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Humanity clings to mysteries that border on compulsions at this point.
The moon landing — did we actually go, and if we did, is the footage real? And what about the pyramids — built by laborers and farmers, or were those 80-ton granite blocks actually set in place by ancient alien technology?
Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity has fast become another cultural oddity that just won’t quit.
Craig Wright was the ringleader of that particular media circus for years, until courts took action against him. Now that Wright is finally proven to be totally wrong, it’s the rest of us that are doomed to be repeatedly punished for the closure.
In the past six months alone, we’ve had multiple fresh attempts at reviving the Nakamoto narrative. First was HBO’s Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, from documentarian Cullen Hoback, and a new documentary from the UK’s Channel 4 lacked compelling evidence, let alone a tangible theory.
You can read my thoughts about HBO’s take, but ultimately it came to the laughable conclusion that long-time Bitcoin contributor Peter Todd was in fact Satoshi, hiding in plain sight.
In between those releases, we were also subjected to threads on X, including one from Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, which suggested that tech billionaire Jack Dorsey is the man behind the Nakamoto moniker.
Veteran Bitcoiner Jameson Lopp shared his method of debunking the Dorsey theory during a premiere episode of Supply Shock on Thursday — a brand-new Bitcoin brand and podcast hosted by Bitcoin Historian Pete Rizzo.
Lopp had previously busted an earlier suggestion that Hal Finney was Nakamoto by showing Finney had competed in a 10-mile race in Santa Barbara at the same time Nakamoto was emailing early developer Mike Hearn.
Eventually, Lopp found enough instances, after trawling through Dorsey’s old Twitter posts, where it would have been almost impossible for Dorsey to coordinate a double life as Nakamoto to consider the theory bunk.
“I think a lot of the people who are accused of being Satoshi candidates are Bitcoin legends in their own right,” Lopp told Rizzo.