813867,"date":"2024-12-22T00:28:14","date_gmt":"2024-12-22T06:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/22\/who-invented-bitcoin-hbo-documentary-money-electric-tries-to-solve-an-enduring-crypto-mystery\/"},"modified":"2024-12-22T00:28:14","modified_gmt":"2024-12-22T06:28:14","slug":"who-invented-bitcoin-hbo-documentary-money-electric-tries-to-solve-an-enduring-crypto-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/22\/who-invented-bitcoin-hbo-documentary-money-electric-tries-to-solve-an-enduring-crypto-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Invented Bitcoin? HBO Documentary \u2018Money Electric\u2019 Tries to Solve an Enduring Crypto Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitcoins <\/p>\n

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\n\tWho invented Bitcoin? That question has become a captivating mystery for the digital age along the lines of whatever happened to D.B. Cooper or who was Deep Throat in the Watergate scandal.<\/p>\n

\n\tDocumentarian Cullen Hoback<\/a> thinks he has the answer. His new HBO<\/a> documentary \u201cMoney Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery<\/a>\u201d digs into the rise of crypto currencies and the effort to uncover the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the nom de plume<\/em> used by the author of the 11-page white paper<\/a> that set Bitcoin and the broader crypto craze in motion after it was distributed widely online on Oct. 31, 2008.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Hoback, diving into crypto-mania was a natural segue after he probed the netherworld of the internet in his 2021 HBO docuseries \u201cQ: Into the Storm.\u201d That six-episode series posited a theory about the people who are fueling the dangerous and delusional theories peddled under the moniker of QAnon. Both \u201cQ\u201d and \u201cMoney Electric\u201d stemmed from Hoback\u2019s interest in how the digital revolution is changing culture and the social order. The rise of crypto has been fueled by the yearning by many to establish a decentralized financial system \u2014 governed by publicly available Blockchain ledgers rather than institutions such as Bank of America or Goldman Sachs \u2014 and the growing demand for easier ways to conduct financial transactions online and across borders.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve spent the past 10 years talking about digital rights and digital privacy issues. So making a film about Bitcoin was something that I had wanted to do for some amount of time,\u201d Hoback tells Variety<\/em>. \u201cI wanted to discuss what [crypto] was trying to be versus what it became. It was trying to be digital cash. It really became something more like digital gold.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPopular on Variety\t\t<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cMoney Electric\u201d follows Hoback\u2019s investigative effort to shed light on the Satoshi question. He went into it with no certainty that he would reach a firm conclusion. But after immersing himself in crypto culture, he came away with the conviction that the father of Bitcoin is a Canadian crypto developer Peter Todd. <\/p>\n

\n\tTodd has dismissed Hoback\u2019s assertion. On Oct. 9, one day after \u201cMoney Electric\u201d debuted on HBO, Todd told the BBC flatly:<\/a> \u201cI am not Satoshi Nakamoto,\u201d calling the claim \u201cludicrous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTodd is a well-known figure from the crypto conference circuit. He spoke to Hoback on camera for \u201cMoney Electric.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe filmed with him on multiple occasions. He likes being on stage. He likes talking about Bitcoin. You can see throughout the last decade, once he was given a microphone, he kind of took that opportunity,\u201d Hoback said. \u201cAssuming he is Satoshi \u2014 I think if you\u2019ve gotten away with something for so long and you\u2019ve done such a good job of muddying the waters, you probably think no one\u2019s going to catch you anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tCullen Hoback, director-producer of HBO documentary \u201cMoney Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tHoback says he pursued the Bitcoin story because the clamor to end the Satoshi mystery not only made for a compelling story, but also because of its broader significance. The inventor of Bitcoin famously held on to 1.1 million coins \u2014 or 5% of the 21 million Bitcoins that will ever be mined, according to the protocols laid out in the white paper. At contemporary Bitcoin prices \u2014 valued against the dollar at $68,140.74 as of the close of trading Friday \u2014 those holdings amount to enormous wealth. There has been speculation that whoever is behind Bitcoin has destroyed or deliberately abandoned those 1.1 million coins. Hoback is skeptical.<\/p>\n

\n\tHoback funded the first year of work on \u201cMoney Electric\u201d out of his own pocket until HBO came onboard. The slow but steady march of crypto products into mainstream financial systems \u2014 El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 \u2014 has piqued broader interest in the subject. Filmmaker Adam McKay is an executive producer with Hoback on \u201cMoney Electric,\u201d as he was on \u201cQ: Into the Storm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI only really wanted to tell the story if I felt like we could at least posit a compelling theory for who was behind Bitcoin,\u201d he said. \u201cI picked up where other researchers left off and put together a short list. And I said, \u2018OK, if I can get access to some of the players in this network, either one of them is likely to be Satoshi or to have known who created Bitcoin.\u2019 But what really motivated me was the global adoption story. When El Salvador announced that they\u2019re going to be using Bitcoin as legal tender, that really breathed some new life into the story for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCrypto markets have been on a wild ride in recent years. The trading price of Bitcoin and other tokens tanked hard in the spring of 2022 but markets have rebounded significantly. Nevertheless it remains a volatile world that is vulnerable to theft, hackers and the loss of the all-important electronic digital \u201ckeys\u201d that crypto owners guard as carefully as others would the key to a physical safe deposit box. The implosion of the prominent FTX crypto trading exchange and conviction of founder Sam Bankman-Fried also put a big spotlight on the potential for fortunes to be made by savvy trading of tokens \u2014 and the potential for massive fraud.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat I find interesting about Bitcoin is that it is an intersection of unlikely allies,\u201d Hoback said. \u201cYou have libertarians, you have people from the financial sector, you have your stock market guys and you have your technologists. You have nerds who sit on their computers all day and then, and then you just have people who are looking for somewhere to put their money with the hope that this is kind of their way out of the rat race.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t(Pictured top: Peter Todd in \u201cMoney Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery\u201d)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Cynthia Littleton Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who invented Bitcoin? That question has become a captivating mystery for the digital age along the lines of whatever happened to D.B. Cooper or who was Deep Throat in the Watergate scandal. Documentarian Cullen Hoback thinks he has the answer. His new HBO documentary \u201cMoney Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery\u201d digs into the rise of crypto<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":813868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4041,31130],"tags":[11476],"class_list":["post-813867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bitcoin","category-invented","tag-bitcoins"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}