A new HBO documentary directed by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Cullen Hoback claims to have revealed the true identity of the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. As Politico notes, Hoback “drew critical acclaim for his series ‘Q: Into the Storm’ that exposed the authors of the QAnon conspiracy theory.” The bitcoin documentary is scheduled to air next Wednesday at 2 a.m. CET (Tuesday at 9 p.m. EST). From the report: [T]he exposure of Satoshi as its alleged creator threatens to raise some huge questions, not least his potential complicity in crimes that have featured Bitcoin use. It could also establish him as one of the world’s richest people: Satoshi himself is estimated to control about 1.1 million Bitcoin, but it’s unclear if he still has access to the cryptographic keys to the fortune. If he did, this would put his net worth at $66 billion at current valuations. Intriguingly, as the date for the airing of the documentary has drawn near, a number of high-value wallets from the “Satoshi era” have become active for the first time since 2009.
According to Bitcoin Magazine, around 250 bitcoins — worth approximately $15 million at Thursday’s bitcoin rate of $60,754 to the dollar — were drained from wallets in the past two weeks. While the coins are not officially linked to wallets used by Satoshi Nakamoto, they have been dormant since the earliest days of Bitcoin, when the cryptocurrency was worth almost nothing. The wallets’ creators would certainly have been Satoshi’s earliest collaborators. Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity remains one of the biggest mysteries of recent years.