Money Electric: A Bitcoin Mystery review — Satoshi ‘whodunnit’ lacks killer blow

★★★★☆ | Cullen Hoback’s documentary is an entertaining watch, and uses the same tactics as a crime drama to keep his suspect hidden until the very end.

Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery created a huge splash when a trailer was released by HBO, with the documentary promising to finally unmask Satoshi Nakamoto. 

It’s a film by Cullen Hoback, who says he first became interested in BTC seven years ago, concerned about the dangers of digital surveillance.

At 100 minutes long, it’s a chunky watch — and given its debut on a mainstream channel, has to walk an awkward tightrope between serving two very different audiences.

For those who know little about Bitcoin, there’s nifty graphics explaining how blockchains work, and a concise but elegantly written canter through the cryptocurrency’s 15-year history.

There’s also clever use of archive footage from TV shows and films, with BTC mining illustrated using a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where a golden ticket is found.

But the real aim of this documentary isn’t to explain how Bitcoin works — that’s been done before — instead, the goal is to identify its pseudonymous founder.

And in explaining why this is so necessary, Hoback argues that Satoshi’s stash of one million BTC makes it a matter of urgency as crypto becomes integrated with traditional finance, as there could be mass panic if these coins are suddenly spent.

The suspects

In some ways, Money Electric comes across like a “whodunnit,” featuring interviews with some of the best-known faces in the industry.

There’s a chat with JAN3 CEO Samson Mow, who’s depicted as a “Bitcoin ambassador” as he flies from country to country, encouraging governments to adopt it as legal tender.

Mow describes fiat as “a house of cards built on a house of cards built on a house of cards” while sitting on a private jet — ammo for critics who would say he could be talking about BTC.

That then leads us to Blockstream co-founder Adam Back, described as Mow’s boss, who claims he might be the first person that Satoshi Nakamoto contacted about his big idea.

Hoback delves deep into Back’s past and spends a lot of time sifting through the evidence that could suggest he is Satoshi, bringing plenty of compelling receipts along the way.

The filmmaker notes how the cryptographer moved to Malta around the time BTC was created — a country that coincidentally happens to be a tax haven.

Back’s also British — and that’s significant given how Satoshi appeared to use U.K. spelling, and included a headline from the London Times in Bitcoin’s genesis block.

Even though he claims to be a latecomer to BTC — claiming he was the “embarrassing late guy” by joining the BitcoinTalk forum four years after the cryptocurrency was created — Hoback points out that Back was editing the Bitcoin Wikipedia page long before then. Why? To name those who potentially could be Satoshi Nakamoto, without naming himself.

At one point, Back looks physically uncomfortable when Hoback bluntly asks who Satoshi could be. There’s another awkward moment at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, when Mow teases Back by suggesting that he’s the one who brought BTC into being.

Unmasking the ‘culprit’

But just like a good crime drama features a scene with the actual murderer long before they are caught — meaning the viewer is aware of who they are but doesn’t suspect them — Hoback spends a little time with Peter Todd as he goes caving in an abandoned WWII bunker.

An early part of the documentary shows how he learned to code at a young age and became a controversial figure in the Bitcoin space — with Todd jokingly telling Hoback that he is Satoshi. Todd’s controversial emails with a man called “John Dillon” also emerged, who claimed he worked in a relatively high position in intelligence. Watching this, he didn’t seem like a serious suspect… until the documentary’s finale.

For someone who’s well-versed in Bitcoin, you could argue that it’s only the last 20 minutes of Money Electric you need. It features Back and Todd exploring steelworks ruins in the Czech Republic and Hoback confronting the pair about everything he’s learned during filming.

There’s a cut to Hoback making a dramatic realization while scouring the BitcoinTalk forum, which appears to show Todd finishing one of Satoshi’s sentences — days after he opened an account on the website. The filmmaker speculates that Todd may have posted using the wrong profile, meaning a simple human error would have blown his secret wide open.

Todd laughs as he’s confronted with this theory, with Hoback mentioning that he seemed to have a pretty good recollection given the post in question was 13 years ago. 

But what follows is a flashback through key interviews earlier in the documentary — the breadcrumbs that have led Hoback to believe Peter Todd is Satoshi Nakamoto. There’s the 2001 email he sent to Adam Back as a teenager, Roger Ver claiming that Todd “always wants to prove he’s the smartest guy in the room,” and questions over his ties to John Dillon. There’s a clip of Todd denying he could code in C++, too, even though an old bio said he had this skill. 

Hoback goes on to claim that Peter Todd and John Dillon could be the same person — a theory that Todd dismisses as “ludicrous.” 

“It’ll be very funny when you put it into the documentary,” Todd laughingly says. “Bitcoiners will be happy if you go down this route — journalists missing the point in a way that’s really funny.”

A final piece of evidence shows a message where Todd describes himself as a “world-leading expert on how to sacrifice your Bitcoins” — perhaps an admission that he no longer has access to Satoshi Nakamoto’s stash — with Hoback suggesting Todd turned to this pseudonym over fears Bitcoin wouldn’t be taken seriously because of his young age.

A definitive answer?

Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery is a well-produced documentary with a surprising outcome — and in the aftermath, Todd maintains there are “hundreds, even thousands of people who could have created Bitcoin.” 

At first, it’s easy to worry that it’s going to be another cliched film — with one of the first visuals showing a hooded man wearing an anonymous mask. A mashup of news anchors declaring BTC is dead then follows, complete with graphics showing how this coin has accelerated in value over the years.

But Money Electric is a literate show that isn’t shy when dealing with BTC’s intricacies. The cryptocurrency’s downsides are acknowledged, but key players within the industry are given plenty of time to get their point across. We witness Bitcoin’s excesses over the years, with Hoback describing Bitcoin maximalism and “orange-pilling” as “pretty f****** annoying.” There’s short shrift for NFTs, mention of Ethereum’s cringeworthy conferences, and criticism of how central bank digital currencies could end up surveilling all of our transactions.

Hoback’s conclusions are compelling and unexpected — so much so that Todd wasn’t even named in a Polymarket bet speculating on who would be identified as Satoshi. But realistically, this documentary has failed to deal a killer blow that settles this matter once and for all, and the crypto community is already poking holes in the documentary’s narrative.

For now, it’s safe to say Satoshi’s identity remains far from certain, but there’s a prescient quote from Peter Todd as he goes caving early on in the film.

“It’s unlikely it’ll collapse on our heads, but one day it will.”