Peter Todd Says He Isn't in Hiding After Being Fingered as Satoshi Nakamoto, But Taking 'Security Measures'

By Sander Lutz

It’s been an eventful month for longtime Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd, who was recently accused of being pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto in a new HBO documentary.

Despite vigorously denying the claims, both on-camera, and off, Todd told Decrypt on Friday that being publicly branded as the elusive genius sitting on $74.4 billion worth of Bitcoin has forced him to go even further to defend himself.

“I have taken some security measures,” Todd said. “But it’s not a good idea to say exactly what I’ve done publicly. Best to keep the bad guys guessing.” 

The early Bitcoin contributor added, however, that he is certainly not in hiding, nor has he been, as a recent Wired story suggested. In fact, Todd attended a Bitcoin conference in Lugano, Switzerland—where a statue in honor of Nakamoto was unveiled—today and says he plans to speak at five more events around the world in the coming weeks. 

All in all—and perhaps surprisingly—Todd says he hasn’t yet been spotted or badgered in public by anyone who’s recognized him from the HBO documentary in which he appears, “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery.” 

“One thing that probably helped that was refusing to do any audio/video interviews with any of the (many) journalists who asked me to,” Todd said via email. 

Todd is, it should be noted, no stranger to public scrutiny. Though this is certainly the most attention he’s ever received as a potential Satoshi candidate, the blockchain developer was involved with Bitcoin from its infancy and has been previously floated as potentially responsible for secretly creating the world’s first cryptocurrency.

Cullen Hoback, the director of “Money Electric,” argued in his film that several pieces of circumstantial evidence pointed to Todd’s identity as Satoshi, including alleged similarities between both individuals’ writing styles. Hoback asserted that Todd’s experiments as a teenager with the concept of digital currency were especially suspicious, as was a blog post Todd authored that Hoback claims was accidentally made on the wrong account—and should have been posted by Satoshi.

Many in the crypto community, however, weren’t convinced by those arguments. When Todd was presented with them by Hoback at the climax of the documentary, he immediately dismissed them as “ludicrous.”

After Todd deflected claims that he was in hiding this week, Hoback took to Twitter to argue that even that assertion revealed the developer's hidden, Machiavellian scheming.

"Peter Todd tells Wired he's gone into hiding," Hoback posted. "Then he mocks Wired for running with this narrative, making an appearance today onstage."

"As its author deftly wrote," Hoback continued, quoting the Wired piece. "'Just as Todd's 'trolling' insulates him, it also exposes him.'"

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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