Just today, HBO released a film about the “unmasking” of Satoshi Nakamoto. The main clue there is a message from Peter Todd, which, according to the filmmakers, he supposedly posted, thinking he was writing as Satoshi but accidentally wrote as Peter Todd. I decided to dig into that message a bit. Here are my brief conclusions.
At first, when I looked at that message, it seemed strange to me as well. Judge for yourself – on December 7, 2010, Peter Todd created an account, and on December 10, he posted in a thread a short message that seemingly clarifies a point made by Satoshi Nakamoto, who had posted a few hours earlier about transactions and double-spending. If you look at these two facts, it may seem like they caught him in the act. But when you dig a little deeper, here’s what actually comes out.
In reality, Peter Todd almost immediately after registering on the BitcoinTalk forum, less than a minute later, wrote the following post:
I asked ChatGPT what buying an invitation to “Diaspora” might mean. It turns out there was a decentralized social network called “Diaspora” at the time, and access was only possible through invitations.
Peter Todd registered specifically to buy such an invitation, and he mentioned he was ready to pay $2 and asked the seller to contact him directly. I’m not sure if it was Bitcoin or not.
Then, less than three days later, he wrote that very message, to which HBO filmmakers clung as the main argument that he is Satoshi. But in reality, knowing now that Peter Todd registered specifically to buy an invitation, this post doesn’t seem strange. Peter likely read Satoshi Nakamoto’s post and decided to add his “two cents”, clarifying that strictly speaking, inputs and outputs in transactions cannot be equal if the transaction fee has changed. It seems Todd was interested in Bitcoin technology by then and decided to share his opinion. The post was very short, just one line, which was unlike Satoshi’s other posts at the time.
A few days later, Satoshi posted his last message, just two days after the very post by Peter Todd that HBO seized on, and disappeared. Around that time, an article about Bitcoin was published in PC World magazine mentioning WikiLeaks and that the CIA was interested in Bitcoin because it was being used for WikiLeaks donations.
And what about Peter Todd? After his post clarifying the Bitcoin transaction, he disappeared for a year and a half, but later resurfaced, claiming that he was no newbie on the forum, that he had an account, and that he even had a few earlier posts.
Now, to summarize everything:
- Peter Todd created an account to buy an invitation to a decentralized network from another user, as these invitations were highly sought after at the time.
- A couple of days later, he clarified one of Satoshi’s ideas, writing a few sentences.
- A year and a half later, he reappears and reminds users that he’s not a newbie, saying he even has a few earlier posts. Presumably, he did this to reassure others he wasn’t a spammer.
Now, let’s assume this was Satoshi, and he wanted to buy an invitation to “Diaspora” and created a separate account for it. Would he have paid with Bitcoin? The very coins he mined, despite the fact that none of the mined Bitcoin had been spent, except for a few early transactions to Hal Finney in January 2009? We would have known about this by now.
Another question: would Satoshi Nakamoto “dust off” his account under a real name (Peter Todd) and mention his previous posts on the forum, of which there were only two—one about buying an invitation to “Diaspora” and another clarifying data about a transaction with a different fee? According to HBO’s version, this is where he supposedly slipped up, posting as Satoshi by accident. After all, if he wanted to remind everyone that he had previous posts, wouldn’t he have checked first, “What did I write there?” This is easily done—forums have a link to the “user’s recent posts page“.
