Cullen Hobak, the producer of the highly anticipated documentary, presents several claims in the 100-minute production that suggest that Todd, a well-known name in the cryptocurrency world, is the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.

Todd has been contributing to the cryptocurrency world as a Bitcoin Core Developer for years. Todd became interested in cryptography and blockchain technologies at a young age, and first became involved in these fields in his teenage years.

The first documented interaction with Bitcoin dates back to the late 2000s; He became active in the crypto community shortly after the publication of the Bitcoin white paper in 2008, at the age of 23.

In a podcast episode called “What Bitcoin Did” that he participated in in 2019, Todd explained that he contacted early Bitcoin participants such as Hal Finney and Hashcash inventor Adam Back when he was about 15 years old. These early interactions helped shape his later contributions in the field of Bitcoin and cryptography in general.

Todd officially started working at Coinkite as a Bitcoin Core Developer in July 2014 and later held key roles as lead scientist on projects such as Mastercoin and Dark Wallet. Hobak’s primary reason for naming Todd Satoshi was because of the piecing together of environmental evidence.

One of this evidence is Todd’s encrypted posts online; In particular, a post in which he described himself as “the world’s leading expert on how to sacrifice your Bitcoins” was interpreted as meaning that Todd destroyed access to approximately 1.1 million BTC attributed to Nakamoto.

The documentary further fueled speculation after Todd allegedly accidentally posted from Satoshi’s account on the BitcoinTalk forum in 2010.

It is also stated that Todd is a strong advocate of the Replacement-by-Fee (RBF) proposal, which is a controversial issue within the community. This mechanism proposed to allow a transaction to be replaced by a new transaction offering a higher fee.

The documentary implied that this technical suggestion could only come from someone — like Nakamoto — with deep knowledge of Bitcoin’s original code. But despite these theories, Todd adamantly denied that he was not Nakamoto, even before the documentary was released.

When asked to deny HBO’s claim by responding to a comment on platform X on October 8, the developer replied, “I’m not Satoshi.”

The crypto community quickly debunked HBO’s claims. Web3 researcher Pix pointed out a few key ways the documentary went wrong.

Pix first argued that Todd did not need to use a pseudonym like Satoshi Nakamoto, noting that he was still studying fine arts in 2008 and was not active in the field of cryptography.

Pix also debunked HBO’s claim regarding the 2010 BitcoinTalk post. According to this claim, Todd forgot to change the accounts and revealed himself as Satoshi. Pix claimed that the follow-up post made 13 hours later was a simple comment and that there was no evidence that he had forgotten to switch accounts.

Addressing the RBF connection, Pix stated that Todd introduced RBF in 2014 and Satoshi had already left the scene. HBO’s claim that this feature was pre-planned by Satoshi was described as a gross exaggeration.

Finally, Pix addressed the “don’t sacrifice Bitcoins” message, explaining that Todd’s cryptic comment was a joke about blockchain integrity, not an admission that he destroyed access to 1.1 million BTC. According to Pix, this key piece of evidence was taken completely out of context, further discrediting HBO’s claims.

One of those who did not believe HBO’s claims was CryptoQuant researcher Ki Young Ju, who called the documentary “disgusting.”

“Surprising that they reached this conclusion, yet all #Bitcoin experts disagree,” Ju wrote on the X platform on October 9.

BitMEX Research joined the skeptics, calling the evidence presented by HBO “obviously ridiculous” and stating that there was “no reason” to believe Peter Todd was Satoshi.

Adam Back, one of the important figures who has long been linked to the early development of Bitcoin and is claimed to be Satoshi, did not support this theory either. Back, who appeared in the documentary, did not give credit to the speculation and simply stated that “nobody knows who Satoshi is.”

Other market observers dismissed this conclusion as just sloppy journalism. Although Polymarket, a popular prediction platform, lists odds that HBO’s documentary will identify Satoshi Nakamoto as Peter Todd, Peter Todd was not initially included as a betting option.

Bettors mainly focused on names frequently speculated as the creators of Bitcoin, such as Nick Szabo and Len Sassaman. Other candidates included Hal Finney and Elon Musk.