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Howdy! Ed here.
If you listened carefully on Wednesday night the sound you heard was a giant guffaw in the cryptoverse.
That’s when HBO’s “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” aired.
The creator had promised to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s mysterious founder whose identity has remained hidden for 15 years.
Satoshi’s identity isn’t just a curiosity — Coinbase is among firms listing his unmasking as a risk to its business model.
All the usual suspects materialised in stories and podcasts about the potential revelation. Szabo, Sassaman, Back, Le Roux, and Kleiman each made cameos in the coverage.
Even Craig Wright, chastened after his foiled attempt to claim Satoshi’s mantle, got some ink.
Many have tried to solve the greatest mystery in modern finance.
Two things made this attempt different: First, it was television, so clips would be plentiful on social media. And second, Polymarket.
No sooner did news about the film break than a prediction market sprang to life on the betting site and rapidly soared to $20 million.
Initially, Len Sassaman, the brilliant dev who died in 2011, was heavily favoured.
By Tuesday, the odds had shifted. His widow told Ekin Genç that her late husband wasn’t Satoshi.
Then Nick Szabo, the computer scientist and cryptographer long thought to be Satoshi despite his denials, drew the smart money on the Polymarket pool, as Liam Kelly reported.
By Tuesday night’s big reveal, though, the bottom fell out of the market.
HBO pointed to Peter Todd, a protégé of Adam Back who was a teenager at the time of Bitcoin’s creation.
In a segment that became an instant classic, Todd laughed off director Cullen Hoback’s assertion as “ludicrous.”
Some delighted in Todd’s jousting with Hoback in the film. But Todd hastened to correct the record.
“I didn’t trick Cullen Hoback,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “I think he just needed a stunt to hype his film.”
There was little doubt about that. Whatever you may think about the film’s claims, the marketing team at HBO deserves a big hand.
In the years to come, there will be more sleuthing into Satoshi’s identity, more purported revelations, and dead ends.
As for Bitcoin, it chugged along indifferent to the spectacle of its creation. By Friday, it had slipped 1.3% in the last seven days.
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Binance exec’s bail plea dismissed on technicality
Tigran Gambaryan, the jailed Binance executive in Nigeria, has suffered another setback. Osato Avan-Nomayo reports.
Robinhood, Revolut, and PayPal lead corporate crypto moves: ‘The floodgates are starting to open’
Traditional financial powerhouses are making digital assets a key part of their strategies. Eric Johansson and Joanna looked into it.
Post of the week
Ryan Salame, an FTX executive who pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, used LinkedIn to announce the start of his seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence.
