Peter Todd Was ‘Unmasked’ As Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Now He’s In Hiding

In the week earlier the documentary was released, online betting markets had Len Sassaman, a cryptographer who moved successful akin online circles to Satoshi, arsenic the astir apt campaigner to beryllium revealed arsenic the Bitcoin creator. Sassaman took his ain beingness successful 2011 astatine the property of 31, soon aft Satoshi disappeared.

The lawsuit for Sassaman was first outlined successful 2021 by Evan Hatch, laminitis of crypto gaming level Worlds. Whenever speculation astir Sassaman bubbles periodically to the surface, the spotlight is thrown connected his widow, bundle developer Meredith Patterson, who believes the mentation is unfounded.

“People utilized to beryllium truly fucking nosy and entitled. I’d get radical penning maine with a two-page database of dates and locations, asking wherever I was astatine specified and specified a clip oregon place,” says Patterson. “Where bash you get off? A implicit alien walking up to a widow and trying to interrogate her. It’s like, fuck disconnected Sargeant Joe Friday.”

When Patterson caught upwind that the documentary mightiness sanction her erstwhile husband, her archetypal thought was for her parents, whom she disquieted mightiness beryllium targeted arsenic a mode of threatening her into handing implicit Satoshi’s bitcoin stash. “I called my dada and said: Something weird has happened and it’s not immoderate of our faults,” she says. A person who works successful instrumentality enforcement successful Belgium, wherever Patterson present lives, advised her to instrumentality refuge successful her section constabulary presumption if she felt unsafe.

In the end, the occupation was not hers to woody with. “I was relieved for myself and my household that they named Peter Todd,” says Patterson. “But I consciousness atrocious for Peter Todd. Frankly, cipher deserves getting a people painted connected their back.”

The stance of galore Bitcoin advocates, including Todd, is that determination is thing to beryllium gained by the hunt for Satoshi. In the lack of its creator, Bitcoin has evolved nether a meritocracy of ideas, successful which changes are projected and decided upon by assemblage vote, they say. Meanwhile, determination is plentifulness to suffer for anyone accused of being Satoshi, whether accurately oregon otherwise.

After the documentary aired, emails began to flood into Todd’s inbox. “So far, [it’s] a clump of radical asking for money,” says Todd. In 1 speech seen by WIRED, an idiosyncratic sent twenty-five emails successful the span of 2 days asking Todd to assistance repay a loan.