Will the identity of the creator of Bitcoin be revealed: this is what is claimed in a new HBO series

A new HBO documentary series claims to have cracked the identity of the Bitcoin creator known as “Satoshi Nakamoto”.

According to the creators, the disclosure could shake the global financial markets and even the US presidential election, given the way Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump cultivated the support of Bitcoin enthusiasts.

The series is expected to be broadcast on Tuesday at 21:00 EST (in Israel on Wednesday morning).

The creator of Bitcoin is probably one of the richest people in the world: according to estimates, he himself controls about 1.1 million Bitcoins, but it is not clear if he still has access to the cryptographic keys to this value. If so, that would put the value of his assets at $66 billion according to current estimates.

In recent days it has been claimed on websites dealing with the issue that, intriguingly, as the broadcast date of the documentary series approaches, a number of high-value wallets from the “Satoshi era” have become active for the first time since 2009.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, about 250 bitcoins — worth about $15 million at Thursday’s bitcoin exchange rate of $60,754 a bitcoin — have been withdrawn from wallets in the past two weeks. The coins are not officially related to the wallets used by Satoshi Nakamoto. They have been dormant since the early days of Bitcoin, when the cryptocurrency was worth almost zero. The creators of the wallets, it is claimed, were Satoshi’s earliest collaborators.

The true identity of “Satoshi Nakamoto” remains one of the biggest mysteries of recent years. In 2010 the person known by this name disappeared from the public arena. His last communication was related to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The message said: “WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet’s nest, and the swarm is targeting us… I appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You won’t be able to get more than pocket money, and the heat you bring could destroy us at this point.”

In the years since then, many have tried to crack the Satoshi riddle and failed – the first notable attempt was that of journalist Leah McGrath Goodman in 2014. She identified Japanese-American Dorian Nakamoto as a suspect, but he denied the allegation, while others in the community remained unconvinced by her report.

In 2016, Australian cryptographer Craig Steven Wright claimed the title, after being reluctantly identified as Satoshi in documents leaked to the press a year earlier. Despite receiving support from some early senior community members, the attempt to convince the world that he was the creator of Bitcoin was torpedoed at the last minute because he did not provide the proof he promised.

Among those generally suspected of being Satoshi are the late software engineer Hal Finney, systems engineer Dorian Nakamoto, computer scientist Nick Szabo and Hashcash inventor Adam Beck, but many in the Bitcoin community reject attempts to identify Satoshi, citing the importance of his right to privacy. They claim that without serious proof all claims are only speculative.