A new HBO documentary claims to have revealed the real identity of pseudonymous bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, UNN reports citing Politico.
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If these findings are widely recognized, the revelation could shock global financial markets and even the US presidential election, given how Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump has garnered the support of bitcoin enthusiasts, the publication notes.
The documentary is the latest work by Emmy Award nominee Cullen Hoback, who received critical acclaim for his series Q: Into the Storm" series, which exposed the authors of the QAnon conspiracy theory. The main exposé will air next Wednesday at 2 a.m. CET.
Bitcoin has become a financial phenomenon of the Internet age. Since its inception in 2009, the censorship-resistant cryptocurrency, which exists on a decentralized ledger called a blockchain, has become a means of saving for those who believe that traditional money is systematically devalued; a means of speculation for those who feel excluded from conventional financial markets; and, most notably, a popular means of paying for illicit products and services such as drugs, cyber fraud, and murder-for-hire.
Backed by active supporters such as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, it has grown into a trillion-dollar asset class, becoming so large that even central banks have had to consider it as a potential rival to their own systems.
Thus, the exposure of Satoshi as its alleged creator threatens to raise a number of serious questions, not least regarding his potential complicity in crimes involving the use of bitcoin. It could also make him one of the richest men in the world: Satoshi himself is estimated to control around 1.1 million bitcoins, but it is unclear whether he still has access to the cryptographic keys to the fortune. If he did, the net worth would be $66 billion at current estimates.
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Interestingly, as the documentary's airing date approached, several large wallets from the Satoshi era became active for the first time since 2009.
According to Bitcoin Magazine, about 250 bitcoins have been withdrawn from wallets over the past two weeks - worth about $15 million at Thursday's bitcoin rate of $60,754. Although the coins are not officially linked to the wallets used by Satoshi Nakamoto, they have been inactive since the early days of bitcoin, when the cryptocurrency was worth almost nothing. The creators of the wallets were undoubtedly Satoshi's first associates, the publication notes.